Houston, we have a problem…
A big, huge, annoying bindweed problem. I get it cleared, and if I stop pulling for even one day, it comes right back with a vengeance. Which I should have expected - it’s bindweed after all. Everyone, here in Colorado at least, is used the effects of bindweed. But truth be told, I naively thought that if I followed regenerative practices, I would magically have no weed pressure and my flowers would grow happily ever after. Well, obviously, that is not what has happened. I did NOT want to ruin the soil biology of my soil so I have been weighing my options and researching, but it is seriously CHOKING out every flower on the farm. You can’t even see my peonies because the bind weed has COMPLETELY covered them. It takes hours to unwrap each and every stem of my plants. I don’t have that many hours in the day to spend just mindless pulling bindweed. I’ve tried everything I can think of - hand pulling weeds, almost turning up the whole bed to pull them out (but then it feels like I am basically tilling the soil by doing that and that’s NOT what I want to do), painting weed killer (which I really didn’t want to try, but ) on each individual leaf of each plant - which by the way, didn’t work at all so that won’t be even an attempt in the future, I tried boiling water on one plant just to make sure I didn’t kill too much soil microbes and the weed came back the very next day…WHAT AM I GOING TO DO??? One benefit, my sheep LOVE eating bindweed, but I can’t have them in the flower field eating the bindweed and my flowers.
UPDATE: I have contacted the agents at the NRCS who helped me in the very beginning for some regenerative agriculture suggestions for bindweed. They have given me some great suggestions and now I am reversing my thought process. I did have wood chips as my pathways and just leaf mulch with my soil beds. Next year, I am going to try living pathways - maybe teff grass? I need it to be safe for my sheep to graze on so I am chatting with a livestock vet and researching a diverse grass mix that makes a good living pathway but also safe grazing. Also, for the flower beds, I am going to try a wood chip mulch on top of my leaf mulch. Also, after listening to several regenerative agriculture/no till podcasts, I realize I am not the only one struggling with weed pressure, specifically bind weed and to not give up. Stay tuned for next spring and summer to hear an update on how it’s going.
The bindweed is swallowing my field whole…
