Next doors invasion of bindweed.

PrincessB · 4 Jul 2019 at 09:03

Hi all,

Next door we have a lovely (elderly) lady who has a garden full of bindweed and it's doing its best to invade my garden too.

Some areas on our shared fence zone can be sprayed, in the main part of the garden, the bindweed is wrapping itself about a variety of potted plants.

Is there any kind of 'paint it on' weedkiller that anyone can recommend to kill the bindweed without killing my own plants.

I'm thinking of a paintbrush and strong chemicals to murder the bindweed down to the roots without harming my own collection of pot plants.

Should give me something to do while I wait for the next generation AMD processors.

Regards,

B.

Haze · 4 Jul 2019 at 09:07

Goto b&q and stand in front of the weedkiller section and buy something in a spray bottle.....

Terminal_Boy · 4 Jul 2019 at 09:10

I’ve never found any chemical that would kill bindweed that didn’t kill everything else around it.

You could try one of those propane wands and burn back the bindweed in your garden hoping that the thermal shock will kill the roots.

Alas, there isn’t really any substitute for ripping the horrible stuff out by hand.

200sols · 4 Jul 2019 at 09:12

If its coming from the other garden why would you need to spray weedkiller on your plants, just pull out the bindweed and treat weed around the fence with a suitable product.

skyripper · 4 Jul 2019 at 09:18

"Hi Neighbour, do you need a hand getting rid of that bindweed as I can see its taking over your garden and it must be hard work trying to keep on top of it?"
"You would? Great."
"How about saturday afternoon and I'll bring my gardening gloves."

Steampunk · 4 Jul 2019 at 09:23

There are two ways I've found to deal with bindweed.

1. SBK Brushwood Killer. Spray it on, and the bindweed should be dying within a week. It has the advantage that it doesn't kill grass or a load of other plants. It's very effective, relatively quickly. It looks expensive for a small bottle, but you dilute it 30 ml to 1.5 litres of water, so a little goes a long way.

2. Unwrap as much of the bindweed as you can (at least a foot). Put it into a ziplock bag. Spray any good weedkiller into the bag. Zip the bag as closed as you can, and just leave it. The bindweed will die, and you can chuck the bag. This is good if it's growing on a bush or something you can't spray directly.

Ideally you want to get into next door and spray all the bindweed. SBK will be fine on grass, but you need to check or test if it's all over other plants. Anything woody (like roses) will be killed, so you have to use the bag method instead.

There are gel stick weed killers like Roundup that should work. It's like a giant glue stick that you dab onto the leaves of the bindweed carefully, and you just get the weedkiller where you want it, but I don't know how well they work for something as tenacious as bindweed.

As with all these weeds, if the problem is in the next garden and your neighbour doesn't sort it, it will just keep coming back the next year, and you'll have to keep spraying. That's true of all weeding. Even if you go and sort out her garden, she could get it from her neighbours, or birds, or wind carrying seeds in, etc. Be prepared to expect it as ongoing maintenance.

psd99 · 4 Jul 2019 at 10:11

but those flowers are so pretty

PrincessB · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:08

Hi Steampunk,

Thanks for a well reasoned informative reply.

Regards,

B.

Rroff · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:11

skyripper said:
"Hi Neighbour, do you need a hand getting rid of that bindweed as I can see its taking over your garden and it must be hard work trying to keep on top of it?"
"You would? Great."
"How about saturday afternoon and I'll bring my gardening gloves."

Have you ever actually talked to your neighbours? more often than not they are less than cooperative in my experience. Though to be fair our previous ones were quite happy for me to use their drive to park vehicles on when moving out and our current ones seem pretty easy going but that is more of an exception than the rule

Thekwango · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:15

Rroff said:
Have you ever actually talked to your neighbours? more often than not they are less than cooperative in my experience. Though to be fair our previous ones were quite happy for me to use their drive to park vehicles on when moving out and our current ones seem pretty easy going but that is more of an exception than the rule

and it's an elderly lady - they can be cantankerous auld witches, especially if you dare insinuate they need help with something!

james.miller · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:25

We have next door's bamboo shooting up in the corner of the back garden. Going to have to dig it all up. Fun times.

Terminal_Boy · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:36

james.miller said:
We have next door's bamboo shooting up in the corner of the back garden. Going to have to dig it all up. Fun times.

Buy yourself a pick axe as you’ll have to break it up first before a fork and spade will touch it.

james.miller · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:37

Terminal_Boy said:
Buy yourself a pick axe as you’ll have to break it up first before a fork and spade will touch it.

Yep

Usher · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:37

Use a Gel weedkiller,it comes in an applicator and you just touch the leaves to 'paint' it on as you requested
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roundup-We...38&hvtargid=pla-422232283401&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 5 Jul 2019 at 11:49

I believe those gels are just glycophosphate in a more usable form. They work in exactly the same way.
Bindweed is one of the hardest to kill off, dont try to dig it out unless you are really accurate, if you chop it up you end up with even more!
The best time for really killing it is autumn, it draws down the weed killer into the underground bit, you can probably kill it anytime with these level of weedkillers, but if its stuborn then do it in the early autumn

Usher · 5 Jul 2019 at 14:04

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I believe those gels are just glycophosphate in a more usable form. They work in exactly the same way.
Bindweed is one of the hardest to kill off, dont try to dig it out unless you are really accurate, if you chop it up you end up with even more!
The best time for really killing it is autumn, it draws down the weed killer into the underground bit, you can probably kill it anytime with these level of weedkillers, but if its stuborn then do it in the early autumn

I used Glycophosphate to kill ground Elder which is even worse than bindweed, every tiny fragment of root will start a new colony, it took me three years to finally eradicate it (hopefully) It even killed a 15ft Ash sapling in under 2 months, one of the many that self seed in our rural garden

fastwunz · 5 Jul 2019 at 14:31

I fear this is a ‘go next door and rip it all up yourself’ job.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 5 Jul 2019 at 14:33

Usher said:
I used Glycophosphate to kill ground Elder which is even worse than bindweed, every tiny fragment of root will start a new colony, it took me three years to finally eradicate it (hopefully) It even killed a 15ft Ash sapling in under 2 months, one of the many that self seed in our rural garden

Yep anything that is basically a rhyzone (spelling) is exactly the same. japanese knot weed is another to add to the list.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 5 Jul 2019 at 14:34

fastwunz said:
I fear this is a ‘go next door and rip it all up yourself’ job.

Won't work, no way you will get it all doing that. You need to kill it with chemical but if its mainly next door low chance of getting enough to work its way into the roots.

fastwunz · 5 Jul 2019 at 14:35

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Won't work, no way you will get it all doing that. You need to kill it with chemical but if its mainly next door low chance of getting enough to work its way into the roots.

Turbo strimmer time!