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More a moan than a question - I've been taking the advantage of the dry weather to get dug over (if anyone says you shouldn't dig in frost, all I can say is come and give me a hand, some of us have to dig when we can!), and the amount of bindweed I am digging out is just ridiculous.

It looks as though my major crop this year is going to be bindweed - might as well eat the effing stuff!

Adrian

I had a rabbit that really loved it.  Like it dried, would not eat it until it was sun dried crispy.  I tried it but did not rate it. 

I wish someone would cross it with a sweet potato. 

It is so difficult to shift the roots go so deep.  Getting rid of it was one of the few benefits of manure contaminated with aminopralid.  I have had some success with putting it into a plastic bag and spraying in weedkiller.

This discussion comes up every year. I think if you have a plan to get rid of it you'll just get disheartened. I find digging out a big knot of roots can be quite satisfying but I know there's plenty more beneath. When it wraps itself round plants I just snap the tendrils off at the ground. I've also found that putting layers of cardboard ,under my raspberries , for example, can help.

It's a terrible nuisance, all you can do is persist with it.
My new garden has bindweed and mares tail and was rotivated by it's last owner!!!

It's a full time job!
X sunloving

I've been digging mine out now for a little over ten years and I do believe that I am finally starting to win!

There are lots of different opinions about bindweed toxicity, complicated by there being more than one genus in "bindweeds" - the consensus is that toxicity is low but flavour varies from acceptable to horrid. Some say it is less toxic when cooked, but even so you'd have to be pretty gung-ho to use enough to make it one of your 5 a day, and if that is enough to control it you haven't really got a bindweed problem in the first place.

Apparently goats and chickens will eat it, and last time I looked it was OK to eat goats and chickens.

Tortoises will eat it, but anyone who eats tortoises is pure evil...

Cheers.

PS. don't believe anyone who says the best way to dispose of your pile of bindweed roots/stems is drowning it in a bucket. It doesn't work, requires a big bucket and smells terrible. It dries out really quickly on a raised mesh - even in winter it only takes a week or two -  the best thing for large amounts is a chicken wire hammock - once it has dried to crispy it's entirely safe in the compost heap.

It will also compost wet in a poly bag with chicken manure... but I suspect you could probably dissolve corpses in fresh chicken manure!

Less bindweed where I've been digging today, just enough couch to stuff a mattress. This is what you get when SWMBO says she'll look after a bit...

Adrian

I just compost it. The first year I was on the plot the roots were so massive that I had to give them two summers to die, but I've never had a problem since.

Quote from: Robert_Brenchley on January 31, 2017, 09:27:38
I just compost it. The first year I was on the plot the roots were so massive that I had to give them two summers to die, but I've never had a problem since.

Two weeks on a chicken wire hammock in summer would have killed them, maybe 2 months in winter. You don't even have to clean the roots - the rain will do that and that will only add a week.

Bindweed in a compost heap is risky - you only have to take your eye off it for a few weeks and it will be out. Not to mention denying you access to a whole season's compost.

I once had it a metre down in solid clay, roots as thick as a pencil, so I erected a 20ft hammock from 4x2s and a roll of used chain link (thank you BR, at least you dumped it on your own land) and just loaded it up with any spade-sized clods that showed more than 2 ends. In the last dry spell of the summer I took my sledgehammer to the plot and shattered them to soil - I found nothing but nests of crispy brown strings inside - stone dead.

It works for couch grass too though that actually has a skin on each root that will hold out for a few days more.

Cheers.