Just learn to enjoy it. Come late summer it will be the greenest thing in my 'lawn'. And the flowers look so lovely all tracking the sun across the sky.
Control rather than battle. Around my perennial veg I use cardboard covered in grass clippings.. I occasionally get a bit coming up between layers, so I pull it out and then put down another overlapping bit of cardboard with more clippings.. and that sorts the issue for the season. I mulch with grass right up to the edges of my cane fruit, rhubarb, currents, etc. Then just hand weed bits of it out when I see them. I use a mix of cardboard and paper bags (from grocery pick-up, no reusable bags at the moment) or newspaper around my annual veg. Or just handfuls of grass clippings along the dirt if it's close rows. It really does suppress the bindweed, but also makes it easier to pull because it's curled up trying to make it through the grass mulch.
I do spray it when it gets into some of the gravel areas of my yard.. it's impossible to get it out of there. I also dig it up with a trowel in the spring in my veg plot if I feel like it, before planting.
You'll never get rid of it, so learn to manage it.. and maybe appreciate it. 😁
I would say come and destress in our wildlife garden, though it is full of bindweed, nettles, willowherbs, probably all the things that drive most gardeners mad.
The product I use if something simply has to go is Round-up stump killer.
It is far more contained than spraying, directed at individual plants that need to go. I get 100% effective results.
I cut the stem a few inches above ground level, split it, then paint on the neat chemical. That's it, it will be gone, root and all.
We use the can technique and pop a can over each bit we see spouting. It stops them developing and on the area we’ve been doing this there is less and less each year. We’ve chosen to be a bit Andy Warhol and use tomato cans, but you could always paint them...
I do appreciate the suggestions, some I've heard/read before, but all welcome regardless thank you.
I suppose with all the frustration with it all I was more hoping to get some reassurance that even if I can't eliminate it, it's not really going to cause a problem/any harm so long as I don't let it actually clamber over the plants we want, as Dovefromabove indicated. (So I guess more 'learning to live with it' really.)
I agree Blue Onion it is beautiful in the right place, there is a railway line I often travel by that is usually covered in white flowers from it. No doubt if it wasn't so thuggish it would be very popular. Unfortunately since we only have a small garden I think even if we took to just mowing the parts in the grass it would just further encourage it's spread elsewhere.
Of course there is the small matter of more of it coming in from next door as well, another reason I'm kind of hoping its roots won't actually matter to our plants so long as I don't allow any top growth for very long.
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Control rather than battle. Around my perennial veg I use cardboard covered in grass clippings.. I occasionally get a bit coming up between layers, so I pull it out and then put down another overlapping bit of cardboard with more clippings.. and that sorts the issue for the season. I mulch with grass right up to the edges of my cane fruit, rhubarb, currents, etc. Then just hand weed bits of it out when I see them. I use a mix of cardboard and paper bags (from grocery pick-up, no reusable bags at the moment) or newspaper around my annual veg. Or just handfuls of grass clippings along the dirt if it's close rows. It really does suppress the bindweed, but also makes it easier to pull because it's curled up trying to make it through the grass mulch.
The product I use if something simply has to go is Round-up stump killer.
It is far more contained than spraying, directed at individual plants that need to go. I get 100% effective results.
I cut the stem a few inches above ground level, split it, then paint on the neat chemical. That's it, it will be gone, root and all.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I do appreciate the suggestions, some I've heard/read before, but all welcome regardless thank you.
I suppose with all the frustration with it all I was more hoping to get some reassurance that even if I can't eliminate it, it's not really going to cause a problem/any harm so long as I don't let it actually clamber over the plants we want, as Dovefromabove indicated. (So I guess more 'learning to live with it' really.)
I agree Blue Onion it is beautiful in the right place, there is a railway line I often travel by that is usually covered in white flowers from it. No doubt if it wasn't so thuggish it would be very popular. Unfortunately since we only have a small garden I think even if we took to just mowing the parts in the grass it would just further encourage it's spread elsewhere.
Of course there is the small matter of more of it coming in from next door as well, another reason I'm kind of hoping its roots won't actually matter to our plants so long as I don't allow any top growth for very long.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.