Field Bind Weed

14 years ago

i live in the great basin area and we have a weed that is very invasive. i think the common name is Field Bind Weed. i get rid of it one week and it is back next week. i flood irrigate in trenches between two rows and i run my tiller where i don't irrigate. this keeps it down and when the plants get big enough it kind of keeps them down where i water. it would be nice to kill the stuff.

the flower looks like a small morning glory and a lot of folks call it morning glory. it is more like morning nightmare. help! if we could eat the stuff we would all get fat.

WiringMan

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Comments (6)

vetivert8
14 years ago
It's one of those drought tolerant, sun-loving, seeds last in the soil for 60 years plants. Deep sympathy.

It doesn't like shade. It doesn't like being cut off with a hoe repeated over the growing season. It sneers at weed killer.

Maybe a 'cleaning crop' such as potatoes would help to reduce its enthusiasm. When the tops grow it will shade the weeds and the hilling up would ensure that the new sprouts plus the old established plants would be made miserable.

It grows from an underground stem rather than a simple root system so it has plenty of reserves to survive losing its top growth a few times - but not repeatedly.

Another possible for particular areas is (gulp) polythene to cut out the light. It will not be great for your soil but, if you can keep the light away from the Convolvulus, it won't be great for that, either.

It's a hard weed to battle over large areas. It might help to focus on a section and just do containment by taking off the greenery repeatedly in the wider areas of the garden. Building on where you've 'cleaned' the plague from the soil.

Good luck.
wiringman
Original Author
14 years ago
it is truly an obnoxious weed. your right, when the good plants get ahead of the bind weed it seem to slow it down and the repeated tiller treatment is not liked by the bind weed.
i do have a 1/2 to 1/3 acre potato patch and we have a cultivator on the tractor that first cuts the weeds and that hills the potatoes. after we hill the potatoes there is so much bind weed we use pitch forks to remove it. then we hill the potatoes again. the potato patch does look better after.
note: beware of bind weed if you sprinkle.

for your insight vetivert8 however discouraging it is. it sounds like you have fought this battle too.

wiringman
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Don't use roundup,. It's expensive and it will kill everything it touches so you can't use it in your lawn or you'll have a dead area. I have not read all of the above threads but the best bindweed killer is AMINE. I believe the recipe is 6 tablespoons to a gallon of water in a sprayer but I could be slightly off. Just read the directions. This will kill the plant all the way to the root. Unless this is a brand new plant growing from seed, you cannot pull bindweed and get it all. It'll just keep getting stronger and stronger every time it grows back. Use Amine and it will take care of the problem. You can use it in your lawn and it will not harm the grass. It will harm other leafy plants, so wrap a plastic bag or newspaper or other barrier around the good plant to protect it and give the bindweed a good soaking with amine. It'll start dying pretty quickly. Just give it time to completely die and don't pull it up too soon or you'll stop the process and the root will start growing again. Please understand seeds can lay dormant in the ground for twenty years some times so you'll continue to have bindweed, but like I said at the beginning - in the spring when the seeds first sprout you can pull them and they won't come back. Only the established plants need AMINE. I live on a hill and face the foothills of Colorado and between me and them are miles and miles of wild fields filled with weeds and weed seeds so new ones blow in all the time. This spring I went out and found a patch of Canadian Thistle in my rock garden, where I have not had thistle for many years. I used AMINE - 1/3 cup to 1 1/2 gallons of water and the thistles have not returned. That was in May, it is now July.. Other things are sprouting in that area, so the ground has not been hurt. I just bought a jug of Amine at Paulino Gardens in Denver and it was around $45 but that is enough for several years. I've seen it on the internet in smaller containers but after you pay for shipping you might as well just go to the garden shop and get a big jug.
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Right now I'm very frustrated with double-digging. it's taking me too long. Even the areas that were worked last year are full of johnson grass stolons, bermuda grass stolons and field bind weed. The worst of the worst, right? And they go down more than 2 feet. I'm giving up on digging it all, but will refrain to the planting areas and those areas will be pretty wide. When the other areas have become crowded at the surface, I will destroy that are by digging a few inches, but that's it. I can't do this anymore. I cover everything with hay that works like the back to eden gardening, but know that even a foot of hay won't stop these ! It will just take time. Some of my plants might be stunted from the undergrowth, but I don't have a choice? UGH and a big UGH.
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Well I thought it was funny. While we are nuking that can I add something to the list? I want that Trumpet Vine DEAD and GONE. This sort of post is always funny to anyone fighting an unwanted persistent triffid. 'Day of the Triffids', remember the movie? My favorite "nuke it" solution was the one I read about dipping a growing tip of the offending enemy plant into a jug of Roundup and "let it drink itself to death". There was just something about the wording of that I found 100% satisfying. Maybe its the self inflicting death part and knowing that the plant is not somehow more clever than us after all in the war of property ownership.
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Amy, I hate to burst your bubble, but I have a large plot of zinnias at the SE corner of the front garden, and they periodically get PM. I also have bindweed that pops up there occasionally, usually in August when I have decided it is too hot and too snakey to weed. The bindweed grows through the zinnias and gets the PM and it doesn't die. I believe I have that situation going on in that corner of the garden right now. Bon, It is possible, but not likely that you have the bindweed gall mites there. They are imported from Europe and hard to obtain, except in a couple of states where those states' Ag Ext service has managed to get them established. They share them by giving away infested bindweed. You have to drive to their location, pick it up, bring it home and interwine the infested bindweed among your bindweed and, obviously, in those states the window of opportunity to get the mites is very narrow. These little suckers do not spread easily even in a place where they've been established, though in one research study, after infested bindweed was mowed, they did disperse and move over 600 yards in just a few days, apparently in search of more bindweed. So, unless you are very near one of the sites where OSU or some research group has tried to establish bindweed mites, I cannot imagine you've have any of them. Years ago (it might have been in the 1990s, I no longer remember), the Texas A&M extension service tried to establish them in multiple sites in Texas. I don't know how it worked out, but it was a very slow process. I think they got good results where they got them to establish, but getting them established was hard. In a perfect world, the bindweed mites would spread like kudzu, but sadly, this is not a perfect world. Oh, and like all mites, they don't do well in high humidity and plentiful rainfall, so it would be iffy to see them establish a thriving population anywhere in OK, except in the driest parts of western OK where rain is generally scarce most of the time. Dawn
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leisa_in_md
14 years ago
I am fighting this in my front flower bed. So far, I've been keeping it at bay with round up. Multiple rounds of round up. I HATE round up, and do everything else organically, but for this, I will make an exception.

Pulling it encourages growth. It can regro from the tiniest piece of root. Don't EVER let it flower :)

Leisa
petzold6596
14 years ago
Every stem section will produce a new plant so cultivating only exacerbates the original problem. I have painted the leaves with round-up ( prevents over spray) and after several applications the weed is gone. Triox may have to be used but that is potent stuff.
sdgeiger
13 years ago
What if the bindweed is in your vegetable garden? I don't feel comfortable using Roundup in that area...
lindac
13 years ago
What if the bind weed is in your perennial bed?

Field Bind Weed

Comments (6)

vetivert8

wiringman
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Field Bind Weed

Comments (6)

vetivert8

wiringmanOriginal Author

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wiringman
Original Author