Though it may not be researched thoroughly by agroscientists, I believe there is a lot to the idea that serious weed infestations can be managed by changing the balance of soil cations, generally calcium. I have found Charles Walter's book "Weeds, control without poisons" to be right on.

For those of you with serious bindweed problems and a willingness to consider what Walters says about it:

"Low calcium, phosphorous, potassium and pH are benchmarks. Most creeping-vine-type weeds have fast growing rhizomes that develop to completely entrap the soil nutrient system in and around all the clusters of organic residues. The biological energies contained in these foul, rotting residues support numerous dominating hormone enzyme systems that are 'just right' for the vine weed families, and 'not just right' for other species of soil and plant life".

He goes on to say that a crippled decay system caused either by very dry sandy soil or overly wet clayey soil are often involved with a bindweed problem. Interestingly the only place I have a problem with it is in central florida, where of course the soil is exceedingly dry and there is very little normal decay in the soil.

I was just out pulling my very first bucket of bindweed of the new season, and saw this thread. A coincidence, or what?

Each season, I spray it if I can, when the rest of the garden gets really going and its difficult to spray, I pull it - the famous coffee-beer* method, and finally, sometime in late July, I give up - succumb to the Zen of it all.

My bindweed story of 2013 comes from the heavily mulched vegetable beds, where the weed managed to get through 12 inches of chopped leaves and grass clippings. Pull it out, and there is a foot-long strand of white stem as it pushed its way through to the sunlight.

* pour cup of coffee. Go pull bind weed until it gets too hot. Later, when it cools down a bit, grab a beer and go pull more bind weed.

Dave, in your warm-season climate it is probably a similar case to florida winter: very dry soil conditions and reduced decay?

Pretty much, Pat. I put newspaper mulch out, cover it with grass clippings to make it look a little better, and that will last for several years - like eight.

I can't find it now, but I read an interesting study about how bind weed and prairie dogs are now in some symbiotic relationship - bindweed is one thing that grows like a bandit around prairie dog colonies, its is not very palatable unless its very new growth in the spring, which sustains the rodents in the early spring. Then later in the season, because its not palatable for cattle or horses, they don't don't wander through the colonies messing up their mounds.

Here we have prime bind weed / prairie dog habitat.....

I have found a possible organic solution to killing bind weed with out using round up. I have used the following solution and it works very well at killing thistle plants. I have tested it on the bindweed in my yard and it seems to be doing well at killing it.

Items needed:
1 gallon general purpose sprayer.
1 gallon distilled vinegar (generic brand works fine, also cheaper)
2/3 cup of salt
A couple drops of dish soap.

Mix together in sprayer and provide a liberal dose on any weeds that you want to kill. Be careful not to spray on any plants that you want to keep. I find that using a sprayer with an adjustable nozzle allows you to either cover a wide area or pin point just the plant you want to get rid of.

It is best to apply during the morning on a dry day so the plants it drink up. Since there are no harmful chemicals in this solution it is safe to use in your garden. The only side effect I have noticed so far is that you have a craving for fish and chips after you use it.

What is "general purpose sprayer"?

Nice to see some threads never go away.

Since I wrote here on Wed, Feb 23, 11 at 17:02, i have purchased a new home in George West, TX. It came with almost an acre, some of which was the previous owner's 30x40 garden. Nothing is left of the garden except one lone bougainvillaea. That plant is a tangle of bindweed, so I have my own little laboratory.

I tried putting some RoundUp in a bud vase and dropping a couple strands of bindweed into the liquid at the bottom. A week later the bindweed looked normal. 2 weeks later and it still looked normal. However, about 3 weeks to a month later it died. The shrub was unaffected. Looking around I noticed all the bindweed on the bougainvillaea had died. I also noticed that there was some dead bindweed on the chain link fence, 30 feet away, that I had never noticed before. That garden is a sticker patch where I am encouraging the St Augustine to fill. For now I don't hang out there to make observations. I do see the bindweed is back for 2013. Now I want to try the vinegar and salt.

The fact that bindweed is only present in certain frequently-disturbed soils is a clue to possible control methods.

Hint: glyphosate is not the answer.

You can control bindweed with cultivation, but you have to get at very early in it's growth...which is hard to do in most active gardens since it's not going to come up all at once very early in the season.

Heavy mulching works, but you need to keep it heavy enough that it blocks light and it takes years (2-3+ years). Even then you have to watch out for latent seeds which can last for a few years more if you remove the mulch.

Most chemical (non-organic) herbicides are control methods rather than eradication. Glyphosate and 2,4-D work, but it takes weeks...and it has to be applied while the plant is in an active growing stage...and it will have to be applied more than once in a season. Pre-emergent chemical controls are also spotty in effectiveness and are a better control method rather than eradication.

It's a really crappy weed to have around. Established stands are a pain in the ass. Spotty occurrences are easier to control, but still no fun. It seeds like crazy and it has a root system that's about as crazy as the amount it seeds. It's a real nutrient stealer and crazy grower.

From your description, one would suppose a weed that able would have taken over the temperate latitudes and eaten our collective lunch. Why hasn't it?

That it has not is a clue to managing it. Poison is never the answer for dealing with infestations of plants or insects.

Not so sure about 'cultivation' - if you want a real mess, run a 7 hp tiller over a bind-weed infested garden. Each little rootlet/piece of stem will grow a new plant, and ... if you fed the soil by tilling in manure and compost and water it well, you end up with an 8 inch thick mat of bind weed. Ask me how I know....:-).

You never get rid of it, the issue is control. A thick layer of mulch does wonders - by the time it works its way through that, weeks have gone by, and its easy to spot and pull.

Put up one of those little copper plant tags with Convolvulus arvensis var."Fairy Bondage" and pretend you planted it.

ed-[Unforgivably rude. Removed.]

This post was edited by albert_135 on Wed, Jul 10, 13 at 16:25

Cultivation isn't a good idea for "infested" plots...it's only good for early growth bindweed. It sets crazy huge roots when it has age on it...really broad/deep.

Cultivation isn't a 1-time-and-done method, either. Very few people use it for control unless it's new to the plot...even if it's a yearly thing.

Most people use chemical controls followed by hand applications of what comes up later.

"From your description, one would suppose a weed that able would have taken over the temperate latitudes and eaten our collective lunch. Why hasn't it?"

...mostly because in field plots (where it's a noxious invasive in many many states) they are taken care before they take over fields. Palmer amaranth and Johnson grass are more pesky in fields than bindweed (and seed/spread a lot easier), but you'll still find bindweed on many field margins and buffers growing all over the rest of the plants in the area. It is very good at not being crowded out by anything and reaching over existing plants to spread.

The reason it's a hated weed is because it takes a long time to die out even with chemical applications. It doesn't respond to glyphosate/2,4-D in a manner of days to a week like many common weeds...takes 2-3x longer.

This thread, like many here, has started as a home-scale debate and ended with a farm-scale debate.

On a gardening scale, one simply deals with it as with any pernicious weed: you keep after it, or you don't grow crops. People kept themselves fed before glyphosate (that's where Albert's analogy fails - before antibiotics, a severe bacterial infection was fatal).

On the farm scale, it's simply about money, as always. If applying glyphosate multiple times is cheaper than applying the amendments and changing cultivation timing and practices and/or rotations to reduce a weed problem (which of course it is in the short run), that's what will be done.

There is not a single common weed where you won't find gardeners and farmers somewhere saying it's the worst thing on the planet and cannot be controlled without this and that poison. And yet a few miles or counties away it's a different weed that can't be dealt with.

"Field bindweed has a large economic impact in production agriculture. Bindweed can reduce wheat yields up to 30%, barley yields up to 65%, and sorghum yields up to 48% (Westra et al. 1992). Bindweed can also increase production costs by increasing time and fuel spent on tilling the ground or spraying with herbicides such as glyphosate or 2,4-D."

For the home gardener, its more of a minor hassle - as long as you keep working at it. Leave it alone for two months and then you have a real problem.

Its more a psychological thing - most weeds, you pull 'em, they're gone. Not this.

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Dave, in this wetter climate, during the growing season if you leave anything alone for two months you will have a holy mess: red-rooted pigweed will be five feet high with trunk an inch across; ditto for lamb's quarter. Greenbrier would overtake certain areas of my home garden in that time; passionflower chokes the fruit trees (note that this OP starts out with a complaint about bindweed choking rose bushes); sun choke is madly invasive - I've been pulling the shoots out of some beds every few days since April; let's not even talk about the bamboo from hell.

Other places it's kudzu, fireweed, whatever. I don't buy it that a particular weed is only controllable with glyphosate, if that were true then every invasive weed could only controlled with glyphosate.

I will like to help you all with your weeds
I have a fast green solution to killing weeds
Just use sea sait.

Go to www.freefertilizer.com

see how it works

Here is a link that might be useful: Free Fertilizer Inc

No matter what glyphosate products are anathema to an organic grower. The use of them means that you cannot call your self an organic grower for a least 3 years after you stop that use.

I mulch the heck out of my vegetable garden with both polypropylene weed barrier in the pathways and 6 " thick grass clippings over the soil where the plants are, and I still can pull a bucket of bind weed, lambs quarters, wild purslane, thistle, dandelion every few days. Any of those weeds will exploit the tiniest opportunity.

Now if you don't mulch, you either spend your summer hoeing weeds or you give up.

Luckily with my sandy soils I can pull the non-grassy weeds with little effort - less than hoeing, or mulching. I guess if I ever managed to plant in neat rows I'd be more of a hoer (does that sound funny?).

Things like bindweed are probably much more daunting in a wet heavy soil. Speaking of purslane I am finding again this year that it is a dandy living mulch that does not seem to reduce crop growth much.

pnbrown, " I am finding again this year"

Maybe in a couple more years it will be the crop....

Wayne, I don't know what you mean by that.

A heavy concentration of vinegar & salt should kill them.After applying,sprinkle baking soda for a even beter chance.If they are very close to the plants,just foilar spray & try not to get it on your plants.It will fry whatever it gets on.

We finally had a cooler cloudy day after weeks of record and near-record temps, and I got on the bindweed in the big front flower bed.

Two hours later, I'd filled the 7 gallon weed container 3 times, stuffing the bindweed vines down.

This is the only bed on the property that isn't heavily mulched. Ah yup.

And yet, the bindweed must be supressing other weeds that would also be problematic, were conditions not so ideal for bindweed.

Dave, just for kicks, how about dosing an infested area with gypsum, and see what happens over a year or so?

I could do that - I was at the farm store yesterday and they were selling gypsum in 50 lb sacks.

I don't think the bindweed is suppressing other weeds, its just that this particular flower bed was "designed" to have lots of daffodils, tulips, and other bulbs early in the spring, and as that foliage dies back, that space would be replaced by sedum, re-seeding annuals, ice plant, and other low ground covers. As that foliage dies back, and the perennial ground covers start to grow, here comes the bindweed.

So picture trying to weed bindweed out of this w/o ripping up half the plants.......

Perennial beds can be tough, for sure.

I was thinking more of an area where you can till in a good dose of gypsum, to see if the increased calcium will change the game as far as the bindweed dominance goes.

Just today I was touring someone's large garden and saw an area pretty severely overrun with bindweed. The first really bad infestation I have seen in the region. My field is just down the road from hers in identical substrate. I have never had any serious trouble with bindweed.

What is the difference? Her field had the topsoil stripped and sold years back, and she started cultivating there only 3 years ago. Lots of imported compost and "topsoil". IOW, a new and unbalanced situation which has apparently made conditions perfect for bindweed. The worst of it was in and around a high tunnel, indicating that high heat is part of what bindweed needs. I asked if she added calcium and she said she limed in the beginning but I'd be willing to bet Ca is still low.

From upthread:

" but i have never seen the enormous devastation of a beautiful garden by bindweed that i'm experiencing now, in my first year at a new garden property"

Note again, a new situation. Unbalanced soil for crops, perfect for bindweed in a hot region. Change a factor, and some other weed will dominate.

Entropy 2013, 15 1445

Please read :
This paper presents an exhaustive review of the toxic effects of the herbicide, glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, in humans, and demonstrates how glyphosate’s adverse effects on the gut microbiota, in conjunction with its established ability to inhibit the activity of cytochrome P450
enzymes, and its likely impairment of sulfate transport, can remarkably explain a great number of the diseases and conditions that are prevalent in the modern industrialized world. Its effects are insidious, because the long-term effects are often not immediately apparent. The pathologies to which glyphosate could plausibly contribute, through its known biosemiotic effects, include inflammatory bowel disease,
obesity, depression, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, cancer, cachexia, infertility, and developmental malformations.

Glyphosate works synergistically with other factors, such as insufficient sun exposure, dietary deficiencies in critical nutrients such as sulfur and zinc, and synergistic exposure to other xenobiotics whose detoxification is impaired by glyphosate.

Given the known toxic effects of glyphosate reviewed here and the plausibility that they are negatively impacting health worldwide, it is imperative for more independent research to take place to validate the ideas presented here, and to take immediate action, if they are verified, to drastically curtail the use of glyphosate in agriculture. Glyphosate is likely to be pervasive in our food supply, and, contrary to being essentially nontoxic, it may in fact be the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment.

Entropy is a horrible journal. If you have money, you can get published there. Entropy is a "journal" that only publishes online and covers 90+ topics. If you have the money, they'll "print" you. It's a popular place for special interest groups and industry shills to publish their works because legit journals refuse to publish them. PubMed refuses to index or recognize Entropy...which is a hell of a red flag given that they index pretty much every scientifically legit journal in the world having almost 25 million papers in their searchable database.

Stephanie Seneff, a co-author of that paper, has 0 training or education in agriculture, chemistry, or biology. She's a popular proponent of selling sulfur supplements as a cure-all as her claim to fame...which, coincidentally (aka, not at all) she summarizes her effects on P450s being sulfate inhibited as the main issue of the problem here even though that's a stretch at best, and ignorant to wishful thinking at worst. The other co-author has no training in biology, himself...and is an environmental chemical contaminate expert chiming in on biological effects.

The paper in question you've quoted "Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome" has been widely panned, fwiw. It contains 0% actual research by the authors and is a accumulation of parts of cherry picked studies done by others...some of it misinterpreted. The study references various retracted, withdrawn, deleted, and/or discredited studies...most specifically the "rat study," the "Wakefield autism study," various unsubstatiated papers such as the "leaky gut syndrome (which doesn't exist, except in alternative medicine "woo" lore)" paper, and past discredited papers (also found on Entropy) by Seneff.

Also, fwiw, almost anything you put into your system is going to disrupt or change the action of one of the nearly-60 identified (and more not known) cytochrome P450 enzymes found in the human body temporarily as they act upon a substance...they are one of the main mechanisms of breaking down medications and substances entering the body. This study covers (and applies to humans) p450s not even found in humans for some of it's points. The authors don't feel the need to separate (or may not know the difference) this fact, though. It doesn't take in account (or mention) experimental dosage amounts vs likely contaminate levels on many points.

Saying "P450" is kinda like saying "sugars"...fructose is different than lactose, is different from glucose, is different from maltose, is different from lactulose, etc etc...

This post was edited by nc-crn on Thu, Sep 5, 13 at 16:08

And yet, why not take the cautious route and presume that a substance that ultimately kills plants from root-tip to leaf-tip may not be very good for soil life at the very least? And what is bad for soil life is ultimately bad for us....

A cautious route is one thing...a sulfur-suppliment shilling person with no training in biological science somehow coming to the conclusion that sulfate transport routes are disrupted in humans...in a paper published in a online-only "journal" that's pay-for-print...and PubMed refuses to index is another.

It's a fair cautious route to approach this paper with caution.

No legit journal would touch this paper.

PubMed and other index services refuse to touch Entropy "journal" entries because they're a pay-for-play clearing house for refused papers that other journals won't publish. They "publish" 90+ topics under their journal umbrella...which is an insanely broad scope.

If someone has an issue with Roundup/glyphosate there's many better places to look for information/studies/papers to build an argument against it's use than this particular paper.

This post was edited by nc-crn on Sat, Sep 7, 13 at 15:53

nc-crn makes statements without documentation. For example, he stated:

"No legit journal would touch this paper."

AND

"PubMed and other index services refuse to touch Entropy "journal" entries because they're a pay-for-play clearing house for refused papers that other journals won't publish.."

----------------------------------
It is correct that PubMed does not index them, but what documentation does he have for his "because". Is it possible that the reason is because Entropy publishes many/mostly non medical articles? I do not know. I do know that Google Abstracts does cover Entropy. Since he stated "other index services refuse to touch", I am asking: which other index services?

The following are PUBMED hits for Stephanie Seneff publications:

"Results: 5
Select item 22291727
1.Is the metabolic syndrome caused by a high fructose, and relatively low fat, low cholesterol diet?

Seneff S, Wainwright G, Mascitelli L.

Arch Med Sci. 2011 Feb;7(1):8-20. doi: 10.5114/aoms.2011.20598. Epub 2011 Mar 8.

PMID: 22291727 [PubMed] Free PMC Article
Related citations
Select item 22232053
2.Association of alzheimer disease pathology with abnormal lipid metabolism: the Hisayama study.

Mascitelli L, Seneff S, Goldstein MR.

Neurology. 2012 Jan 10;78(2):151; author reply 151-2. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e318242b283. No abstract available.

PMID: 22232053 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Related citations
Select item 22098722
3.Might cholesterol sulfate deficiency contribute to the development of autistic spectrum disorder?

Seneff S, Davidson R, Mascitelli L.

Med Hypotheses. 2012 Feb;78(2):213-7. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2011.10.026. Epub 2011 Nov 17.

PMID: 22098722 [PubMed - in process]
Related citations
Select item 21402242
4.Nutrition and Alzheimer's disease: the detrimental role of a high carbohydrate diet.

Seneff S, Wainwright G, Mascitelli L.

Eur J Intern Med. 2011 Apr;22(2):134-40. doi: 10.1016/j.ejim.2010.12.017. Epub 2011 Jan 26. Review.

PMID: 21402242 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Related citations
Select item 15693733
5.Gene structure prediction using an orthologous gene of known exon-intron structure.

Seneff S, Wang C, Burge CB.

Appl Bioinformatics. 2004;3(2-3):81-90.

PMID: 15693733 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] "

Here is a link that might be useful: PUBMED hits for Stephanie Seneff publications

-original post deleted-

I'm not getting into this again.

Sorry, Entropy isn't a respected journal in the industry (make that, 90+ industries) no matter how much you'd like it to be relevant.

Source: the real world of research science (c) 2013

You might enjoy this more critical response to both the issue at hand and the journal in question...make sure to check out the comments section for even more fun times...

http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/05/16/more-controversy-over-open-access-publisher-mdpi/

Here's one of their more "famous" published papers...

http://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/2/1/1

Google the title of it ("Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life") for critical reviews of the article. Pseudoscience at it's best...

Here's a starting point in case you don't feel like firing up a search engine... http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/01/how-the-craziest-fing-theory-of-everything-got-published-and-promoted/

This post was edited by nc-crn on Sat, Sep 7, 13 at 23:41

Please note that nc-rm has not documented his early statements that I questioned on Sat, Sep 7, 13 at 22:37.

His statement: "Source: the real world of research science (c) 2013" is not documentation. In the real world of research science, anyone who disputes something in a published, reviewed scientific paper has the opportunity to submit a follow up paper for review and possible publication. One can use Google Scholar with each of the 5 Stephanie Seneff publications that I reported in my post. For example for the first one: "Is the metabolic syndrome caused by a high fructose, and relatively low fat, low cholesterol diet?" has been cited by 18 more recent scientific publications. I will just select one (which has the full paper available, free) to see how Seneff's paper was utilized, cited). Her above paper is reference 15. This what was said that referenced paper 15:

"Oversecretion of potentially harmful adipocytokines, such as PAI-1, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) or visfatin, and hyposecretion of potentially beneficial adipocytokines, such as adiponectin, might be major mechanisms involved in lifestyle-related diseases, including diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and atherosclerosis, comprising the so called MetS [15, 16]."

Here is a link that might be useful: link to paper quoted that references one of Seneff's papers

You still don't seem to "get" that Entropy isn't taken very seriously within the research community no matter how much stuff I give you to research on your own...or examples...not to mention the fact I work in the research community and that isn't good enough for you (as if anything could be good enough).

...and for some reason you want to talk about other papers rather than one being talked about...or the journal being discussed.

This is a very typical discussion with you when it comes to things you want to champion (such as this journal, for some reason seeing as this is the 3rd time or so this has come up).

It always branches out to other things with your replies...and that's why I'm not getting sucked into another one. Once I reply, you ignore my reply and then add another point onto whatever is being discussed...usually something that's totally separate from the issue at hand while the initial point is lost in a downward spiral of never-ended subject changes.

The following was stated by nc-crm: "...and for some reason you want to talk about other papers rather than one being talked about...or the journal being discussed."

H.Kuska comment: I have presented her other papers published in other journals in order to document that she is a respected scientist in this field.

------------------------------------------------

Further discussion of the fact that this paper was submitted and published in the journal Entropy.

Here is the link for the Entropy paper:
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

H.Kuska comment: Please notice that it is clearly labeled as a review. Thus the apparently critical statement by nc-crn: "It contains 0% actual research by the authors" is not pertinent - reviews by definition do not normally contain new research.

Also as stated at the beginning of the article: "(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biosemiotic Entropy: Disorder, Disease, and Mortality)".

The explanation for the Special Issue and the call for papers is given at:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/special_issues/biosemiotic_entropy

My point can be summarized as: the author's published work in this area has been accepted by a number of different journals, and I can understand that she would judge it beneficial to participate in a special reviewed scientific specific issue with her peers in that area.

------------------------------------------------
Regarding the statement that I questioned earlier (and which nc-crn has ignored my request for him to document) "other index services refuse to touch Entropy "journal" entries".

H.Kuska comment: Why does someone make a statement if he is unable/unwilling to document it?

H.Kuska comment on the above statement: I routinely use 2 index services for my scientific literature searches. The first (Google Scholar) I aleady mention abstracted the paper. The second is Scirus http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/. Scirus also covered the paper under discussion.

-------------------------------------------------------------

I was trained to respect other scientists' viewpoints. That does not mean that I always agree with their conclusions. (We would not have to train future scientists if everything was understood.)

The following is in the link below (which I signed):
" Conclusion: When those with a vested interest attempt to sow unreasonable doubt around inconvenient results, or when governments exploit political opportunities by picking and choosing from scientific evidence, they jeopardize public confidence in scientific methods and institutions, and also put their own citizenry at risk. Safety testing, science-based regulation, and the scientific process itself, depend crucially on widespread trust in a body of scientists devoted to the public interest and professional integrity. If instead, the starting point of a scientific product assessment is an approval process rigged in favour of the applicant, backed up by systematic suppression of independent scientists working in the public interest, then there can never be an honest, rational or scientific debate."
http://independentsciencenews.org/health/seralini-and-science-nk603-rat-study-roundup/

Here is a link that might be useful: link for statement that I signed

Related research paper...

http://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf

This pretty much clears everything up.

Careful RoundUp (big kill, little/no soil contact) use :
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/weeds/msg0222404021598.html # search: "container"

Biological controls:

1) Bindweed moth :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyta
http://www.arkive.org/four-spotted-moth/tyta-luctuosa/
Inhabits grasslands, and is usually found on south-facing slopes with patches of bare ground. It requires a source of the larval foodplant field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)

2) Bindweed gall mite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aceria_malherbae
http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/CoopExt/Adams/weed/pdf/BindweedMite.pdf

Sources of biologicals (bindweed controls available to Colorado residents):
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef125.asp

I've got a jungle of bindweed in my garden. I tried using RU and the plants died but came right back up. There was one large spot in the garden where they were the thickest and I decided not ever to plant there again. However, last year I made up my mind not to let a plant decide where I should plant. So I planted about 55 tomato plants and 140 potatoes over the spot. Every day I just turned the soil over knocking them right back into the soil. As soon as my garden plants were mature the weed weakened from lack of sunlight.

I became very positive about this weed and looked at it as fertilizer. Why not?? Its roots go deep bring up all the nutrients the rain has washed away. This plant is no longer a weed. It is my best garden friend. We chat and then I send him away and then he comes back again. I would be lonesome without him if he never came back. I will never poison him again, ever!!

Rosie, that's a good attitude and one that we need more people with.

In my weeds class decades ago we were taught the effect of diligent tillage on bindweed, a nasty agriculture problem if left unchecked. Specifically, research was conducted to determine what had to be done to kill the whole plant. What was discovered was that if one never allows the above ground growth to get more than 8" long before removing it at ground level or deeper and continuing this for 2 straight years, the whole plant would use up it's reserves in that deep root and die. Letting the top grow more than 8" lets the plant send reserves back into the root system so you have to never let that happen.

Years ago when we bought this place the north garden plot was a bindweed pit!!! I spent 2 years with the wheel hoe assaulting the bindweed as was suggested in the research and can confirm that it works extremely well. Didn't even try to grow anything in that plot those 2 years to make it easy to nail all bindweed mercilessly.

Of course, those were just crucial battles, the war isn't over as there is bindweed in areas surrounding that plot that tries it's best to creep in and must be stopped at the borders.

Regular old MG is much worse than bindweed around here. Battling truly epic infestations in the garden last couple of years.

Debate all you like about the effects of Roundup. But why not ask this question: Will roundup work any better than plucking the tops off of the bindweed? The answer is NO! It just kills the tops & the bindweed will grow back just like it does when you tear off the tops. So why in the h... would you use this carcinogen anywhere near your home around your pets or the foraging animals on your property? Answer: To enrich Monsanto Corporation. Go out & buy several gallons of it so you can have some left over for cocktails in the evening.

''...NO! It just kills the tops & the bindweed...'' You never tested this yourself did you?

We have 2 acres of meadowland that grew up in weeds after our horses died off from old age. Some areas were thick with bindweed. We reclaimed our land with the use of a DR mower, and later/now with just a lawn tractor.

I have various flower beds about the property and I just pull the bindweed when it invades. I reach as far down the vine as I can so that, if the roots do not pull out, I get most of the plant. As ericwi said, it makes great compost. Never used roundup or any other of Monsanto's poisons. There is simply no need.

"Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)
Control: Cultivation of young shoots, flaming."

https://garden.org/learn/articles/view/302/

Bindweed - Garden.org - ''...bindweed can grow anywhere except in deep shade. Control it by digging, cutting it back to reduce reseeding, or brushing it with a glyphosate herbicide. ...''

Glyphosate products have been declared potential carcinogens by the World Health
Organization, are banned in numerous countries, and have been required, now, to have been required to list on the label that they are potential carcinogens. Glyphosate products have never been permitted organic growing products and those that use them are not organic growers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-glyphosate-cancer-causing-chemical-list_us_5951ed4ae4b05c37bb78fc20?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

I've been fighting bindweed for several years on several properties, trying to do it organically by mainly pulling and mulching. I did, in a moment of weakness and exasperation use roundup once. It knocked it back and made it look sickly for a few weeks and then it regained its vigor and started up again. Presently I keep pulling it when it comes up and throw it in the compost pile or pass it through the chickens. It does seem to be diminishing with time. I try to pull it before it's a foot long and it does seem to be weakening. I just smile and think of compost and chicken feed. I've read some people think it's toxic but others have said it isn't and my chickens don't seem to care.