The bees like the bindweed flowers, which makes me sad about mowing it.
Deep mulching with wood chips has helped me to control bindweed in parts of my garden. I try to cut them back at soil level every 2 or 3 weeks to weaken them. There are fewer vines coming up in the areas that have had wood chip the longest, and it takes less time to weed now. Good luck with your project!
That’s promising to hear! Not as encouraging as I would’ve hoped (of course they still grow up through the wood chips – bah!), but at least they’re weaker and less prevalent for you now. (Wry grin.) How many inches of wood chips do you use in your garden? Have they helped a lot with keeping moisture in the soil? That’s my biggest hope with the deep mulch, that I’ll need way less irrigation through our rainless summers.
I’m probably putting somewhere between 4 and 6 inches of wood chip, and it does help keep the moisture in the soil and the roots cooler. They break down and need to be replaced from time to time, which is great for the soil and for me since I don’t have a gym membership! Oh, and I really like that the chips are free, including delivery, through Chip Drop.
That’s awesome. I’m planning to request a Chip Drop in spring, so I can deep mulch my garden with them. If I need more afterwards to xeriscape my front yard, I’ll request another drop. I live near the middle of Provo, and I see tree companies driving by with big trees on the back of their trucks sometimes, so I imagine my location would be convenient for them. I’m hoping that means I’ll get a drop quickly after requesting one. On average, how long do you find you need to wait?
I’ve been thinking six inches of wood chips might be a good depth for keeping in moisture. Have you found you need to put them down after your crops have sprouted, or can the seeds germinate and grow up all right? I suspect little seeds (like carrots) won’t do well under deep mulch, and big seeds (like squashes and melons) would do fine. What’s your experience?
I usually get wood chips the same day or the day after I request them. There was only one time I didn’t get a drop. We have a lot of trees in our area, and I’ve learned to listen for the chainsaw and wood chipper.
So far, I’ve mainly used the chips on paths and around established plants. I haven’t used them for crops, but you’re probably right about small vs large seeds. Maybe with small seeds, just clear the chips away a bit from where you’re planting, and then push them back as the seedlings get bigger?
That’s what I was thinking I’d do. It would also have the benefit of allowing water to reach the germinating seeds more quickly. Not to mention being able to tell where I’d sowed things, so I’d be able to tell whether a sprout was a crop or a weed. Sometimes it’s hard to tell a brand new carrot sprout from, say, quackgrass, for instance.
I have to say I am envious of such an easy method of removing grass! Though not by the need for irrigation generally.
Bury them in woodchips and the quackgrass starts putting its major roots in the woodchips rather than in the soil. Then you can (carefully) pull up whole plant groups rather than fighting them one at a time. Make sure you get all the roots.
Oooooh. I like the sound of that. We have a lot of quackgrass, and it’s very hard to remove.
I’m very tired of morning glory/bindweed.
Hi, Alma. I’m tired of bindweed too, but I think it must be trying to tell us something. In my case, I’ve let the Kentucky bluegrass lawn become weak and so it took over. I’m planning to grow squash in this area which I hope will compete with the bindweed.
It’s an amazingly resilient plant. If anyone can tell me how to use it in a positive way, I would be glad to hear it. In the past, I’ve pulled up a lot and soaked the pile in a barrel of water to kill it. After a few weeks, I water plants with the soaking water and use the plant residue as a sort of mulch. But I haven’t been consistent enough to actually eliminate it from our property. It would be great if there was a way to take advantage of its resilience and somehow live with it, instead of fighting with it.
They are in the same family as sweet potatoes. I wonder if they are close enough for attempting a wide cross. I also wonder if pigs would eat them.
They really are exceptionally resilient. I can pull out the shoot of the same plant twenty times in a month, and it still comes back the next day. In full shade. Under giant zucchinis.
My whole lawn can die because of no water, and the bindweed will spread around and do just fine the whole summer. With no water. And it’ll flower and produce seeds, too.
If it were edible, I would love it. It’s amazingly resilient, and it’s pretty! But since it’s inedible (mildly poisonous, apparently), and it can outcompete almost anything, baaaaaaaaaaah. I’m very tired of it, too.
I’m choosing to take its incredible resilience in my yard as a sign that I should be growing sweet potatoes.
It’s getting water from the water table beneath your feet. Roots go down between 3 and 20 feet, and spread. If your neighbors are watering, they’re probably watering “your” bindweed as well. The water you got during the winter that sank into the soil is also keeping the plants alive. It may be 10 feet down, but it’s there.
Ahhhhhh. That would explain it! Those are impressive roots. 
Now that you mention it, my neighborhood has a much higher water table than most places in Utah. We live near the Provo River, which is the source of water for this part of the state. That’s probably why this used to be some of the best farmland in Utah. (So of course they poured concrete all over it.)
Well, I’ll take that as a sign that if I can get my crops to grow really deep roots, I can dry farm them! Boy, it would be cool to be able to do that with everything. Maybe that’s what weeds are for: to show us what our crops are capable of, if we choose carefully.
So, maybe a good thing about bindweed is that it brings up minerals from below, where other plants’ roots can’t reach?
I just came across a discussion on permies.com where someone says, “The only thing that worked for me long term was improving the soil. As the soil got better, the bindweed just disappeared on its own.” The last entry of the thread also supports this strategy of directing one’s energy in a positive way.
https://permies.com/t/186200/stop-bindweed-wild-morning-glory
I was in a forest that had bindweed once. I saw this well-mannered periodic groundcover and just ignored it. Then I noticed the shape of the leaves and looked closer.
It wasn’t smothering anything, it wasn’t making a nuisance of itself. It lived amicably right alongside other forest plants.
That’s when I started to wonder if the soil-fix theorists were right.
That’s so interesting. I’ve wondered how bindweed behaves in its native habitat. Maybe this offers us a glimpse of its good side, and another reason to consider a food forest (as opposed to annual crops).
Wow! That’s fascinating that it’s well-behaved in its native habitat.
This matches what Stefan Sobkowiak said about dandelions on his channel. He said dandelions are a sign that the soil doesn’t have enough nutrients (calcium specifically), and if you let them run their course, they’ll improve the soil and then die back and not grow all that much anymore.
It makes me wonder if most of the plants we think of as highly invasive weeds are actually an important message that the soil is out of balance, and if we fix it, they will dwindle away on their own as other plants that need more nutrients grow in and thrive in their place.
So in theory, if I keep putting down wood chips and fallen leaves and other sources of fertility onto or into the soil, that ought to eventually take care of the bindweed on its own? Awesome. I wouldn’t mind a bit of bindweed as a well-behaved wildflower. It’s pretty. Its invasiveness is what makes it a nuisance.
now i’m curious, if you just pull and drop it does it root or just breakdown. If i think of it as an accumulator and fertilizer for my other plants that makes it feel slightly better 