bind weed

[firehor5e]

AAGH.bindweed growing like mad again,thought it was bad last year.think you have dug it all out,only to find you have left a tiny tiny weeny bit of root and wheyhey up it comes .gerrr.

[MikeNash]

Keep wiping the leaves with glypsophate (as in Roundup) which you can get in small dispensers that have a sort touch wick type end. Spraying is no good if you have plants you want to keep nearby. The bindweed will still return but it'll be weaker and stunted and eventually you'll win. Regards, MikeN.

[firehor5e]

Thank you, but She will not,ever ever ever use any kind of chemical whatsoever ! no slug pellets,miracle grow etc or anything..60foot x 30ft poly tunnel and an acre of land,i only go there two days a week.fighting a loosing battle ere,lol.

[les]

Worst I've had is moss in the window channels!

[SteveClem]

I agree with Mike. Roundup is the only sensible way to get rid of stuff like that unless you have an army of gardeners. It saved my sanity (and garden) when I was doing 5 acres at our holiday cottages. It's neutralised on contact with the soil and,once dried on the leaves,harmless to animals. If 'she' is so opposed recruit her to do the weeding? Or tell a little white lie?

[MikeNash]

Hmmm.
Well, Mr Firehorse, in that case you're doomed. (I speak from experience.) You'll be old and worn out before your time, disillusioned and defeated. And I ask you, is she worth it? Is she gorgeous and friendly, and rich and generous? No? Then load your Morris with your precious things and head for the ferry tonight. You can just get abroad by tomorrow before Brexit raises the drawbridge and you'll be over the Alps before she wakes up. Italy will welcome you with pizza and good red wines and you'll never see bindweed again.
Go NOW, MikeN.

[firehor5e]

Thanks Mikenash...looks like i am doomed then..SHE is a 74yr old (me being just a worn out 50,and no we are NOT an item or as Delboy would say a "significant other")Rich...no,but very kind and sometimes generous (gave a £500 gift to my daughter on the birth of both her children)keeps me employed two days a week...maybe i should push for an extra BINDWEED day? lol.

[bmcecosse]

You MUST use very concentrated glyphosate - not the usual 7.2% stuff - you need to mix your own from conc. at least twice that %. Then the weed must be bruised by beating it - and then drowned in the glyphosate, otherwise it just runs off and is not absorbed by the plant. There are other very expensive 'treatments' - but try the bruising/15% first. I doubt you will ever get rid of it - but at least you can keep it down. It was put in railway embankments to help bond the structure together. We spray for weeds on the track every year - but the bind weed remains untouched by the chemicals.

[MikeNash]

Ah! Sorry about that Mr Firehorse; I thought you were an item.
But Roy's right. If you've a friendly farmer or small holder nearby they could give you the right mix. The bruising works and is almost essential if you're using the weaker mix that you get in sprays, etc at garden centres. But relying on digging it out over a large area is truly hopeless. I expect you've the field bindweed, that with the small pink and white flowers rather than the ordinary with the large white flowers; the former is tougher and more persistent.
And if you've either already among crops or flowers and shrubs then digging out is impossible. However, I've seen workers in a crop using gloves to which the weed-killer was piped from the reservoir on their backs and as they grabbed and pulled across the leaves damaging the plant the weed-killer was deposited upon it. That should work for you and perhaps SHE might accept the use of weed-killer in such a limited and strictly targeted manner.
But count your blessings; you could have had horsetail! (You don't, do you?) Regards, MikeN.

[ASL642]

I've got horsetail on both my allotments no joke it starts 5 metres down so I just have to keep digging it up I can never eradicate it. It was here when the dinosaurs were!

As for bindweed. Cover the ground to be cleared in the autumn.Bindweed is lazy and will rise to the surface under the cover. In spring remove cover and the bindweed should be much easier to remove.

[crackers]

Green concrete, the old car nut's friend

[XWL61]

I've got horsetail on both my allotments

Try a weedkiller containing Glufosinate Ammonium after damaging the plants, e.g. by walking on them

Andy

[ASL642]

I have I use Kurtail but it still returns.

[crackers]

Had a wisteria out the back of one place I owned. We tried everything - all the poisons (the ruddy thing thrived), dug a massive hole to get rid of all the roots (must've been root bound by the way it came back). Eventually we extended the house and it copped a concrete slab over the top of it. Didn't come back from that

I don't know the weed you're talking about but some of them are tenacious sods.

[firehor5e]

Just have to keep digging the damn weed up,the slightest bit of root left and it pops its ugly head up again!

[ASL642]

Tell me out it. I had neat rows of vegetables before all this rain. Returned yesterday and the whole place is covered in Horsetail fronds again Need to sharpen the hoe and do it all again!

[crackers]

Green concrete mate. Cover it, kill it, then if you're a real masochist, pull it up later though putting a shed over it to take your expanding Morry collection probably makes more sense.

[ian.mcdougall]

better hurry up as they want to ban glyphosate in the future
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ougov-poll

[ferret76]

Reminds me of a song:

The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun,
And many other creepers do the same.
But some climb anti-clockwise, the bindweed does, for one,
Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.

Rooted on either side a door, one of each species grew,
And raced towards the window-ledge above.
Each corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew,
Where they stopped, touched tendrils, smiled, and fell in love.

Said the right-handed honeysuckle to the left-handed bindweed,
"Oh, let us get married, if our parents don't mind, we'd
Be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined, we'd
Live happily ever after" said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.

To the honeysuckle's parents it came as a shock.
"The bindweeds," they cried, "are inferior stock!
They're uncultivated, of breeding bereft,
We twine to the right and they twine to the left."

Said the anti-clockwise bindweed to the clockwise honeysuckle,
"We'd better start saving, many a mickle macks a muckle,
Then run away for a honeymoon and hope that our luck'll
Take a turn for the better" said the bindweed to the honeysuckle.

A bee who was passing remarked to them then,
"I've said it before and I'll say it again,
Consider your offshoots, if offshoots there be,
They'll never receive any blessing from me".

"Poor little sucker, how will it learn,
When it is climbing, which way to turn?
Right, left, what a disgrace,
Or it may go straight up and fall flat on its face!"

Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed,
"It seems they're against us, all fate has combined.
Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Colombine,
Thou art lost and gone forever, we shall never intertwine".

Together, they found them, the very next day,
They had pulled up their roots and just shrivelled away.
Deprived of that freedom for which we must fight,
To veer to the left or to veer to the right!


Just introduce some honeysuckle to your bind weed and problem solved!

[SteveClem]

Better than The Bard, that!