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BINDWEED
Michele Cook
Posts: 2
When is the best time to treat bindweed in the garden, I got the treatment for it but not sure best time to apply it.
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Posts
When it is growing vigorously so that would probably be now not forgetting the obvious don't apply the treatment just before heavy rain.
Thank you, will look forward to doing it on the next dry day with no rain ahead.
And doing it and doing it and doing it. The secret is to keep doing it as soon an another bit pops up. As long as it does not rain within an hour after you have sprayed/painted it, it will be fine.
I heard an amusing comment from an old gardener when asked how to get rid of bindweed he said "never let it see a Monday", wise words.
Don't get rid of it. Cut long lengths, strip the leaves and coil the stems into miniature wreaths, dry somewhere dark and you have great decorations for around the house or dried flower displays.
And wait until the leaves are brown and the plant is totally dead before you pull/dig it up - that way the roots will have died too. If you pull it up too soon the roots will live on and grow again.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
This area is bindweed central. It is such a huge problem for everyone that we really can't use weed killers because it just floats back in from the gardens of everyone who doesn't treat it and from the hedgerows.
I've got mine pretty well under control now. It's a new garden a couple of years old so I started by digging all the beds thoroughly before planting anything and getting out as much as I possibly could.
The trick to not letting it spread is regular bindweed patrol, I check the beds at least every week in spring and summer and dig up any bindweed I can find with a narrow bulb trowel, if you keep pulling up anything that shows it's face above ground level it soon gives up. I never ever let it flower.
For those sneaky large bits you miss as they are under ground hugging plants or trying to murder the roots of your roses I shove half a coke bottle over the bindweed and spray it all with weedkiller through the neck so it doesn't get on the other plants around it and just leave it in there until it's all dead.
I'll never get rid of it but it is less every year.
stick some canes into it and it will naturally climb, you might to help out at first. then, when there's enough leaf area, use the roundup gel. I've got it in 2 beds which were infested when we moved here. slowly but surely it's going.
I never let it get that big, as soon as I see leaves popping up through the soil it's gone. Mind you when the garden becomes a bit more mature it will be much harder to spot it. Luckily it's not too bad this time of the year, Spring is the worst, it goes mad!!!
Also neighbours, I can be as diligent as I like with my own bindweed but I have to contend with the fine crop of bindweed coming over the fence from both sides. I have two batchelor boys one each side of me and neither of them waste time gardening.
Still on the plus side they don't complain about my three cats so there is always a silver lining.
You can see on the right there a bindweed in full bloom climbing up the shrub. It's pretty but that's it.