well, a good part of it!
this little lot came out of a small part of my mate's front garden
[attachment=1]
and this is a piece of the root section, which has just sprouted hundreds of growing tips!!
[attachment=2]
Looks like my allotment, I have removed a pile the size of a family car from my plot. Amazing plant, truly aweful and awesome.
If GM scientists really wanted to help the world, they could create a bindweed/sweet potato hybrid which grows tonnes of sweet potatoes on marginal land.
Looks like my allotment too :( :(
Lovely.. ::)I'm in the middle of the job like that.... ::)
I'll swap it for my international ground elder collection.
Quote from: Tulipa on May 11, 2010, 12:40:04
Looks like my allotment too :( :(
And mine >:(
Quote from: Robert_Brenchley on May 11, 2010, 18:18:58
I'll swap it for my international ground elder collection.
:) :) :)
Quote from: Robert_Brenchley on May 11, 2010, 18:18:58
I'll swap it for my international ground elder collection.
I share your grief, this is my back garden bain.
One day I will work some land not afflicted by penicious weeds, one day.
Out of interest how are you disposing of it Tony?
Quote from: 1066 on May 11, 2010, 18:35:23
Out of interest how are you disposing of it Tony?
It's not mine!! It is a friend's garden, he actually composts it!! (a few local garden contractors supply him with loads of grass cuttings, leaves etc)
He usually builds (and fills) a couple of 8ft X 8ft by 4 ft high compost heaps per year from plasterboard pallets. (constant filling and shrinkage, throughout the gardening year)
Blimey! That's some compost making set up!!!
Quote from: 1066 on May 11, 2010, 18:50:43
Blimey! That's some compost making set up!!!
I'll post some photo's if you like!!
Compost bindweed away....april the 1st?...no wonder it is that bad...I need nuclear explosion to kill what I have dug up... ::)...first I leave on path to dry out and later on they will be burned..I do not give it a chance of return.. >:(
I always compost it. A really thick root will take two years, but they all die in the end. Anything I find alive just goes straight back in the bin.
I experimented with the roots, I stacked them all together on plastic and mixed some other garden waste in with them, they rotted down without regrowing. Robert is right.
i compost everything too - for about, oh, five minutes, i separated perennial roots out of all the weedings before I got very bored. It might take a bit longer but it all dies in the end.
The best method of destroying bindweed and twitch grass (spear grass in Norfolk - couch grass for the rest of you) is to dig it out and burn it.
I was told that during the WW1, in the fens, a farmer had harrowed out twitch from a field, made heaps of it and set it alight. A German Zeppelin flying overhead at night, thought it was a village and dropped a bomb on it (waste of time harrowing it out only to get it spread all over again).
Bindweed is a pain here too. If you do decide to burn it, make sure that it IS all burned though. One year, I thought I'd burned it, spread the ashes from the bonfire, and had bindweed coming up everywhere.
The thick white roots of bindweed look quite juicy, and so productive - can't we eat them?
Quote from: pigeonseed on May 16, 2010, 20:28:36
The thick white roots of bindweed look quite juicy, and so productive - can't we eat them?
Yes leaves & roots can be eaten but it's not recomended to eat them very often due to the purgative effect, the leaves often have a bitter aftertaste dspite what PFAF claim.
See the PFAF site for further info on edible uses:
http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Calystegia+sepium
Put it in water and put a lid over the bucket or, in my case, dustbin.
After a few weeks the liquid makes a good feed.
The next year it goes on the compost heap.
Shimples
The one thing I'd add to that is that it will also root from a buried stem.
but it's not recomended to eat them very often due to the purgative effect.
Who cares? get the celeb gardeners and celeb chefs round to dig the bloody stuff out. Most of them talk the effects of a purgative anyway ;D
On the subject of getting rid of terrible weeds - repeating myself a bit (said the same about couch).
You're crazy to burn it while it's damp or still floppy because of the smoke nuisance.
You'd be even crazier to burn it when it's dry enough not to smoke - at that point it is crunchy and 100% dead and all that fertility can go through your compost heap with no further effort - it simply disappears no matter how crap your composting technique is...(I should know).
Bindweed roots dry much quicker even than couch - they don't seem to have a skin on them.
A week in dry weather will do it, but hedge your bets by putting it on a raised mesh or grille so if it does rain the soil will wash off the roots and it will dry all the quicker when the sun comes out.
A big problem just requires a chicken wire hammock to dry it all.
If you can't get it out of the clods the answer is to dry them and then hit them with a lump hammer - it doesn't take much effort to smash it small enough to get every bit.
If the clod isn't dry enough to smash easily then dry it some more...
I compost them. They die like everything else, and couch doesn't last very long in a bin. I think the antipathy to composting them comes from the tradition of open-topped heaps where they'd be able to establish themselves.
Quote from: Robert_Brenchley on May 18, 2010, 09:20:46
I compost them. They die like everything else, and couch doesn't last very long in a bin. I think the antipathy to composting them comes from the tradition of open-topped heaps where they'd be able to establish themselves.
Any composting is good composting, but I don't like the idea of perennial weeds making merry in my wonderful compost - and it
feels like they are even if they aren't!
Are you relying on purpose-factory-made bins? (which I don't like enough to pay for), or does it still work with the classic 4-pallet cube with carpet on top?
If there's any uncertainty about whether I'm going to find 'strings' of roots in my compost, then I think the tiny effort of drying them to death is far less than the effort of finding and separating them out again...
Cheers.
I use the factory-made bins. It would work in anything lightproof. A heap with black plastic over the top kills them just as efficiently.
They don't sound delicious, do they! ;D