My big challenge this year is controlling the invasive bindweeds (like morning glories). Each year they get closer and closer to the house. Thousands and thousands of them, and nothing kills them. They are imbedded in the flower beds, the hedges and now the lawn. Now they’re climbing the telephone poles and hanging from the wires. And nothing kills them, because if you pull the vines, you can never get all the roots. And if the lawn mower chops them up each little piece is a new plant.
I wish there were some weed killer that kills them, without killing anything else.
HELP!!!
I’m looking for a factual answer, but another forum may be more appropriate.
I can offer you nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat. Using a trowel and a handfork, and larger implements as necessary, you dig 'em up, and you pull 'em out. You can’t get them all, but you get as much as you possibly can. They come back. You repeat the exercise. They come back again, but less vigorously. You repeat the exercise. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.
Each time the bindweed becomes a bit more discouraged. If you break off the campaign at any point before final victory the bindweed will re-establish itself as vigorously as it ever was. But eventually, if you persist, it will give up in despair. It takes a long time to get to that point, but when you reach it men will say of you that this was your finest hour.
Because “they are imbedded in the flower beds, the hedges and now the lawn”.
You can try painting the leaves, one by one, with a herbicide designed for the purpose. Many happy hours await you, and it’s still next to impossible not to get the bloody stuff on something that you want to live.
The lawn is a non-issue, just use a broadleaf herbicide. And if they are climbing poles,they should also be very easy to treat. Without seeing your garden bed, it’s hard to say what herbicide to use or how to apply. But if you are at all able to physically remove the plants, then herbicide treatment will be faster and easier.
If he could physically remove the plants, his problem would be easily solved. But they’re not called “bindweed” for nothing.
Yes, he can spray the plants where there is no danger of affecting plants that he wants to keep. But these things get everywhere and through everything; there’ll be large areas where he can’t safely spray. Spraying may be a useful way of reducing the scale of the problem before he resorts to the brute-force-and-ignorance method of pulling them up.
I’m familiar with the plant. The question was why not use herbicide, rather than resorting to the tedious task of hand removal. I say once again, if you are at all able to physically remove the plants, then herbicide treatment will be faster and easier.
And if, as you say, they are unable to physically remove the plants, then your advice that they should physically remove the plants is a tad pointless.
The trick is to manually apply the herbicide, not to spray it. Wear a latex or other waterproof glove; apply something like Round Up (or your weed killer of choice) to the glove, then wipe it directly on the morning glory leaves. This eliminates the overspray that would kill everything around it. Apply it to a few of leaves on each vine and see if that’s enough to kill it.
You could also try using something like a paintbrush (especially the disposable foam type) to paint poison on the leaves, but the glove trick gives you the most control.
I misunderstood you; I thought you were suggesting that he could remove the plants to a place where he could safely spray them, without danger to other plants. But, of course, once he has removed the plants he has no need to spray them.
The problem with spraying is, as stated, that bindweed climbs around and through everything; spraying the bindweed alone is not feasible, except where it does something like climb up a pole or a dead tree-stump. As noted, direct application of herbicide to the leaves is possible, but it requires great care and it’s still quite difficult to avoid collateral damage, given the extent to which bindweed intertwines with other plants. Dracoi suggests applying herbicide to “a few of the leaves on each plant” to see if that’s enough to kill it, but I can tell you from experience that it’s not. This stuff is vigorous, and it’s usually much easier to kill the plant it’s growing on that it is to kill the bindweed itself. It’s very difficult (and I mean “very difficult” in the sense of “practically impossible”) to apply enough herbicide to knock of the bindweed and yet avoid knocking off the plants on which it is climbing.
That hasn’t been my experience. Using a strong concentration of roundup, painting a few leaves of each plant is enough to knock it back to ground level, and a repeat application will kill 99% of plants.
If you are worried about the herbicide dripping onto other plants, you can buy it ingel formula, or you can make your own by mixing glyphosate with pectin. But in my experience a hobby paintbrush and a bit of patience works with negligible damage to other plants and is still much faster, easier and more effective than manual removal.
If there are populations of the weed outside the boundaries of your property, it might not be a battle you can ever win without resorting to extreme measures such as building walls or installing buried barrier membranes.
A tip I heard on applying herbicide to this plant:
Get some smooth plastic canes - push them into the ground where the bindweed is growing and allow the plant to climb them - when it’s established on the support (probably only a week or so), give the cane a twist and it should be possible to pull it out - the living bindweed on it can then be gathered down to a big bunch at ground level, providing a lot of surface area for the application of the weedkiller and enabling you to give the plant a serious dose.
Also, if you cut the top off a large plastic bottle (to make a sort of funnel), this can be placed over the bunched-up weed and the herbicide can be sprayed through the hole, avoiding accidental overspray.
often you can have success, when getting rid of a plant in a desirable plant area, to cut it back (remove all except some of the lower leaves on the vine or stalk), remove what you cut, then treat the remaining plant leaves with a small spray head or paint the leaves. this leaves (not that kind) much less plant to be killed with the dose.
Combining two of the ideas in here, I’d look at attaching foam brush ends, to the glove fingers, and then squishing plants\leaves between your fingers. Even quicker, and still direct application.
ideally, you don’t want physically damage the plant when applying glyphosate - it needs to get absorbed and carried through the vascular system to the roots etc - which all works best if the plant is healthy and intact when sprayed.
The idea of poisoning morning glory would shock many Thais who consider the vegetable great for eating. We have lots of such “weeds” on our property and just this morning my wife was excited so many were ripe for gathering. In addition to vitamins, some may have psychedelic power at least in high doses. (The morning glory/bindweed family Convolvulaceae has 1700 species, so perhaps your weeds are distinct from our food.)
Some morning glory restaurants put on a show. (Advance to the 2:18 mark to see some impressive tosses.)
So…I could’ve had a huge family barbeque instead of moving off my property?
I was ignorant about invasive morning glories, and actually planted a cutting I’d taken from the wild so I could have those beautiful deep blue flowers on my fence line. Within two years it was approaching the house, with thick runners 20-30’ long - all with side shoots and all rooted about every foot or so. We moved due to a job transfer, but I was so relieved not to have to deal with the morning glory problem.
Good luck with that. If you figure it out, let the rest of us know and you’ll make millions of dollars.
BTW, no matter what you do, there is NO way to completely eradicate bindweed; the tiniest little atom-sized fragment will grow to smother an entire hillside in no time. It’s the one weed that’s even worse than blackberry.
