In a bind about bindweed?

There is no quick fix to solving a problem like bindweed, as RURAL’s gardening correspondent, Gill Maccabe, reports. Just a ‘slow fix’ of hard graft

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Our travel plans have been firmly thwarted this year because of the garden. Even a weekend away seems too much bother as there is so much to do on our return.

As I write, after an exasperating few weeks of being unable to see the fruit for the weeds, I would happily pave over the whole lot.

The main culprit of my disquiet and exasperation is bindweed, calystegia sepium, which is performing highly trained guerrilla manoeuvres nightly, perfecting its well-honed technique of strangulation and decapitation of any plant which gets in its way. As it spirals anticlockwise to the sun, it razes its victim to the ground and then scarpers off to the next.

Any attempt to shoot it out of the bed is futile as it has burrows deep below the ground, like a well-trained Special Boat Service commando inching along on their belly seeking out another plant to invade with the accuracy of a Rapier missile. The higher my salvias, verbenas and alliums grow, the happier it is, using the stalks as a ladder to victory.

These professional saboteurs steal water, light and nutrients from the plants you want to grow and unfortunately, they are very difficult to eradicate by hoeing and regular methods, as their long white taproots can extend deep into the soil. If you try to pull them away from your plants, they snap, and you can be forgiven for thinking the problem has gone. But I’m afraid not!

The powerful roots are able to regenerate from the smallest sections and established colonies can spread outwards by around 6ft in a single season. Because of its burrowing habit you can even catch it from your neighbour’s garden. David Room, the head gardener of Trinity Manor, was forced to dig out a whole section of the walled garden a few years back to a depth of quite a few feet and replace the soil, totally in a bid to eradicate the weed. But even now, he reports there are still a few stragglers which require constant management. Bruce Labey, the senior operations manager at Parks and Gardens, offers three solutions:

• Call in the professionals to spray it with glyphosate repeatedly as it will survive one application, and probably two or three doses once it grows back after the first, which it always does • Cover the whole plant with a light excluding fabric, almost impossible as it will sneak around the edges, but the best bet on a large flat site • Or learn to love it. It really is one of our most beautiful native plants and it is really useful for clothing ugly chain link fences and industrial buildings, so it does actually have its uses.

He added: ‘We also have field bindweed in the Island, convolvolus arvensis, which is really pretty and something we are trying to encourage to spread along the wild grass areas of Victoria Avenue.’

In addition, the RHS suggests that at this time of year when the ground is dormant and bare, you can have some success forking out as much of the root system as you can and keep repeating throughout the cold season.

‘By persistent digging and hoeing, it is possible to eradicate these weeds in a couple of years,’ they report.

Many people swear by placing bamboo canes or similar at strategic places amongst the plants, and letting the bindweed climb up them which gives more visibility.

Public access to glyphosate products is being restricted from October in Guernsey, but at the time of going to press, Jersey’s Environment Minister Deputy Jonathan Renouf said: ‘There are no plans to ban glyphosate in Jersey. However, I have asked Natural Environment officers to provide me with an update on the use and impacts of glyphosate in the Island, with a view to considering whether any actions need to be taken.’

If you do use the chemical, do bear in mind that it is non-selective, so you could end up killing all your flowers. Where the weed has started to twine into plants it is possible to carefully untwine the stems and lay them on bare ground before spraying the foliage. Or, if you are careful, you can spot treat them whilst they are on the canes, as above.

And finally, some good news comes from Sebastian Wieckowski, the compost and operations manager at La Collette: ‘You don’t need to separate bindweed from your normal green waste and at the moment we are happy to accept it. The sanitation method we use (a minimum of 65˚C) is proven to kill the seeds and pathogens very well.

‘I would definitely discourage people from putting bindweed in their own compost heap,’ he added.

Sorry, I wish I had a quick fix – I can only offer these slow fixes!

Pedro Perestrelo and Maria Coelho from Ricco Contractors tackling bindweed