Jay, I know nothing about Bindweed, but after reading a little about it I am thankful I have Bermuda.

Larry

Bindweed is terrible. When I used to drive the tractor for my grandfather I had to drive around the bindweed patches like an obstacle course because tilling it under would just make the problem 100 times worse. Sorry it found its way into your garden. :(

Jay,

I have bindweed in my clay soil, so of course it is in the veggie garden. It was here when we bought the property, and it likely will be here long after we're dead and gone.

I have some success with putting down cardboard or newspaper under my hay mulch, but some years new plants sprout daily anyway. Since seed can be viable for up to 50 years, I suppose we already have enough seed in our soil to keep me busy pulling bindweed forever. This year it seems especially bad and I know it is my fault, I had some bindweed come up on the bean trellis last year, and I clearly didn't get all of it pulled up before it bloomed and set seed.

I pull bindweed every day. However, all I have are the little seedlings. Inside the veggie garden, I don't have any of the deep rooted kind that spreads and takes over. I dug all that out the first few years and thought I'd won the bindweed war, but more sprouts from seed pretty much every day. My goal is just to keep pulling them whiule young and keeping them from getting big enough to flower and set seed.

Dawn

I had bindweed in OK but it was never a huge problem like I know it can be. I've not seen a bit of it here, thankfully.

I used hay for mulch for a long time but finally decided a year or two ago, no more. Between the herbicides and the weeds, it was just too much trouble. I'm happy to have a wood chip source now. I'm sure it'll come with its own problems but I'm ready for new problems, tired of the same old problems. LOL

Diane

I had a whole field of bindweed, forty acres, in CO. What a nasty weed. I think my little sheep herd did eat it, but the horses wouldn't touch it. That is one invasive weed!

The stuff that looks like a white, wild morning glory? Ugh. I have been battling that in my back flower bed. Fortunately it's only in that bed. I've been fighting it as much as a I can with pulling and chemicals. I also have real morning glories in that bed. I'm pulling every one of those I see too.

I have another weed I always refer to as bind weed, it's not, but it's just as awful. It forms a long seed pod in the fall.

I have a variety of obnoxious viney weeds in my beds. They get more numerous every year. I'm sure I have the cute little birds to blame.

We have some kind of strange vining weed in our fruit bed, too, and I know it's not bindweed. It sends up single viney tendrils that wrap around anything that's tall enough not to be ground cover. I found one yesterday that had wrapped itself around one of my raspberry canes all the way to the top before I realized it was even there. With the thorns on the raspberries it was kind of an adventure teasing them apart. At least it's easy to pull and doesn't seem to spread like bindweed does.

On a semi-related note, this discussion about bindweed somehow led my brain to look up pictures of kudzu eating houses and cars in the southeast. Apparently it has spread to parts of southeast Oklahoma, which is a scary thought.

Down here in southcentral OK, the wild grapes are almost as bad as the kudzu. The wild grapes climb trees, shrubs, fences, power poles, etc. and bury everything under their big leaves. I wouldn't mind if they made good grapes, but the grapes taste just vile.

Dawn,

If they are possum grapes, I'd be happy to come pick them. That's one of my favorite tastes from childhood!

Seedmama

Seedmama,

I have no idea what they are. I cut them down and remove them from our property so we don't have them here. They are very heavy and thick on some of the river bottom land that is Wildlife Management Land along the river down at Thackerville. We were down there last year (I think it was near Labor Day) for 2 days working to recover the body of a drowning victim from the river and a man who said he was the grandfather of either her ex-boyfriend or ex-husband brought us a handful of the grapes, told us they were great for making wine, and urged us to taste one. They were spitters! So, having oodles of time to just sit around and wait when we weren't serving meals and drinks to our firefighters, the lake patrol/wildlife mgmt. officers, and her family members, I started looking around and those big grape vines were everywhere around us growing all over everything and heavily covered in big clusters of very dark-colored (dark purple or black?) grapes. That old gentleman told us the locals start watching for them to ripen, and when they are getting ripe, the race is on to harvest all you want before someone else beats you to them. I can assure you that's a race I'd avoid. The next time we're down there on the river, I'll look at the leaf, or even pull one and bring it home, and try to compare it to photos and see if these are possum grapes or what.

Dawn

We have an invasive tree in our yard, here in AZ. It's an African sumac. You'd think it would be nice in the desert to have a tree that grows quickly and needs hardly any water. But this thing is such a weed, I have trees all around my foundation and places it doesn't belong.
I'm waiting for a wind free day to start hitting them with the high percent round up, full strength that someone on the tree forum recommended. Once I get a handle on the suckers. When my husband has a chance he needs to chop down the bigger trees as low as possible, than I think I'll drill the stumps and put some stump rot stuff in them.
We also have a vine that my husband actually planted to cover the fences years ago and he actually kind of likes. I hate it because it leaves the fences and crawls all over the ground. It's called cats claw and it has spines. Yuck! I pull it all up and it just comes back.

Jay,

I got bindweed in my garden in a similar way (CRP hay as mulch), but I have had very good luck controlling it by pulling seedlings immediately when I see them and spraying bigger plants with Roundup when they bloom, but before they set seed. The only mulch I use now is switchgrass that I grow over my septic drain field. I get three or four cuttings a year, just before it sets seed.

Tom Logan