rowenabean

[rowenabean]

Elodie, you mentioned fighting bindweed successfully, and I am desperate to know the secret. If you don’t mind sharing, how did you manage to defeat it? I’m so frustrated.

Honestly there are only three ways, depending on whether you want to eat from plants there.

One is to keep pulling it up. The roots go a long way, but if you do it in spring with a big fork when the ground is wet, you can follow it back. Eventually it will give up because it can't keep growing forever!

The second way is to decide you actually want bindweed for something, like basket-weaving, and then it will retreat from you. This doesn't work but is useful in a pinch.

If it isn't a food-plant area or a specially eco area, I don't object to the use of herbicide. This is where we tend to lose the REALLY eco people on the internet, who will probably want to sharpen their pitchforks, but the real-life gardeners will be nodding along and agreeing. I presume you know your own situation best.

The safest way to use an herbicide is to bait the bindweed. Identify and separate the main culprits. Train the tendrils to grow up a short stick for a few turns. This will take a few days. Then, spray the sticks firmly with RoundUp and wrap a plastic bag around the sprayed sticks.

Warn children away and keep pets/poultry away. After a few days, wearing gloves, remove the entire stick/bag/plant situation into a landfill bag. The herbicide will go back along the plant, killing the roots. The plastic bag ensures maximum exposure and constrains the environmental damage.

I trust that you know your own situation best. We had to do this in a situation where bindweed from a neighbour was coming over (we had no control over THEIR situation, and obviously no ability to quell the roots on their property) and the bindweed was invading areas of our garden that were problematic, like our outbuildings. By the time you finish spelling this out and invite anyone who wants to criticise you to come and remove it manually, they permit you to use Roundup.

On the allotment, with different priorities, we do it all manually.

I trust you know your own situation best.

[rowenabean]

[rowenabean]

went for a little walk as per my previous post and found a) a golden-glowing cloud in the sky, very magical b) my neighbour's sheep has had lambs! c) a whole trail of ghost leaves, also very magical

[rowenabean]

That 40 min walk to nowhere particular Will save your life

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this is an incredible map

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please tell me your favorite owl

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Hit the hay so hard last night that i found the needle

[rowenabean]

🌊

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Precious treasure!

[rowenabean]

One of my favourite of Guite's poems, for today.

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preserving this awesome comment before i blocked them for unrelated bigotry

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you can tell things are bad when this type of article is coming back...

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my balcony blocks my view of the playground, but I heard one child yell "I FOUND A FROG" with a great deal of excitement and now there is screaming, so I'm filling in some blanks

[rowenabean]

radio at the op shop started playing the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald and. well. picture me in front of the mismatched crockery trying to hold back the tears in front of everyone just trying to find their necessities

[rowenabean]

Pumpkin has the vibes of a root vegetable

[rowenabean]

The Great Torc from Snettisham, England dated from 100 BCE on display at the British Museum in London, England

This torc is one of the most elaborate golden objects from the ancient world. It is made gold mixed with silver and weighs over 1 kg.

Torcs are made from complex threads of metal, grouped into ropes and twisted around each other. The ends of the torc were cast in moulds and welded onto metal ropes.

Photographs taken by myself 2016

[rowenabean]