 Epic battles! Incredible feats of strength and skill! Gladiator has nothing on my on-going battles with field bindweed, also called wild morning glory. Once it gets hold of your garden, it puts its roots deep, even unto three feet! You dare not rototill, because every broken piece of root or stem will grow into a vigorous new plant. I refuse to use poisons (they don't work anyway), so I dig out as much of every root of every plant that I possibly can. I have put down black plastic and pulled it up after two years, and there will still be thick gnarls of white sun-starved bindweed shoots. This is a picture of a spot after I pulled up the plastic and these plants greened up after only a couple of days!  Look at this will to survive! Every knot and stem is a node where a new plant can start. In places where it became too thick for me to dig out every piece, I dug deep and started a fire, then banked it and made charcoal. Where the fire burned deep, I was finally able to eradicate some of the bindweed.
I keep thinking that with so much energy stored in the roots and shoots, if one could cross-breed bindweed and potatoes (or some other nutritious starchy vegetable), world hunger could be cured! |
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