If only… I have alkaline soil, and bindweed is still my nemesis.
I planted a patch of mixed mustards a couple weeks ago, only to remember that there had been TONS of bindweed there last year that I didn’t manage to pull before setting seed. Not counting the bindweed seed bank that was probably already there. I’ve gotten REALLY GOOD at distinguishing bindweed seedlings from brassicas now!
(Laugh.) Yes, I had the same experience needing to learn the difference between bindweed and brassica sprouts VERY QUICKLY! 
I have alkaline soil, too. Bindweed loves it. In fact, the less well everything else grows, the more eager bindweed is to take over. It’s a pioneer species . . . so improving the soil and filling it with plants you actually want is the best defense. It still won’t stop the bindweed, but it will slow it down, especially if it’s competing with layers of plants that have huge leaves that shade the soil, because it adores full sun. Squashes and brassicas can both help.
Ironically, I confidently asserted that the orchard was almost entirely bindweed-free just a few days ago . . . and then I found twenty new vigorous bindweed vines all over the orchard the next day. 
They hadn’t been there the day before!!! That weed. 
It likes to make liars of us, doesn’t it?
Me: “I’ve finally cleared that raised bed of every single bindweed root.”
Bindweed: “Haha, you thought so…” 
Here is a species that wants to TALK and tell us something important (maybe that we should stop extracting food from this specific piece of land?) … and probabely tries to CURE the soil from whatever desequilibrium we have introduced.
I have some bindweed arround and inside my plots and rather worried about them.
I am glad I started alterning cover crops (crops intended to feed the soil life) and harvestable crops. My cover crops are a mixture of 5 - 7 species including hay crops and nitrogen fixing crops.
So I feel like I am showing my good intentions towards the soil, and I hope the message will be understood by however is listening / watching. (bindweed, bindweed, are you listening? ) 
I read this thread a while ago, but it finally percolated to the top of my brain that somewhere in the misty past, I remember hearing/reading that bindweed can indicate a hardpan soil. So, maybe try some deep-rooted annuals?
Oh, that’s useful to know!
Yeah, a hardpan is certainly possible – my neighborhood used to be a plowed farm a hundred years ago. I suspect we don’t have that, though, because our soil is pure sand for a foot, and then sand and rocks for a foot, and then it’s just rocks all the way down after that. Hard to have hardpan when there’s no soil down there.
But it is possible there’s a hardpan layer of soil after several feet of rocks. I’ve only dug four or five feet down, so I don’t know what’s under that.
As a side note, bindweed seems to do a great job of volunteering up through all the rock mulch in my firepit. Which is annoying . . . but on the other hand, it’s mostly just bindweed, which I rip out as soon as I see flowers, so it doesn’t have the chance to make seeds, and the bindweed grows back a huge tangle of lush vines up through those rocks every few days without any water, so . . .
. . . mulch! 
I’m kinda not minding having the firepit growing me loads of mulch for the rest of my garden for right now. I still want to get rid of the bindweed altogether ('cause if I let it live anywhere, it’ll live everywhere), especially since I’m going to eventually want to use the firepit for fire, and I won’t want to have plants growing in it at that point (fire hazard), but for right now, it’s a pretty decent place to harvest large quantities of mulch every few days!
Ummm, not actually speaking from a solid knowledge base now, but as a child in the field with my dad pulling the one small batch of bindweed on his property every summer, he meticulously gathered all the pullings, because he was of the opinion that any stem left behind would sprout and grow. But surely you are handling your mulch in a way this isn’t possible… And my dad may not have known this, it may have just seemed like it because of the plant’s tenacity.
And it’s very possible the plant may not know the difference between a rock layer and hard pan. Maybe you could have a discussion with it and explain…
Besides field bindweed (convolvulus arvensis) and hedge bindweed (calystegia sepium), there is also bindweed-heliotrope (euploca convolvulaca) and low bindweed (convolvulus spithamaeus), so probably what works for one of these may not work for all of these.
But as I was looking in the “when weeds talk” book (Jay L McCaman) and I looked at some of the weeds I identified in my garden: creeping charlie, hedge bindweed, smooth pigweed,… what they all have in common is high iron soils. And then I look at my original soil test showing iron that is 100x the normal, and that I remember that my clay soil looks pretty orangey below 1 foot and that is probably a sign that I should reduce the iron content in my soil to get rid of some of these weeds.
Maarten
My air is dry and my sun is hot. Bindweed laid on top of the soil doesn’t reroot – it turns crispy and dry. The same thing goes for all weeds. Good point that humid climates are probably different!
(Laugh.) Funny story while I was reading one of Carol Deppe’s books.
At one point, she has a humorous conversation with an amaranth weed, and she tells the weed she knows it’ll just reroot in the path if she leaves it there. I was like, “Huh?!?!” I have amaranth weeds too, and they don’t reroot if I leave them in the path. They turn crispy and brown and dead by the next day.
Later on, she said it’s important to use a dehydrator to get seeds totally dry, because they won’t fully dry otherwise. I went, “Huh?!?! What are you talking about? Sopping wet seeds turn bone dry after being left on a plate for a day!”
Eventually I realized that I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink she has higher humidity in Oregon than I do in Utah . . .
Hi Lauren! Just curious, what cluster of concepts were you referring to by “soil-fix theory”?
but my trouble with the bindweeds are “when weeds walk” 
… i’m happy with them talking with bees and such but golly they crawl and bind and creep
A lot of people believe that weeds are there to fix or adjust the soil. Others take a different angle and say weeds tell us what nutrients the soil needs rather than fixing the deficiencies.
THERE WE GO!
It looks like bindweed may be good for promoting hair growth, especially in people experiencing age-related hair loss.
THANK YOU! THAT IS VALUE IN BINDWEED!
(Ahem. Goes to soak some bindweed stems in water to try using it as a hair rinse . . .)
Oh, gosh. And it’s high in salicylic acid, which is the compound in willow that makes it an effective rooting agent, which implies that soaking bindweed stems in water may be able to make a nice, natural rooting hormone (similar to willow water) to use on cuttings you want to propagate, which means there would be no need to grow willow in order to make rooting hormone . . .
There we go!
Yes, Emily!! I think we’re in a similar environment, and truly, mulching, sheet mulching, shading, covering, etc. just makes the (field) bindweed happier.
We have about 3,000 sq ft at a school garden – we plant year-round, so each bed gets “flipped” twice a year. We practice healthy soil practices so, we don’t leave any dormant beds. The bindweed freezes back during the winter. And we’re not actually turning over the soil, but we loosen and hand weed at that time. We use this awesome tool called a Root Assassin (great name) – much easier and more effective than a shovel. We put it in as far as it can go, lean back on the handle so the blade is at an angle and then step on it again – every square foot of the bed, and then use another cool tool called a Root Slayer (yes, these names are hilarious) to help us pull out as much of the bindweed as we can, dropping it back as mulch (I tested it. It doesn’t miraculously resprout this way. I was worried - ha.)
I find the Root Slayer much more comfortable to use than the Hori Hori – much less wrist strain!
At this point, my goal is not to eradicate the bindweed, but to keep it friendly. So far this kind of weeding is manageable, and it’s free biomass mulch. The bumblebees like the flowers. We do very little hand weeding after planting unless there’s a patch of bindweed that’s climbing in an extra aggressive way – then we just sort of “mow” it by pulling the above-ground parts when we happen to see it. The other plants are succeeding amongst the somewhat subdued bindweed.
It does create a relationship with beneficial fungi, so I figure it can be supporting the fungi in the background.
Heidi
I want to eradicate the bindweed from my yard completely. Its climbing habit can get really annoying, and there are plenty of edible plants with similar vigor and drought tolerance that I’d rather have as groundcovers. I don’t have anything against black medick, for example, and I love common mallow.
Even if I completely succeed, I assume I’ll always have easy access to pick bindweed somewhere nearby — for instance, it’ll probably still be findable sprawling out of every sidewalk crack around the neighborhood. 
I like it just fine in wild or uncared-for spaces. It’s pretty and only bothersome when it’s climbing up a plant you are trying to harvest. There’s only one weed I will stop to pull out absolutely everywhere I see it, because I despise it and want it to nowhere near my own or anybody else’s feet: Tribulus terrestris, also known as goathead or puncture vine.
Speaking of which, here’s an even more difficult question:
Is there any value in goathead?
Nature’s caltrops. Sow where you do not want neighborhood barefooted kids or soft footed animals to tread.
Other than that I can’t think of a thing.