Bindweed problems

Bindweed is such a lovely flower, but otherwise a thug. Kind of reminds me of the Dandelion which is another pest and doesn't have a nice flower, however listening to James Wang on Gardener's Question they are revered in Singapore.

 

They can gladly have mine and in fact I'd pay the fare.

 

I refuse to use weedkiller. I always wondered what mankind did before weedkillers were invented/created.
Probably swear more!!

 

I like both flowers. I even choose to have a relative of the rampant bindweed, with little purple trumpet flowers over a long season. It does spread on long stems, but rarely roots away from its initial base so is easy to control. Pretty hardy down here too.

 

Hedge Bindweed is very popular with insects. Not just for food, it's good shelter too. I always look inside the flowers to see if something is having a snooze, or if a flower spider is lying in wait.

 

Spent an afternoon tackling bindweed, got a bucket of it out. Nothing more satisfying in this very dry weather, with the soil being bone dry as well and that is pulling a whole bindweed root out, comes out relatively easy. Now do I put these roots in the general rubbish and not the compost bin?

No doubt I have missed quite a bit though.

 

I leave them in the sun to dry completely, then put them in the compost.

 

Okay, thanks, I do have a hot composter, would I still need to wit for them to dry out?

 

Yes, I think so.
Even if the risk is low, finding bindweed in a new place as a result of spreading compost would be annoying.

 

The bindweed down our allotment gets put in a black bag in the sun to wither and goes on the compost at the end of the year. We also put some with a mix of grass, nettles and comfrey in a water butt to make a liquid feed. The remnants at the bottom of the barrel then get chucked on the compost at the end of the season.

 

I managed to grapple with bindweed last week. It was so easy to pull, where it hasn’t rained in a month. No greater feeling than pulling a whole bindweed root out. However I did have several that did snap, so want to get these out.

 

It's a good feeling, but I'd rate pulling out a dock root the size of a parsnip slightly higher.

 

...now I'm remembering the satisfaction of finally levering out each of the roots of a very well established 18' leylandii hedge...
..any advance?

 

I mostly buried a water butt down our allotment because we had limited space and I can then use it as a low table. The point of this story is that I went down 4-5ft and was still finding bindweed roots that were a foot or more when pulled out of the bottom. This is why I now just pull it on sight in the hope that it eventually weakens.

 

As I said above I said I had eradicated all my bindweed, or so I thought! It is coming back, although it still get great pleasure ripping it out and nothing like a great feeling when a big strand comes out.

So with new shoots the stems are very weak and they tend to snap easily or do I let them grow so the stem gets stronger and more chance pulling these out?