Bindweed - there must be a way...

[TheodoresMummy]

....to get rid of the flippin' stuff !!!

It is so well established that I have no chance of getting the roots out.

It's rife right where I need to put my veggies so I thought I would put squares of carpet down then put a raised bed on top. But my neighbour (keen gardener) says it will still come through .

Any ideas ?

[walbert]

Hi Theodoresmummy: aaaarghhhh! bindweed? oh dear, the suff of nightmares, i'm afraid. it is an evil bugger and unless you ensure you take up and get rid of every root and every bit of stalk it will always come back, i know as we ended up with a grden full of the stuff: in end paid a bloke to chop it all down as it was so overgrown, then dug out all top soil and laid new turf. the best bit was our neighbour at the time was a miserable little fart, and a bit must have got in his garden as a short while later it qwas creeping round the fence back to our garden!: my three words of advice are destroy destroy destroy!

[Bodkin]

My mum's top tip for getting rid of it (albeit chemically) is to take a section of growth, spray with Roundup or similar and then wrap either in clingfilm or in a sandwich bag tied on with a bit of wire. Stops it getting washed off by the rain while it is working, and stops it getting on the plants you don't want it to, and stops little fingers from touching it! As it gets taken into the roots of the plant, if you do it on enough sections and regularly, eventually you will get rid of it. it is a bit laborious, but she has cleared her garden of it this way. Have yet to apply the same technique to mine, but it is my next chore in the garden! HTH

One more tip - if you have it growing in a hedge or herbaceous border, put some bamboo canes in first and let it grow up them and away from the plants so you can attack it more easily.

[mrspink27]

Plant tagetes minuta ( a type of marigold) half hardy annual which you can grow from seed. It gets rid of bindweed and ground elder, organically with no chemicals!

[yomellamoHelly]

It's really hard to get rid of. You need to tackle all of it, so if it's in any of your neighbour's gardens (which is probable given its nature) you need to get them onside or it'll just keep returning. Then you need to chop it back, then dig out as many of the roots as you can. Warning - it goes quite deep.
I had a site once in Brighton where they then put down a 1.5 - 2 metre deep vertical membrane to try and stop the bindweed returning. Don't know if it was successful or not.

[TheodoresMummy]

Thanks so much guys !!

mrspink27 - will def be trying your idea first, as prefer organic methods. Have you actually used this plant ? How much would I need for an area 7 metres long (it's growing along a fence at the moment) ?

Ta very much...