Bindweed problem!!

[Joshremlin]

Ive just taken over a allotment about 4 month ago. I set off digging it out and then planted some stuff but i thought for this year ill take it steady and not fill the full garden as i was sowing latish  :'(, we had a bit of rain and the bindweed come back threw but not loads at the end of the cropping season im thinking of buying some round up concentrate and over mixing it!! do you fink it will work??? If any one has had a problem with the weed before and got rid of it easy let me know what you used or did!!

Cheer joshremlin!! (rotherham road alloments)

[Joshremlin]

[goodlife]

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If any one has had a problem with the weed before ohh..do I .. ::) unfortunately it is not easy weed to get rid of..but then again if you can keep it down by regularly pulling it off before it has chance to pull your plants down, it is not such a troublesome weed.. :-X
You can grow perfectly good crops amonst the bidweed..providing you keep it under control.
We cannot get rid of the at all..we have hedges around our lotties and all the hedgerows are full of the stuff. I've almost got it under control in veg areas but still every now and then there is plants popping up.. ::)
Couple of years ago I dug out large area of raspberry canes..they were infested with bindweed..and even now that the bed is free from any perennial plants and its been dug over again and again, everytime I put my fork in it I can guarantee that I come across loads of those 'spagetti' roots.. ::) One day it will come to an end...
My advise is..learn to live with it....

[Tulipa]

Hi, welcome to A4all!

I agree with Goodlife, you will never see the end of bindweed so don't let it stress you.  I keep digging it up but it grows from the tiniest speck of root left behind.  Once I have started growing veg each season I just keep pulling up the bindweed as best I can to stop it choking the plants and making new roots, and hopefully weakening the roots!

Roundup works much better at this time of year when plants are actively growing (and you get better value for money!) than later in the year so you are better spraying before you plant your veggies rather than late in the summer when it doesn't work so well.

good luck  :)

[pigeonseed]

Yes I have it too! I hate seeing it's silly little head popping up left right and centre  >:( It does make me feel better that you say you live with it, goodlife and tulipa.

As long as it's in a hedgerow and not in my crops, it's a very beautiful plant!

[Unwashed]

Depends a bit what kind of bindweed and what kind of soil you have.

It's not so difficult to keep it under control on light soils, but it is more of a problem on heavier soils.  For me the key was digging the ground over a couple of times so the new roots grew into lose soil and then it was pretty simple pulling it up with a little losing with a fork, but it took a year or so.  That was hedge bindweed (the one with the big white flowers) and it's not really well adapted to being an arable weed.

Field bindweed is a bit more difficult (smaller pink flowers) as it gets its roots down well and is better adpated as an arable weed.  Again, cultivate the soil first and just keep pulling it up by hand and after a year of that you should have it down to managable proportions.

Potatoes are a good crop to grow in infested ground as they compete well and once you've earthed them up the soil is quite lose and you can weed out by hand any bindweed that starts to take over.

[Joshremlin]

cheers for all the fast replies!!.  I take it i will just carry on digging the blinding stuff up  :'(  :'(  :'( I hate it!!! - although I am still finking of applying some concentrated weed killer high in Glyphosate so I can over mix it to make it stronger due to seeing in a John Harrison book Glyphosate's good for killing the weed off, I thought of writing on here to find out how other people have controlled/killed it!!.

At the minute I have been pulling it to keep it off the surface of the soil due to also hearing of my neighbour on the allotments it stresses the weed and kills the weed off that way.

Cheers All

Joshremlin

[saddad]

It will succumb to constant pulling.. it needs photosynthesis to "feed" the roots... but "constsnt" pulling is the problem.. a week of top growth is too much...  :-X

[grannyjanny]

I get great satisfaction when I gently pull a piece (after uprooting with a trowel) & end up with a long root ;D ;D ;D, it's the same with couch grass. Oh & then there's horsetail

[Digeroo]

If you are not adverse to poisoning it roundup is effective though it can soon return from the edges.  If you put a clump of it into a plasic bag and then spray the stuff into it that is quite effective and you do not accidently get something else. 

I have heard that you can dip the end into the solution and leave it there for a long as possible.  It seems to like growing under pieces of wood so I have used that for paths and then found a cluster of roots underneath which are easy to remove.

I have never found it possible to dig it all up and sooner or later it seems to get round the roots of a tree or bush from where it lurks and mounts attacks back into the growing area. 

[Sparkly]

We seem to have got on top of our bindweed problem quite well. There are a few bits that still come up now, but not much. This was our plot a few years ago so it can be done: http://bp0.blogger.com/_SXMv2XhorB4/R91ee6cefCI/AAAAAAAAADQ/Q2sBqjILzTI/s1600-h/IMG_1703.jpg We did spray intially with glyphosphate then covered it up and dug a bed at a time. (dig again , again , again). Pulling it out will knock it back as has been said. Now marestail, that is another story!!!

[Digeroo]

I thought the answer to marestails was lime.  When I was at school I remember being out on a Geog Trot (a geography field trip) and looking for upper green sandstone.  When we walked down the scarp slope of the North Downs suddenly there was marestail and that was said to be the sandstone. 

Many thanks for reminding me, I have one patch of it in the garden and I shall put a blueberry right in the middle of it. 

[jimtheworzel]

mix glyphosate with wallpaper paste and paint on the leaves of bineweed
sow the next doar plotter do it and it worked!

[Robert_Brenchley]

Don't forget soil creeps downslope; you wouldn't have moved away from the limy soil just by going downhill. Most likely the occurrence of the horsetail was something to do with the drainage, but I'd have to see for myself. It's been donkey's years since I did any geological mapping, but I'm sure it would come back to me!

[Joshremlin]

It's not too bad but it dose do your head in!!! - a little rain comes and it pops up Ive bin digging the stuff the past two days an today I got rid of it all till it pops back up and says hello again :(.  Hopefully some time soon it will just go completely.  What I can say is there isn't no hedges on our lotties just fence's and I'm in the middle of two people who have never had the stuff in there garden's theres like 4 of us out of 60 sum allotments who has the problem

Joshremlin

[cambourne7]

I have bindweed in the garden as well and i am finding the paint on weed killer much more effective then the watering can approach.

I sympathise with your need for one big dosage of weed killer but i think its regularly knocking it back with the paint on stuff might be more effective its what i am finding. My gardens on its 2nd bottle of roundup concentrate in 18 months and i still have the bindweed even with the garden being covered with membrane for 6 months.

Its not fun :(

[macmac]

We had bindweed in a flower border at home so we grassed the whole thing and mowed as usual and now it's gone. Sadly not a solution on our allotment.

[Joshremlin]

NO WE CAR'NT MOW IT  :'( :'( :'(

[Unwashed]

We had bindweed in a flower border at home so we grassed the whole thing and mowed as usual and now it's gone. Sadly not a solution on our allotment.

Weeds in borders, or for that matter in any kind of permanent planting, are much more difficult than in an open allotment.  If you can dig a bed through that's half the battle, but if you can't losen the soil it's hopeless trying to pull out bindweed, or the other nasties like twitch and ground elder, and abandoning the bed is pretty much the only answer.

[ru2010]

I took on my plot in January, and it is also infested with bindweed!

I don't mind it too much - the roots are easy to see and don't branch off everywhere. I've pulled out yards and yards of the stuff and find it quite satisfying.

It keeps popping up in areas that I've dug and weeded, but without the enthusiasm that it's shooting up in my uncultivated areas!

Apparently bindweed really doesn't like being disturbed and, if you keep badgering it, it will eventually get fed up and bugger off!!

I read somewhere, if you want to go down the glyphosphate route, you should train some up a post or cane (to get lots of healthy growth and leaves) and then slide it off and put in a plastic bag and soak with the weedkiller, thus getting maximum exposure and coverage and keeping the stuff off the rest of your plants.

Personally, though, I don't mind it now; it's gone from being public enemy number 1 to something less worrying - I know what it looks like, I know what its roots look like, and I know what it doesn't like!

There are plenty of other weeds I don't have a clue about, at least I know this one well!

Good luck!

[ThomsonAS]

I've had my plot for five years now - and each year the bindweed problem gets smaller and smaller - without chemicals. My main plots are virtually clear now and the only area where it give grief is a stoney bank up to the access road - and I don't think other plotholders would be amused if I started deep-digging into than! I may never eradicate it totally - but it's pretty much under control and, as someone commented earlier, there's something oddly satisfying when you remove a substantial root run!

I don't think anyone has mentioned (perhaps it's so obvious there's no need) but the roots need to be burnt - not composted.

Good luck.