gardening, weeds, herbicides
...and I feel so guilty about it. I really loathe the idea of dumping a bunch of chemicals into my yard. I want plants to thrive there, and I don't want local creatures (or me!) to get sick. But... I have a mortal enemy. It's name is bindweed.
The stuff is rampant here in Seattle, and it looks like morning glory. In fact they're both part of the same species, Convolvulaceae. Morning glory is a catch-all term, and both the plant I'm fighting - hedge bindweed, and the even worse field bindweed are plants within that umbrella. They are both EVIL. They can grow back from as little as one centimeter of root left behind if you dig them up. The variety I've been dealing with has been making a very impressive effort to choke out an entire Japanese maple tree. It climbs EVERYTHING. It legitimately ate my hose.
Here's the fact sheet about it, from my county. The stuff I have is the 'hedge' variety, not the 'field' variety but most of the facts there still apply.
I've been fighting this stuff for years in my tiny townhome backyard. It loves to spread laterally, and it's extremely difficult to pull & get it out. As that fact sheet says, "Repeated hand pulling works eventually, but is highly labor intensive", and ain't that the truth! I have tried, for most of a decade now, to control it via hand removal. It takes incredible consistency that I just cannot manage, though. I am an adult, with a job, and depression, and sometimes the back yard is just the thing that falls off of the to-do list. Sorry, yard, but it's true. This last year I lost any gains I'd made in the previous years, and it all came roaring back.
To add insult to injury, I live next to a 1960's era apartment building with like... 10 units, and a small parking lot along the side and back. the pavement for their lot is about 6-8 inches taller than "ground" level of my lot. This means that the bindweed has grown it's roots under the pavement and then through the fence, into my yard. I cannot pull it out of there, the only way to effectively do so would be to tear up the asphalt! (I would find this quite satisfying, but also painfully expensive and inconvenient for all involved.)
So, I've finally given in, and bought a whole gallon of Roundup. I was standing in the aisle in my local Lowes, last night, trying to read tags and match up active ingredients... it was enough to make me thankful I am not a chemist, I will tell you all that much! I should've brought a magnifying glass, too. The active ingredients are all labelled in like 6 point font, and I need new glasses. Ugh. I waffled, staring at all the bottles and brands, about buying such a big jug, but decided I'd be ticked off if I ran out early, and I'm glad I did. The gallon ran out, just as I ran out of weeds to spray.
(this is just before I pulled a TON of weeds out, a month or so ago. Like I said, depression can be a bitch, and I lost all of my maintenance gains last year.)
I'm pretty sure that there'll be some losses from friendly fire - a couple of volunteer sword ferns just kind of... appeared in my yard a couple years ago, and they're pretty so I've just left them, but they're at ground-zero of this invasion (along the fence next to the apartment building), so there's not much hope for them. My baby tear ground cover has mostly been smothered already by the bindweed, but what has survived definitely got a dosing, today, as well. The periwinkle in the retaining wall also is going to lose some soldiers, and at least one helebore got hit. If that's all I lose, and I lose the bindweed, though? I'll count that a win. Baby tears and periwinkle can both be re-planted once things run their course.
So... am I a bad person for using a broad-spectrum herbicide in my yard? I dunno, but if all this bindweed dies off and I end up with a yard I can use? I think it'll have been worth it.