For our first, and probably last, annual award for the worst weed in the garden, this year goes to bindweed, hands down. Weed of the year requirements are simple. What weed is causing me the most grief or the most work to control in the garden? This year bindweed is way ahead. It’s hard to kill, it has deep tap roots that easily snap off. After breaking off the plant from the root, the root quickly puts out new growth.
Bindweed Twining
The stems wind around other plants and can cause damage by themselves or when attempts are made to remove them.
Bindweed is Convolvulus arvensis of the family Convolvulaceae. It’s closely related to morning glory, considered mostly a good plant, and sweet potato, a plant that gets almost no bad press. And although bindweed is an actually useful plant (aren’t they all?) it’s pretty well hated by gardeners and farmers.
New Bindweed Sprouts
Bindweed is troublesome for two primary reasons. First, the plant quickly sends out long stems which wind themselves tightly around other plants.
Soft Bindweed Tap Root
And second, the plant has deep and soft taproots that carry enough nutrition to keep feeding new growth even after the plant has been cut back several times;
Bindweed can be controlled, but it requires repeated pulling or slicing off. Like most weeds, you can stay ahead by hand weeding. All it takes is time.
Yup…have been trying to dig this out of my garden for years! It’s the weed from hell. Horrible when it winds its way up among my peas or around my tomato plants! ugh. Yes….weed of the year….can’t they find a specific weed killer for this nasty invader?! ugh
I’ll take bindweed any day instead of goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria), my nemesis. Goutweed roots can survive with no connection to the sunshine for 5 years, and still crawl out from under landscape fabric and a foot of replacement soil. And like bindweed, the roots are fragile and easy to break. My wife has beaten it with persistence – and a CobraHead. me/ I gave up! I have been quoted in newspapers as saying, if you have goutweed, sell the house! Henry Homeyer, Cornish Flat, NH
I’ll take bindweed any day instead of goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria), my nemesis. Goutweed roots can survive with no connection to the sunshine for 5 years, and still crawl out from under landscape fabric and a foot of replacement soil. And like bindweed, the roots are fragile and easy to break. My wife has beaten it with persistence – and a CobraHead. Me? I gave up! I have been quoted in newspapers as saying, if you have goutweed, sell the house! Henry Homeyer, Cornish Flat, NH
Interesting!
We had hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium) at our old house and I did have to move to get rid of it–or so I thought. I recently discovered it in our chicken yard and have been cutting it off at ground level. Which reminds me, I need to go out there and do another snipping. I’m hoping to subdue it before it gains too strong a foothold. By the way, my son now owns my former house and the bindweed is no longer there. He took down the fence and mows the whole area and there’s no sign of it anymore. I think there is a certain cover crop that’s supposed to subdue it.
I have both bindweeds and Bermuda grass, and have been using both the longer and the shorter ones, they are really good. I must have used them too much, especially having used them to eliminate also the Porcelain Berry vines. So they (the CobraHeads) are both hiding and I cannot find either of them—- Overworked CobraHeads hiding—-