Bindweed in established plantings

[Barbi C]

I have been getting GYO for a year now & have just found over the fence, hello everyone. We have been building a house for the past 5+ years, in this time I've had to let my garden go a bit, husband keeps saying hes bringing the digger in so I put off doing it, however now the fruit area is overrun with wild strawberries & hardy geraniums and the dandy's are getting ready to invade what will be the veg patch. However my main concern is an infestation of bindweed that has been made 10 times worse by the digging of foundations & dumping of the spoil, which has spread it all over the place, it got to the top of the beech hedge 2 years ago (the bindweed not the digger), I was horrifed when I found it, so last year I dug, pulled & sprayed, seemed on top, but its back, its everywhere again - What do I do? Keep pulling and digging?

[Two_Sheds]

dig it all out if you can, or keep pulling it to weaken it (but this takes years and is soul-destroying)

Or you could use glyphosate: you need to use it when the plant is in full leaf, so leave it a while. If you can't spray, you can dip the weed in a bath of it, or wipe it on using rubber gloves

[bearded bloke]

If you do go for glyphosate the best time to spray is at evening dew point,the plant will accept it more readily then & use a very fine mist (mist is the operative word) do not drench,also do not spray earlier than eight days after emergence (or four fully opened leaves) as upto that point the root is expending more energy growing than it is accepting through photosynthesis,so it stands to reason that it would also be prudent to wait for the same period if you are pulling it up.

[Chef_uk]

I'm quickly becoming acquainted with bindweed lol Of all the beds its coming up in the worst is my carrot bed, the one i didn't want to disturb grrrr.

[endymion]

We found the best way to deal with bindweed was to leave it alone until it starts flowering, then spray it twice - a week apart - with a suitable weedkiller (can't remember what it was called). Some people train it up canes, so it's easier to target. Spraying in the evening works best, although I'm not sure why.

Anything that grows the following year will be a lot weaker, and can be dealt with by pulling it out as soon as it peeps through the ground, but it's really time consuming.

It would be brilliant if you can get your neighbours to spray any bindweed in their garden at the same time, otherwise it'll just crawl back under the hedge again and you really will be fighting a losing battle - our neighbours have a 'wild patch' on their side of the boundary hedge, so we'll always have bindweed.

In a flower bed you can deal with it by pulling it up, but if it's in the middle of something you don't want to disturb (including carrots) you can paint a spot weedkiller on the leaves. But make sure they don't touch anything precious after they've been treated. That's how we cleared a carelessly dug new flower bed couple of years ago, and it's been clean since.

We've also found that it doesn't tend to travel more than a yard or so under a lawn, so that's one way of containing it in one part of the garden.

[LauraS]

I found a good way of eradicating it from established plantings. First dig up what you can. When it regrows and gets to be around 8-12 inches tall, make up a solution of glyphosate and put it in jam jars. Bend the stem so the leaves are immersed in the glyphosate. Put the whole lot in a plastic bag and tie it with string so the stem and leaves stay immersed, and the jar stays upright. Leave it like that so the plant keeps on absorbing the weedkiller. Saves getting it on other plants. A little dab of washing-up-liquid in the solution helps absorbtion.

[Kleftiwallah]

Isn't it a very good thing that bindweed and twitch grass roots are so easily spotted in the ground.

Now if only they could find that these two roots held some sort of anti- cancer properties. . . . .Cheers, Tony.

[bearded bloke]

Spraying in the evening works best, although I'm not sure why

That is because the plant naturally "drinks" dew at dusk & dawn

When it regrows and gets to be around 8-12 inches tall

Just to add,research by agricultural bodies has shown that the ultimate stage to treat bindweed is at 8 open leaves,as at that point the root is naturally weak due to using large reserves of energy to grow that far,however after 8 the the additional leaves return more energy than the plant uses to form further leaves

[biggreenfingers]

I started by pulling it out to try and weaken it but still appeared. I had to resort to painting the leaves of the binweed with a small paintbrush so that it didn't get on my veg. That sorted it out for me.