Have you tried your homemade herbicide yet?

Yes! Thanks for reminding me to follow up :-)

Well, it didn't work as good as I was hoping, though the plants definitely didn't like it. My next strategy is to try stronger vinegar, maybe with salt and see if it's more destructive. I have a feeling it's just gonna take multiple applications to kill a mature plant.

i suppose it's all a balance-- I've planted some mint in an area that's got a lot of morning glory. I don't think I'm going to have to kill the morning glory completely, just keep it down enough to give the mint a leg up so that it can eventually take over.

Interested to try something similar. Have you tried cutting the stem of a targeted weed and spraying or painting it with your herbicide?

i did try but i feel i was fairly half assed about it, it didnt seem to work. i crunched up a morninglory vine and stuck the end in a bucket of fermented stuff. I don't think that particular vine died even, i didnlt pull ît up to see if the root died. I'm pretty sure it didnt but rather just the end in the bucket died.

The morning glôry roots are all over that part of the yard. Ilve decided to pull te vines regularly the last few months, before flowering if possible,and throw tem on my spring brassica veggie beds to help cool the soil and retain moisture (seems to help, i guess)

What did seem to work-- i fermented old bbags ofbread from bakery dumpster in big bucket, leaving some exposed to air to grow mold. I also sperately had morning glory vines soaked but not submerged so they would have air exposure to grow mold. I took all this gnarly stuff and spread it on grass i wanted to kill, covered with cardboard, added some urine and water for good measure. Even though cardboard dried out it stayed moist underneäth. I think i added some worms and wet still ripe compost.

This seemed to really kill the grass good and quickly. The matrix of roots was still someẃhat tough but i think way easier to dig out. I dont think this took more than a month in warm april/may.

Also i wonder if i could make a more noxious brew of stuff that was more moldy and just harsher now that it's hotter out. I think roots are much harder to kill than leaves. One idea i had was to keep attacking the morning glory vines. Then when plants are weaker later this summer, and stressed without moisture, maybe some will get disease. Maybe i can take the diseased plant and try to get a culture going in a bucket that will grow that disease.

We'll see. Maybe i won't even bother trying :-)

I'm of course curious to hear about your adventures also!

Morning glories are only hardy (roots stay alive in the ground all winter) in the warmest climates. If you don't live in S FL or CA, more likely you have some kind of bindweed. If they really are morning glories (and you don't live in S FL or CA,) they are coming up from new seeds/sprouts every spring. They are easy to pull when small.

If you have just 1 unwanted plant, why not dig it up? (May have just been used as a phrase, not to mean 1 actual plant.) But if it is just 1 plant, dug up when you first saw it, it would already be finished & gone, in less time than it takes to make & apply anything.

I" think roots are much harder to kill than leaves." They are all a single entity. To kill any plant, the roots must be killed or removed from the ground. Poisons kill roots, or removing the foliage they try to grow every day.

Too much salt will ruin the ground for growing anything, for an unknown period of time, depending on amount applied, weather. I wouldn't consider doing or recommend this.

Mold that grows on bread is unlikely to grow on a live plant.

yeah its probly bindweed then. The roots and vines are all over that part of the yard. Im in seattle

I'm sorry, that's much more difficult than pulling a few sprouts. Notoriously difficult to eradicate by spraying leaves & digging. You may be able to get completely rid of that by letting the long strands "drink" poison from a jar.

Here's a well-written quote, "glass jar with a good, not concentrated shrub killer in it. Slip the
branch into the jar. The thought is to wick the toxin into the roots
directly. I found that concentrate kills the branch before it 'wicks.'

Doing this, one finds out which bindweeds are attached to which and how many sub-surface individual networks there are..."
- http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2131246/whats-the-best-way-to-get-rid-of-bindweed

This method should work with any of the glyphosate products, that function by being absorbed systemically by actively growing leaves. This allows only the exact amount needed to be used, and not applying anything to anything else or the ground. You would dig a little divot for the jar, so it doesn't tip over, then cover the whole thing (gently, so you don't injure those vigorous branches that need to drink a lot of gunk,) with foil or a plastic bag, to keep rain out.

You may need to repeat this several times during the growing season, and possibly into next year, depending entirely on its' size, vigor, but there are many testimonials that it does work if done well & diligently.

In the meantime, cut off any flowers, to prevent them from making new seeds of that stuff that you'll have to battle in the future. And pull any sprouts that look like they have that heart-shaped leaf. Yes, could happen to be an annual MG vine, but not worth the risk amid an active bindweed infestation. MG seeds are like $.05 each.

This is interesting because my intuitive guess was that i would want to beat up the vine/branch i was putting in the bucket, rather than leaving it uninjured. Sounds like i was wrong.

I still think my idea of culturing plant disease in a bucket might work, i hate to use really strong poisons. at this point diligently pulling the vines before they flower has been working because it gives me some mulch for my brassica beds in the heat. also propagating mint and wineberry to replace the bindweed seems to be working but its very preliminary at this point.

Plants are alive, what's going on in the bucket isn't being cultured on live plants, it's a form of decomposition, so it's unlikely to create anything that bothers live plants, unless you create something with an extremely low or high PH. Trying to culture a plant disease sounds dangerous to me, what if it doesn't just "like" your weeds, but the desirable plants too? I don't use poisons or packages of anything either, and check at least twice a week for any unwanted sprouts while looking at/enjoying the plants I put there on purpose. I spend maybe a total of an hour per year "pulling weeds."

yeah the whole disease culture idea does seem like a stretch. Still the concept intrigues me tho.

Yes my goal is to fill the ecological niches of my yard with plants i want. Seems to be moving along apace but ive only lived here 2.5 yrs

A worthy goal, best of luck!! If you have whole areas where there is nothing desirable, smothering can clear most areas. Woody entities & some tenacious perennial vines require more labor-intensive (or chem) measures. Have you smothered before?