Excellent! My birds are about to be tractored over the infernal bindweed patch.

Hmmm. That is interesting. Our chickens don't touch bindweed. To be fair to them, the bindweed is inside the fenced garden, and they are not often allowed to go into the garden because, among other things, they like to peck tomatoes, cucumbers and melons. And they eat lettuce. And begonias. So, maybe they'd eat bindweed if I let them into the garden more.

I should be outside in the garden now weeding out all the bindweed that is sprouting in the asparagus beds, where mulch just seems to encourage it, and I would be out there....as that was on my To Do list for today. Then, it rained last night and this morning, and now the asparagus bed sits like an island in the middle of an ocean of standing water. As soon as the water soaks in, which may take a couple of days, I'll spend some time out there pulling bindweed.

Meanwhile, the chickens are running around in the yard, eating grasshoppers and ticks, which is enough for me.

And some one drove by on the street honking their horn and everyone of them stood up staight like it was talking to them.

I picked the bindweed and gave it to them. They've been getting crab grass, amaranth, what I call wild lettuce and tagete minuta volunteers. (Mexican marigold or black mint). I cut the seed heads off some weeds sticking over the fence for them to try. Maybe they'll get a taste for them. We are going to make a bigger run from the now disassembled greenhouse. It has a pop up frame which DH things we can throw bird netting over. I told him he has to put something on the bottom to keep the dogs out. The beagle just wants to play. The lab mix is licking her chops. I think my favorite chick is a rooster. :(

Amy,

I read somewhere about the trick of feeding them as chicks what you want them to eat as adults.

Also, have you heard of weeding geese? http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G8922

Johnny

I had a pair of geese. It was 5 years after they were gone before the dandelions returned. When the lawn service people would call to sign us up DH told them we had geese eating the weeds and and fertilizing at the same time. Left them speechless.

Oh, and they LOVED tomatoes, plants and fruit. Watermelon, too.

We did the same with our chickens and creeping buttercup. Fed it to them like treats and now there is not a buttercup leaf in sight anywhere they can reach. They eat most weeds except purslane.

Our chickens free range over several acres and eat what they want, so when I pull weeds I don't take them to the chickens. They all have different things they like, but they still don't eat bindweed seedlings when I pull them and throw them on the compost pile. Maybe the compost pile has other stuff they like more? I'm glad it works for you though, Amy.

I'll tell you what our spoiled chickens like to eat: anything that I don't want for them to eat. What do they dislike? Anything I think they should eat. Lately the Black Australorps have been irritating me by pulling down onions off the tables where they are curing and eating off the onion greens. I've tried to block their access to the tables, but they got one onion yesterday. They don't bother the bulb, just the greens. I have rearranged the onions on the tables so the greens don't hang over the edges any more. I hope that stops the Black Australorps from eating the onion greens. The Black Copper Marans prefer to forage in the shade of the big pecan tree where they spend hours happily digging, scratching and chasing bugs. The White Leghorns and Delawares love the grassy hillside between our house and our son's house and also spend a lot of time working on the 'edge' where the woodland meets the grassland. Our oldest flock, which is a mixed flock of Amercaunas, Mille Fleur d'Uccles, Welsummers and Crested Polish that we've had since 2011 or 2012, always go to the compost pile first, and then prowl the driveway, the side and back yards and try to get into the garden (succeeding if I have left the gate open).

I've been letting some chickens into the garden in small numbers while I am in there to see if they will eat the grasshoppers they are hatching out by the hundreds. They kinda do and kinda don't, letting themselves get distracted by everything else in the garden. I just can't leave them unattended or they start pecking at fruit.

Yesterday a new chick hatched in the big coop and the hen is still setting on more eggs. We still have four very young chicks in a brooder that are a couple of weeks old, but other than that, I thought all the eggs had hatched that were going to hatch. I guess I was wrong. With as many chickens as we've hatched out this year, we shouldn't have any problems with any pests in the area where they free-range. If only they would eat bermuda grass like goats do, we wouldn't even have to mow.

@okiedawn1

Im surprised you put bindweed in your compost pile. Do you find they end up growing in your compost and spread even more?

Nope. The key is to pull it up before it has flowered and set seed and to compost it in a hot compost pile. I try to pull all the bindweed as soon as it sprouts, but sometimes it grows hidden in bean vines and such and I don't notice it until it flowers. As soon as I see it, I yank it out.

Any non chemical ideas for controlling it early? I barely kept it at bay last season, and if I missed a few days, it was dreadful. But it grows heavily in the fenced off area around my few raised beds, so moving sites isn't a option.

Smothering would be my suggestion, too. Goats might eat it...at least the above ground part. Free ranging, my chickens ignored it for tastier things...like tomatoes. Supposedly, growing pumpkins in a field infested with bindweed helps kill it. But that was someplace without squash vine borers and the pumpkins shaded out all weeds. My source.

After researching bindweed, I attempted to grow tangetes minuta (also known as Mexican Marigold or black mint and not to be confused with tagetes lucida, Mexican tarragon) for it's alleopathic properties, hoping it would kill bindweed. The bind weed grew up and wrapped around the t. Minuta. Might have been different if I had a whole field planted with it, but I think the alleopathy is too mild for bindweed. Furthermore, it is kind of agressive, probably invasive, though it may have medicinal properties. I have enough dried from that year to last a very long time.

Has anyone tried the pumpkin method?

Today I was preparing my raised bed closest to the bindweed patch and the hardest hit last year. It seemed full of roots with pale green buds just emerging. I fear the bed will be lost no matter what I do. I'll mulch, and stay in them best I can...