The War Against Bindweed

When you purchase a new home there is only so much time to take in the details of the house and property.  The aspects you love will jump out at you and probably a few things that need fixing.  But there are many things that you don't notice at all.  And I definitely didn't notice that bindweed was thriving all around our property.

I've seen bindweed before but I've never had a problem with it in my garden.  Well, it seems my time has come.  For those of you who aren't familiar, let me introduce you to Bindweed, or Convolvulus.  Bindweed has a couple of forms including Field Bindweed and Hedge Bindweed.  For all intents and purposes they are essentially the same thing, with one being slightly larger than the other.  Bindweed is a perennial vine closely resembling a morning glory.  The plants creep along the ground pulling themselves up any plant that will support them, sending twining stems around and around.  Eventually they form dense mats around other plants that choke and suffocate them to their demise.  The flowers tend to be white or pink and the leaves are triangular or arrow shaped.

Bindweed blooms look like morning glory and have distinctive arrow shaped leaves.

This invasive weed was introduced from Europe and has spread rapidly throughout North America.  It spreads via long lasting seeds that can remain dormant for up to 20 years and also by thick rhizomes.  The rhizomes contain buds along their length that can turn into shoots when they break away from the main root.  Bindweed rhizomes are extremely brittle and break easily so it can be a tricky situation as each portion of the root that is broken away can transform itself into a whole new plant.

I'm not a big weeder by nature.  I love all plants and often weeds are extremely beneficial to insects and other wildlife.  I'm also lazy.  So weeds tend to be a normal part of my garden.  But in this case I'm seriously against bindweed.  It is incredibly destructive to other plants, forming great mats and preventing air and sunlight from penetrating the plants laying underneath this vine.  Recently I've been even more rattled by the fact that this insufferable beast of a weed is trying to make itself at home in my compost bin.  The bin is located next to the hedgerow, which I didn't realize until too late, has bindweed growing though it.  Over the course of the summer the bindweed tried to cross from the hedge and twine itself around my bin.  Frustrated I cut a one foot swath around the bin and I regularly go in and pull the vine to thwart its attempts to make itself at home.

But I hadn't thought about the fact that bindweed spreads by roots.  Recently we've had a spell of warmish weather and I decided to work at cleaning up a compost pile started last winter.  It's in the same location as my compost bin, next to the hedge.  And over the course of the summer the weeds have practically been jumping out of the hedgerow and clambering onto that luscious compost.  That includes the bindweed which I've been hand pulling off the top of the pile.  So I began the work scooping up this compost and placing it in beds when to my horror I found this.

As I dug through the pile I began to find huge pieces of bindweed roots.  Not only had the plant tried to jump on top of the pile but it also sent its roots out underneath it.  There's a mass of roots hiding in my compost pile!  The pile has been a slow compost and not hot so the roots have survived quite happily there.  Although frankly I wouldn't even trust bindweed in a hot compost.  This stuff is just too prolific to take a chance.  Now some people might have said to heck with it and abandoned the compost but it's a prescious commodity around here and the fact is that no matter where I put the compost the bindweed will go with it.  The best course is to remove the offending plant and its roots.  So I've been spending rather copious amounts of time lately sifting compost, shovelful by shovelful, and pulling out the roots of bindweed as I go. 

The good news is that the roots are pretty hard to miss.  Once you've seen them you'll always know.  They can get to be as thick as a pencil and are a bright white.  Their most distinguishing characteristic has got to be how brittle they are.  They snap instead of bending.  Of course this means you have to be careful to not break them and be very very careful to pick out each and every piece.  I think I did a pretty good job of sifting but I'll be keeping a close eye on my compost in spring to see if any plants spring up.



 The above pile of roots has been placed in a brown bag in the garage where they will dry out over the winter and hopefully die before being taken off to the garbage where they belong.