I've been at war with bindweed since 1980. Round-up is the only thing that keeps it from strangling everything in it's path. It even came up in the middle of my asphalt driveway one summer.

Would love to hear more responses on this topic. This is an evil weed. Those little flowers turn into hundreds of seeds & before you know it, you have a long term problem. If not life-long. Anybody know of alternatives to Rd. Up? This plant grows around other plants almost exclusively. It would be great to know if there is a weed killer out there less harmful to other plants. Would Trimec be a better solution?

I'm managing to keep the bindweed in the garden somewhat under control by heavy mulching and pulling. I don't use any chemicals but was intrigued by a solution that was posted in another thread here. Link below. 4th & 12th post down.

Wayne in the Adks

Here is a link that might be useful: Fighting Bindweed

There are some good discussions on bindweed in the weeds forum.

There is a way to get rid of bindweed, or ANY unwanted plants, that is easy, totally environmentally friendly, and cheap (Free.) It's the newspaper and mulch method.

Here is the step by step way to proceed:

1. Collect as many newspapers as you think you'll need, though you don't need to treat the whole infested area at one time. Don't use slick parts of the paper with lots of color in them. There's debate on the safety of the ink. (Even if you have no plans to grow food crops in the area, why put poisons in your soil?)

2. Soak the papers in a bucket or wheelbarrow. This makes them nice and heavy and easy to "mold" around plants you don't want to kill.

3. If the weed you want to eliminate is intertwined with plants you want to keep, try to seperate them as best you can. You might have to sacrifice a plant or two when that's just too much work? Oh, Do Not cut down the plants you want to get rid of. For reasons I won't go into, taller/longer plants are actually easier to kill.

4. Bend or trample the unwanted plants flat. With tall things that are right next to plants you want to keep, always bend them Away From the desirable plants.

5. Slap a good, thick layer of the wet newspapers on the weeds. Make sure the papers overlap, that there are no gaps where the weed could come through.

6. Cover the newspapers with enough organic material- wood chips, leaves, and best of all grass clippings- to hide the papers. This not only will make the area look nicer, but the mulch will keep the papers moister to speed decomposition and prevent them blowing around.

With deep enough paper and mulch, you can kill anything, even poison ivy and oak. If a few hardy specimens do fight their way through here or there, just shove them back under the papers, or simply pile more papers and mulch on them.
Not only is this method free, totally non-toxic, the least amount of work of any method I know of, but it will grealty help the plants you leave or any replacment plants you want to put in the area in the future. The papers and mulch will improve the soil considerably.
I wish everyone who's ever had to deal with "invasive plants" knew about this simple method.

That is some great and shocking simple advise! I can't believe I have been pulling weeds all day and now I read this. I even have to walk past my recycle bin stacked with papers to get to my gloves.
Tyrell, Can old mags and phone books be used too, and what about all that junk mail?

Easy? Perhaps for some, I suppose. The roots are extrememly aggressive. Bindweed pops up here every place it finds a space not extremely heavily mulched, paved over or covered by a house. It pokes up between pavers and between stones in the garden walls. Along posts and between the sidewalk and the foundations. It's come up in the center of double-dug raised beds. It came out the side of a cooled compost bin. It's vining up in the dense raspberry patch and through the roses. I can only imagine that under the lawn is a mass of roots waiting to explode if mowing ever was stopped.

Mulching with paper mache will help but be prepared to mulch heavily around everything and anything that doesn't move, including each individual raspberry cane, carrot, strawberry plant, etc. Make sure your neighbors are doing it also since these roots go very deep, perhaps 15 feet, and spreads very far laterally.

And because bindweed roots are more persistant than paper mulch, be prepared to do it all again before the paper rots. Make sure there is absolutely no place where light hits soil because bindweed seems to head for it like a moth to a flame. The University of California recommends a three year program of black plastic mulch as a means of killing bindweed in the immediate area. Even if the roots have been killed, after the mulch is removed or disintigrates, you get to deal with germinating bindweed seeds that can persist in the soil for 60 years.

Good luck, Heavinsent. Let us know how it works for you. And how easy it was.

Wayne in the Adks.

Bindweed is not somthing I have ever had to deal with. Honestly I have never heard if it. I clicked on the thread to find out what it was. My weed problems are manily dollar weed, bits of grass, and somthing that looks like collard greens with a carrot root. really just normal weeds nothing like the monster you have described!
Thank God!
It sounds like a good plan for normal weed problems.

Count your blessings, Heavinsent. I never had to deal with it before and I'm glad that now that I'm dealing with it, it's up here with a short growing season. I couln't imagine having this stuff grow in your zone.

Wayne in the Adks.

"That is some great and shocking simple advise! I can't believe I have been pulling weeds all day and now I read this."
Yes, Heavinsent, it really saves a lot of time, money, and sore backs. The only weeds I've dug in 34 years now are dandelions in my lawn.

"Tyrell, Can old mags and phone books be used too, and what about all that junk mail?"
I would be hesitant to use them, because of all the color in many pages. Probably best to save them for the recycle bin? But you should be able to find all the regular black and white newspapers you need? You could ask neighbors, friends, relatives (who might also be friends? lol) and co-workers to save some for you.

And Wayne, while I've never had to deal with bindweed,I do have a mostly Bermuda grass lawn, with some St. Augustine invading from a neighbor's yard the last few years. But I think enough newspapers would kill any weed. And once people see all the advantages of mulching- like reducing how often you need to water and how incredibly better plants grow, in addition to eliminating weeding- they will keep doing it from then on anyway.

>But I think enough newspapers would kill any weed.

Nice in theory, unworkable in the real world. Not enough hours in the day to make little papier mache sleaves around every carrot plant, raspberry cane or tulip.

I've been mulching my gardens where practical since reading the writings of Ruth Stout, and Helen and Scott Nearing, amongst others back in the 1960's. I've used their techniques of maintaining a permanent mulch in my home gardens and later in my market gardens.

What I've learned through practical, hands on experience is that mulching is only one tool, I repeat, only one tool that's required in the production of fruits, vegetables, or ornamentals. It is not a universal cure-all.

I've read all the books from Ruth Stout's "No Work" book to the ridiculous notions of the Square Foot huckster. There is no "no work" method. And there is no one, easy way of gardening that works for all, in all situations.

Wayne in the ADks

>But I think enough newspapers would kill any weed.

"Nice in theory, unworkable in the real world. Not enough hours in the day to make little papier mache´ sleaves around every carrot plant, raspberry cane or tulip."

Wayne, there is no "papier mache" involved, simply plain old newspapes. And the original poster was talking about getting rid of bindweed, not the plants you mentioned.

"I've read all the books from Ruth Stout's "No Work" book to the ridiculous notions of the Square Foot huckster. There is no "no work" method. And there is no one, easy way of gardening that works for all, in all situations."

I learned about mulching from Ruth's books, too, but of course nature "invented" it many millions of years ago. And if there is another, easier way to garden, I would LOVE to hear about it? I am "energy challenged," what some unenlightened people call lazy, so I look for the easiest way to do anything in life.
Mulching permanetnly eliminates
Tilling
Weeding
Hoeing
Raking
and Composting

It also is the cheapest way to grow fruits and veggies (virtually free if you save seeds from non-hybrids.) I have asked many people many times for a way to garden that is less work and as cheap. No one has come up with one to date.

You misread or missed my point entirely. I've been fighting bindweed all year using a combination of mulching and pulling. I used newspaper as a tool but the roots of bindweed will outlast the useful life of a newspaper mulch. The closely spaced plants I mentioned are impossible to "mold" wet newspaper around as you recommend. Mulching does not "permanently eliminate" weeding in these areas. Some pulling is required.

In my area, a permanent mulch must be raked off the raised beds early if the soil is to thaw and warm up enough for spring planting. I learned this year that peppers and eggplants can't be mulched too early without cooling the soil and slowing their growth.

I've yet to hear about how a permanent mulch will eliminate composting in regions where snow may cover the garden from October to April or where large amounts of fresh manure must be dealt with.

You've been touting the "no-work" claims of mulching in numerous threads here and admire your tenacity, but I don't think you are looking beyond your own garden gate. For many, if not most gardeners here, mulching is a way of life, an important tool. But unless they garden in a manner similar to your own very limited set of conditions, it will be only one tool, not the only tool.

There is no "no-work" method, other than finding someone to garden for you. Even your method involves gathering and placing mulch which involves some work.

Wayne in the Adks.

Can't we all just get along!?

What works for some may not work for others we all have our own ways that work for us. After laying all the paper I see that I will have to weed by hand the small gaps around the plants that couldnt be covered (I left about 1/2 an inch to allow for growth) but, the vast majority of weeding will cut my weeding time to about once or twice a month rather than every few days.

From Heavinsent
"After laying all the paper I see that I will have to weed by hand the small gaps around the plants that couldnt be covered (I left about 1/2 an inch to allow for growth)"
A little tip from experience. That little area you have to keep clear can be a problem. But if you let the weeds that come up there get tall, then bend them flat Away From the plant, you can cover them with mulch without "weeding" them.

Wayne, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to flag you a 15-yard penalty for "Putting words in my mouth," repeatedlly.

"You misread or missed my point entirely."
I've always found it interesting that people often seem to accuse others of the very thing they do themselves?

"I used newspaper as a tool but the roots of bindweed will outlast the useful life of a newspaper mulch."
So you add new papers! Mulching is a permanent thing, a "way of life," so you just keep adding new mulch year after year. The bindweed will eventually simply run out of food, and roots and all will die. People have told me they got rid of poison ivy and oak with this method. Bindweed can't be much tougher than those?

"The closely spaced plants I mentioned are impossible to "mold" wet newspaper around as you recommend."
Well, then use only grass clippings right next to your plants. And see what I wrote to H.S. above.

"Mulching does not "permanently eliminate" weeding in these areas. Some pulling is required."
Well, then can you explain why the ONLY weeds I've pulled in 34 years are dandelions in my lawn? If you keep doing it, mulching Does permanently eliminate weeding.

"In my area, a permanent mulch must be raked off the raised beds early if the soil is to thaw and warm up enough for spring planting. I learned this year that peppers and eggplants can't be mulched too early without cooling the soil and slowing their growth."
I've read this before, many times, and it may, I say may, have some merit. But I would like to see someone do an experiment, pull the mulch aside on some plants, but leave it around others of the same kind. I wonder if the mulch keeps the soil warmer enough that things will grow just as well without clearing the area in the spring? I've tried removing the mulch and even putting black plastic down, but it seemed to make little difference. And yes I know I have a very farorable climate.

"You've been touting the "no-work" claims of mulching in numerous threads here and admire your tenacity, but I don't think you are looking beyond your own garden gate."
Wayne, a simple thing I could say here is, "I wasn't talking to you." I've gotten comments like yours before, on another board. And I've asked them if they can tell me how to talk to ONLY the people that might benefit from mulching, I'd be happy to hear it? Since these are public forums, people post what they believe or have learned from experience. Anyone who can benefit from it, should. Anyone who can't, or doesn't want to, can simply ignore it. My remarks are not directed at any specific person.

"But unless they garden in a manner similar to your own very limited set of conditions..."
I hardly think that gardeners coast to coast constitute a "very limited set of conditions." I've had gardeners in New Jersey, Alabama. Tennesse, Michigan, the Southwest, as well as right here in California wrtie to tell me they can't beLIEVE the difference mulching has made in their gardens. To me, Wayne, it sounds like you don't want other people to try this? If you think there are problems with it, that's no problem whatever. But you seem to want to stop me from even talking about it?

"There is no "no-work" method"
Again putting words in my mouth. I never wrote this. Are you familiar with the political tactic called "Setting up straw men?"

Everyone has known someone in their lives, out here in the non-cbyer world, that they know they will just never see eye-to-eye with. I already have that feeling about you, Wayne. So a simple suggestion: Ignore my posts. Or don't you give other people enough credit to judge for themselves if what I say works or is nonsense?
I was incredibly fortunuate many years ago to learn of the mulch method of gardening, and all its incredible benefits. All I want to do is pass on my good luck to other gardeners.

Tyrell

>I was incredibly fortunuate many years ago to learn of the mulch method of gardening, and all its incredible benefits. All I want to do is pass on my good luck to other gardeners.

You would be surprised at how much you say I actually agree with. Having gardened using mulch for about the same amount of time as you has sold me on the "method." The same years of experience has proven to me that a lot of situations, many of which have been mentioned above and elsewhere, exist where it is not the best method at the moment.

It is, however an immportant tool, even though not the only tool.

Wayne in the Adks.