How to Get Rid of Bindweed: 7 Pro Tips

While no gardener likes dealing with weeds, some of these pesky plants are worse than others. If you’ve been unlucky enough to deal with bindweed, you know it deserves a place on the “worst weeds” list. Pulling it from the garden only makes it disappear for a week or two, and digging out the vigorous rhizomes is a labor-intensive task.

So, how do you get rid of bindweed? Well, learning a few tips can help. I’ll share some vital information to help you understand its growth habits and provide helpful hints for removing this plant from your property.

What Is Bindweed?

This perennial weed is in the morning glory family Convolvulaceae. The plants grow via underground rhizomes and develop climbing vines that allow it to easily scale fences and overtake other plants. Although these species aren’t native to the United States, people saw them growing here as early as the mid-1700s.

Due to rapid growth and rhizomatic spread, it’s considered a major weed. You can find it growing in every state except Alaska. The plants can also thrive in various environments, including dry areas and those with compacted soil. However, the plant doesn’t thrive in saturated soil, so you’re unlikely to see it in wetlands and bogs.

Removal Tips

I’m not going to sugarcoat it; this is a difficult weed to deal with. When you realize that the plant’s roots can grow eight feet deep and easily sprout new growth, you can see why it reemerges time and time again. However, just because it’s difficult to remove, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Check out these tips if you’re battling bindweed in your garden, compost pile, or lawn.

Identification

Before you prepare for battle with this noxious weed, make sure you’re sure bindweed is the plant you’re fighting! A few other vining weeds resemble it, including wild buckwheat and annual morning glory. While the latter plants are common garden weeds, they’re annuals that are much easier to remove.

Two species often appear as weeds: field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) and hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium). Field bindweed has arrow-shaped leaves with a flat base and a rounded leaf tip. The plants produce roots that can reach ten feet into the soil, and their trumpet-shaped flowers are one to two inches long. Hedge bindweed produces leaves with lobed bases and pointed tips. Their roots grow wide but only a few feet deep, and their flowers often grow over two inches long.

Although wild buckwheat leaves have a similar shape, the buckwheat leaves’ lobes are more rounded. The bindweed leaf looks like an arrow, while the buckwheat leaf resembles a heart. Wild buckwheat also produces clusters of small flowers that lack petals.

Annual morning glory (Ipomoea spp.) has the same vining habit, but sports larger and more rounded leaves. If you see the leaves and instantly think they look like hearts, you’re likely dealing with morning glory.

Commit to the Long Haul

Unfortunately, you can’t just pull or mow this plant and immediately celebrate its demise. While these simple removal methods work well for annual weeds like carpetweed, purslane, and chickweed, they’re no match for bindweed. If you’ve tried to pull it in the past, you likely know that the plant will reappear a few weeks later.

Since it grows from a robust system of underground rhizomes, completely removing it from the garden is difficult. Even if you take out a foot or two of the rhizomes, there are likely more rhizomes lurking deeper in the soil. That’s not to say you can’t remove it by pulling, but don’t expect to pull it once and watch it disappear forever.

The difficulty level of removal depends on the size and age of the plant. However, you’ll generally need to pull the rhizomes for three to five years before the plant’s energy reserves are completely depleted.

Even if you resort to using herbicides, you’ll likely need to apply them more than once. While the first herbicide application may kill above-ground foliage and some of the roots, it will likely resprout and regrow. Multiple applications continue to weaken the plant until it is all the way dead.

Scout Your Garden Regularly

Since bindweed regrows so easily and quickly, you should check your garden for this weed at least once every three weeks during the growing season. Removing the weeds when they’re small will prevent the plants from going to seed and spreading throughout your garden. Plus, removing the sprouts as soon as they appear will continue to deplete the plant’s energy reserves.

Removing it from your raised beds and flower garden is a no-brainer, but you should also keep an eye out for it snaking up fences and popping up from your compost pile. If you take action as soon as you spot the plant, removal efforts will be easier.

Use the Proper Tools

The best way to remove bindweed is to remove as much of the rhizomes as possible. That means digging deep into the soil so you can access long roots and rhizomes. A shovel works in a pinch, but a garden fork or broadfork allows you to dig multiple feet while limiting soil disturbance.

Remember, your goal is to remove the rhizomes from the soil without cutting them into smaller pieces. That means a tiller is an absolute no-go, and a few wide passes of a fork or shovel are better than many narrow passes that end up chopping up the rhizomes.

No matter which tool you use, ensure you thoroughly clean them after use. It’s easy to move a piece of rhizome from one area to the other without realizing it.

Properly Dispose of Bindweed

Both hedge and field bindweed grow from underground rhizomes. These rhizomes aren’t plant roots but rather a type of underground stem. If you break them apart, a piece of rhizome can sprout into a new plant. That means severing the rhizomes can actually do more harm than good.

If you pull or dig this plant from your garden, don’t just pile it on the edge of your property or toss it onto your compost pile. Both of these actions will cause the bindweed to regrow in a new area. Instead, toss it in the trash or burn it. A piece of rhizome that’s a single inch long can grow into a new plant, so make sure to remove even the smallest pieces of rhizome from your garden.

Try Tarping

If you don’t want to practice continuous hand removal yet want to avoid herbicides, try tarping. This weed removal method involves placing a tarp flush against the soil surface so the plants can’t receive any light. In a few weeks to a few months, the lack of light causes the plants to die. The tarp also heats up the soil, which can kill weed seeds. 

You can use many different types of tarps, but I recommend finding a UV-resistant silage tarp. These tarps are treated to withstand sun exposure without breaking down into a thousand tiny pieces. That means you can use them over and over again.

While tarping for a few weeks may kill tender weeds, you’ll need to leave the tarp on the ground for a longer time when you’re dealing with this aggressive spreader. You should leave the tarp for at least a month, but two or three months is preferable. This long period may make it feel like you’re wasting precious garden space, but thinking about a bindweed-free garden can make waiting more bearable.

When you place the tarp on the ground, make sure to secure it to the ground with rocks, sandbags, or other heavy objects. Even the smallest gust of wind can sneak under a tarp and cause it to become airborne, so make sure to weigh down all of the edges.

After you remove the tarp, plant a dense cover crop or ground cover. A fast-growing plant will shade out emerging bindweed and slow its growth. Not only will a dense crop suppress the weed, but it will also feed microbial soil life. Planting a few rotations of cover crops or a perennial ground cover will give you the best shot of keeping this pest at bay, but one cover crop is better than none.

Use Herbicides with Caution

While many people are happy to spend a few minutes each week pulling dandelions or chickweed from their garden, bindweed presents a larger challenge. Therefore, you may be tempted to reach for an herbicide to kill this weed once and for all. While I tend to avoid using herbicides, I realize that gardeners have different priorities. If you choose to use chemical controls, make sure to do so with caution.

A systemic herbicide is the best option. This type of herbicide enters the plant and travels through all of its tissues. That means if you spray the plant’s leaves, the chemicals travel down the plant and into its rhizomes and roots. If you use a contact herbicide, the leaves will die, but the rhizomes will quickly resprout.

The best time to spray bindweed with herbicides is during or after peak flowering. However, aim to spray the plants before the seeds mature since the herbicide won’t affect the seeds.

Regardless of which herbicide you choose to use, follow best practices. Spray the chemicals on a still day to avoid wind drift, watch carefully for pollinators, and only spray the targeted plants. A handheld sprayer allows you to spray individual plants accurately and precisely.