Good morning!
I haven’t posted for a while, but thought I could share what little I have done this year.
I have a deep and stubborn infestation of bindweed in the garden. The roots go down 4 feet, and the plants just keep coming up no matter what I do, so I decided to fallow the whole garden the entire growing season, spraying the shoots with Roundup AND Killex.
This stuff is so tenacious, it is STILL coming up, though somewhat less vigorously than before. Other than digging the entire garden to 6 feet deep, does anyone have any ideas how to get this stuff under control?
My other beds are doing OK, though my kohlrabi was a failure this year The tomatoes went in too late to really produce much, the corn failed, the deer managed to damage the raspberries quite badly, and even the turnips weren’t happy.
That said, I got a small but utterly delicious beet harvest, and the new 6’ chain link fence will help with the deer issue.
I’ve tilled all the beds for the last time this year, and hope to be using the mower to vacuum up the leaves on the lawn before the snow flies.
The light rain we’ve been having has eased our drought. My little creek, while it didn’t stop flowing did get pretty slow toward the end of the summer. It was down to about 5 gpm, but it’s back up to around 2 gallons per second. Much better, and the water is far clearer as well. The cottonwoods along the creek banks were showing water stress too, but with the cooler weather they’re dropping their leaves for winter.
That’s all I can think of for now. Happy gardening, FRiends.
I’ve not seen or heard of bindweed before I am in Michigan. Looked it up, sounds like a real pain in the butt.
https://www.bhg.com/how-to-get-rid-of-bindweed-11703559
“...does anyone have any ideas how to get BINDWED under control?”
I have read everything on the subject and it always comes back to this: pull it, pull it, pull it! And then pull it some more!
We had a very wet season so I have it in spades, too. Since it wraps itself around the things you love, you can’t use Round-Up or Kleen-Up on it, or you’ll kill your desired plants as well!
Part of controlling it too, is to get it before it blooms and then sets seed. It propagates itself via seed and those tenacious roots! Even a little piece of it can regenerate a whole new plant. It is the ‘Tribble’ of the garden! And NEVER put the pulled weeds in your compost bin!
I wish I had an easy solution for you - I had it in places I’d never seen it before this season, and it wrapped itself around a favorite Juniper shrub that I had all trimmed up all pretty and Bonsai-like. Grrrr! Like OVERNIGHT!
Another weed in this ‘frustration zone’ is Wild Cucumber. It’s as bad as Bindweed, but has the added bonus of prickly spines all along the stems/runners AND prickly cucumber-like fruits! Aarrgghhh!
>>I have a deep and stubborn infestation of bindweed in the garden. The roots go down 4 feet, and the plants just keep coming up no matter what I do, so I decided to fallow the whole garden the entire growing season, spraying the shoots with Roundup AND Killex.
>>This stuff is so tenacious, it is STILL coming up, though somewhat less vigorously than before. Other than digging the entire garden to 6 feet deep, does anyone have any ideas how to get this stuff under control?
I’ve read that bindweed can be used to make baskets. It’s funny how quickly a thing can become scare once it is seen as a resource.