Bindweed

Hi All,

I have put a rose in today and as I have my borders covered in membrane and gravel, I shove all the gravel to one side and cut through the membrane dig hole plant and cover back over. However when I have done this today there is loads of white roots. After searching the Internet I think that it is bindweed. It seems to be coming from next door under the fence. Will this cause me a major problem in my garden?

Rusty

 

Oh yes- if it is allowed to take over Rusty. An expert will probably come along to advise best solution. Have you seen real evidence of this bindweed the other side of your boundary . It's up and about and winding like there's no tomorra right now,

 

Clueless1 has a bindweed eradication program that is so effective that scientists have found that all Bindweed roots in the North East are growing away from Redcar in sheer terror.

 

There is some growing up my mahonia but that is about 30 foot from where I have found it today and there is only a little bit. I say it's coming from next door as it all seems to come from there and then stop at my path. I cannot really make out anything next door as it is very overgrown no one has touched it for best part of 18 months, due to it being empty and the new neighbours are working on the inside.

Rusty

 

I have put lots of plants in, built a couple of raised beds and dug a new border and there was none in any of these area. The border I dug was about 6 foot away from where I was today.

Rusty

 

Some inexperienced bindweed is trying to invade from next door. It will learn.

I'll share my anti-bindweed in a bit after the lad's gone to bed.

 

Its so scary it can only be told after the watershed

 

You'll need Holy Water & some Uranium 235 to hand, oh, and some sticky backed plastic & an empty washing up liquid bottle.

 

I'm not sure that you and I FC, as relative new young innocents on GC are going to be able to cope with this "post watershed" ADVICE.
Are you sure you want to know what clueless1 has to say?

 

Right, here goes. This is based on my experience, which came from experimentation, advice of others, and research into how a plant works and how glyphosate works. Some of what I'm about to suggest seems counter-intuitive, but it works.

1. Don't physically damage the bindweed. The only exception being that if you see flowers, pull them off asap.
2. Keep the ground moist, watering in the evening. The reason is you actually need the bindweed to be growing happily. Plants have a range of self defence mechanisms, including the ability to close all their pores to conserve water during drought. You need everything to be optimum, hence keeping them watered during dry weather.
3. Spray with Roundup in the mornings. Remember you watered the previous evening, so the plant is as happy as can be, and will not be deploying any of its defence mechanisms, so it will happily spend all day soaking up the glyphosate from the RoundUp. Remember, don't damage the plant, you want it to happily carry all that glyphosate right down to the roots.

That's not it. After a week or so, it will go yellow, then brown then black. You can cut these bits away now. Don't put any good plants in yet.

Another week or so will pass, and you will see new shoots. Just spray them. Maintain a daily patrol actively seeking out the bindweed shoots and spraying them on sight. Again, never damage them. Bindweed hides. Look under established plants, under fence panels, behind the compost bin, and all along your boundary. After a time you will become so tuned into them that you'll be spotting them out the corner of your eye in places where nobody else would ever see them. Maintain the patrols as regular as possible (I did mine daily) throughout the whole growing season.

Much of the problem will exist outside your jurisdiction (in your neighbour's garden), so this is where it gets a bit tricky. Discretely shoot any bindweed you see outside your perimeter that is in range. Don't get caught. You might also consider a physical barrier against root invasion. I dug a 3ft deep trench along the length of my last garden on the side that the bindweed was invading from, and I put weed fabric in and back filled. Incidentally, this caused much amusement to my elderly former neighbour (on the good side) who came out and saw me in the trench, covered head to foot in mud, with just my head showing above the mound of excavated earth. He calmly remarked, 'oh, is the war back on now then?'.

Despite all your efforts, inevitably there will still be the occasional new shoot. This is because although you've killed all the established ones by now, they'll have set seed at some point in their lives. You will therefore find yourself having to spray shoots that are dangerously close to your good plants. In this scenario you can use one of the many other weapons in your arsenal. You should collect up and make the following tools:

* Plastic pop bottles of various sizes, washed out and bottoms cut off, lids removed
* Plastic tubes of any size
* Small sticks with coloured tape on one end
* Some plastic sheet

The bottles and tubes are to be slotted over the heads of any bindweed shoots that are close to a good plant. With the bottles, you put the bottle the right way up over the shoot to act like a cloche. You can then spray into the bottle to get the bindweed shoot without fear of the spray drifting onto your good plants. Leave the bottles/tubes in place for at least a few hours after. ALWAYS mark the location of treated shoots with your sticks with tape on. That way you can more easily find them to check on their progress, and if you spot an unmarked one, you know it hasn't been sprayed yet.

If you have any bindweed that has wrapped itself round anything, you can carefully unravel it, lay it on the plastic sheet, and spray it.

Another trick that I didn't try (I didn't think of it myself, and have learned it more recently off here) is you can set canes or strings next to infected plants and then wait for the bindweed to climb along it, thus exposing itself ready to be sprayed.

That's pretty much all I've got on the subject. Good luck. Expect any bindweed war to be all out war for at least one full growing season, then a couple of years of routine patrols.

 

Talking of Post Watershed, have you found the Charles Dickens Ghost story that I hid in the Haunted Forum yet? Even Daisees doesn't go in there

 

Clueless1.
That was the most exciting thing I have ever read IN MY WHOLE LIFE. Have you ever thought of taking up writing novels?
And I thought Enid Blyton was a damn good read but your Bindweed short story there has got me so twitchy, I don't think I can go to bed for ages and ages. Well, at least not until after one o'clock in the morning.
Are you alright FC?