What is Bindweed ?
Bindweed is the very annoying weed with attractive pinkish white bell shaped flowers and green arrow shaped leaves, that winds its way across your garden, under and over fences, up the stems of garden plants and boundary hedges making a suffocating tangled mess of foliage , Its a gardeners nightmare, a single bindweed weed grows up to five feet in length from a deep strong root.
Where does Bindweed come from?
Soil that has lain undisturbed for up to fifty years can contain Bindweed seeds and these can be awakened and spring into life by digging and building work going on in your garden.
It also grows from roots, never ever put bindweed in your compost heap, when you spread the compost you will almost certainly be spreading bits of bindweed. The tiniest piece of stem or root will eventually colonise your garden. Its worth checking plants you have bought in containers to make sure the plant pot is not a "Trojan horse" for the dreaded bindweed weed.
Keeping a garden free of bindweed.
Preventing bindweed from getting into your garden is almost impossible, especially if your neighbours are growing it, even neighbours a few doors away. It will creep under fences, garden walls almost nothing can stop it and its seeds are virtually impossible to keep out of your garden. Bind weed likes cultivated soil just like the soil in our gardens.
How to clear and eliminate Bindweed completely ?
We cant !
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How to clear and control Bindweed.
Watch for Bindweed appearing and growing in your garden, pulling it up doesn't work, the bits of root you leave will sprout and produce new growth.
You could try digging deep enough to get to the bottom of the root system, making sure you remove even the tiniest bits of root.
Continually cutting bindweed of at ground level can work by eventually starving the plant of light. This could take forever though. Covering the Bindweed infected area with black plastic has the same effect, but once again this could take a long time and you will need to deal with the horrible little shoots appearing from the edges of the plastic sheet.
I find the best way, I don't like using chemicals but in the case of Bindweed I feel its justified, is to get your gardener to treat the growing leaves with weedkillers containing Glyphosate this attacks the leaves and the roots and will kill of the plant. You may need to do this several times (read the label).
Gardeners need to keep an eye out for the inevitably new invasion of Bindweed, either from seed or from under the neighbours fence, and treat it as soon as it appears.
If your neighbour neglects the garden, Its almost impossible to stop bindweed creeping over, under and through neighbouring fences and walls, You could try asking your neighbours to control it but its probably easier to check now and again and destroy it yourself.
What's good about Bindweed.?
Nothing, but grudgingly I suppose I quite like the delicate flowers which give of a soft fragrance and are Bee and other insects friendly, On the other hand so are the plants and flowers it will eventually kill off and replace with a suffocating tangled mess of vine ! Get rid.
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