Bind Weed
lesinnl
Posts: 36
Hello All,
after finding out last week that I have bought a house with high maintanence lilac trees, can someone please put me out of my misery regarding how to tackle bind weed? If the replies come back that there is nothing I can do, then I just have to put the house back on the market, I moved to the countryside for a quieter life...
many thanks in advance.
Lesley
0
Posts
Easy-spray with a glyphosate based weed killer like Roundup-get it just on the leaves of anything you want to zap-it takes2/3 weeks to work so don't expect overnight results.
There is also a gel version you just rub on the leaves
It works
I had a 100ft garden full of bindweed. Best time to spray is when its in flower, so leave it to romp and then soak the b**tard on a windless day! Repeat as needed.
I dug all mine out over the years. I'm very pernickety about weeds and I don't trust weed killers to do as good a job as I can. Saying that, the roots go deep and are very brittle. One tiny bit will sprout a new plant. You have to be extremely careful to dig out as much as you can (I have extremely light soil on a clay base) and constantly pluck new shoots until the stuff stops returning. It's not easy though, it can travel a distance in no time!
If you are serious about gardening and protective of your plants, dig it out. If you just want the quick fix, poison it.
I had a problem with bindweed among my raspberries for several seasons and adopted the same approach as Figrat. Eventually I did get rid of it but it took a lot of painstaking hand-forking to get it out. I'm not opposed to using glyphosate but the stuff was so intertwined with the rasps that I was worried about killing them, and I found it quite satisfying to do the job by hand.
I will just add that Glyphosate become inactive on reaching the soil so can't leach through to kill other plants it works through the leaves-I appreciate that some are against using chemicals but if any roots are left behind when digging out the problem remains
It is all down to choice.
I have no bindweed to speak of but am vigilant as my parents' garden was infested. When I spotted a little bit in amongst wanted plants, I gave it a nice tall cane of its own and trained it up there for a while then covered the wanted plants and sprayed glyphosate just on the bindweed leaves. Obviously wouldn't work for a huge infestation but may help someone.
Much thanks for all your advice, I think for me it will be a two pronged approach; as I appear to have a summer full of snapping suckers from my lilac tree roots, then this summer I will go the weed killer root. Then maybe towards the end of the year, move the plants I want to keep, I have no idea what I have inherrited yet...then dig out what roots appear to be left. I like the cane idea FloBear, every day this past month I have been plucking, but if I allow it more space, then my attack will be more a more concentrated approach.
The garden has been neglected so I know it will be hard work!!
Lesley
When you arrange your garden in autumn, dig up any plants you wish to move or keep and wash off all the soil, repotting in new compost mixes to suit the plant. Otherwise, the bindweed may be hiding in amongst the roots.
Glad to be of help lesinni. Don't know where I heard it but all my best ideas are pinched ;- )