Bind Weed. Come rant with me

[charliecat]

How do you get rid of this evil thing?

Where is it? Can you use a herbicide or is it all tangled through another plant?
If it's growing through something else, you could try cutting its stem at ground level, then waiting a few days for it to go dry and brown before disentangling it from the plant you want to keep.

You dig and pull out roots, and dig and pull out roots, and dig and pull out roots....
The good news is, if you put the roots in water, then weight them down, and leave them for ages, the resulting "stock" makes a handy food for tomatoes. Haven't tried it yet, I've been reading gardening books by Bob Flowerdew he's full of good advice.

you can't. you really, really can't

But be careful even a tiny bit of root or sten can regrow (if it feels like it)

pull it out.
dig out every smidgey bit of root you can
dig your laaaand - it doesn't like cultivation, prefers abandoned soil.
I spend a contented 10 minutes each morning and evening picking sproutlings of it out of our garden.

its growing upwards at the moment, some re gettable at some arent if i cut it will it kill it?

You must dig out the roots, season after season.

Not a big fan of roundup, bit ick about killing any insects/cats/other small animals

It's the roots, that's where the evil lies. Like underground spaghetti!

I think it was alan titchmarsh I once read saying that even he has learned to live with it in his garden because he can't get rid

It's actually quite satisfying carefully extracting a long white root - I think it's the same satisfaction that some peopl;e get from peeling sunburnt skin

It can grow huge jungles from just a tiny slice of root.

It's impossible to get rid of it. One of my neighbours sieved (honestly) her entire garden before planting anything and it still came back. Apparently it will grow back from an inch of root left in the ground.
I have turned pulling it out into a bit of a hobby (no, I don't have much of a life!) and patrol the garden on a regular basis, grabbing it as soon as I see it.

No, cutting it won't kill it straight away, but it will kill the stems and leaves that you cut ad stop it from strangling your plants. If you keep cutting it (very regularly for weeks and months) it will eventually exhaust the food supply in the roots, but not if there are any sectios of the plant still growing happily and photosynthesizing to make more energy for itself.

Just x-posted with all of the 22.40 crew above! How's this for a late night bind weed blast!

oh, bind weed, it is dreadful, isn't it. At this time of year it is just coming up in all the borders.

You have various options, depending on where it is, whether the border is full of stuff, or if it's in the veg patch.

Most satisfying, if you can, is to wait for a day when the soil is damp (hah!) and weed it out piece by piece. Gently loosen the soil and wiggle each bit out by the root, as any left in , even a fragment, will re-root.

If it's in established borders you can wait till it pokes its head up, then stick a cane into the ground for it to climb up. Then, when it thinks it has the upper hand, you put on a pair of rubber gloves, squirt some nasty Tumbleweed stuff into your gloved hands, rub over caned growth, then carefully enclose in small sandwich bag so it doesn't leak noxious chemicals over everything else.

If I am ever asked for my hobbies for Who's Who, they will definitely include 'fighting a loosing battle against bind weed'.

Or, you could learn to love the quite pretty white flowers?

Good luck!

you know i think im going to go for the watch it grow method, i did it on ...friday, removed every bit i could see...its monday now. there were bits nearly a foot tall already

Put on a rubber glove. Put a cotton gardening glove on top of the rubber glove. Dip your gloved hand in glyphosate (Roundup) and stroke the bindweed. It will die.
Do not touch the 'good' plant or it will die too.

Stroke ok....that will be fun!

Got so sick of pulling it out last year we left it to grow up through our forsythia and even tho I dread to say it...it looked really pretty when it flowerd!

It's growing up through our decking and patio now...arrrrrggh!

i'm kind of getting to love it

it's looking almost...embarrassed to be so quick and hardy

our neighbour has a jungle of bindweed, nettles and brambles where there should be a garden so even if i nuked our entire garden it would always come back - your bindweed could be coming from three doors down. dig, dig and dig. pull it up on a weekly basis. it wont ever go entirely but you can at least have less of it.

my mil's garden is full of it, i have to weed it every summer. best thing to do is soak the earth to losen the roots, wear gloves and pull it out. cover your arms too mine always rash from it.

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Another way is to untangle the bindweed strands from the other plants, stuff them into a plastic bag and squirt a glysophate-based weedkiller into that. Leave it for a couple of days to make sure all the weedkiller soaks in and other plants are protected. Unsightly but effective.

For all weeds, weedkiller is more effective if you bash/trample on them first. And the violence may be therapeutic ...

Put round up on the leaves and then DON"T pull it up until it has completely died down. It needs time for the poison to get to the roots and kill it. Then dig it up and get as much of the roots out as possible.

It will come back, but much less vigorously. Keep doing the same year after year, after year, after year.......