Tag: Clueless gardener

I know I’ve only just started, but I think I may have already found my gardening nemesis…

Each week when our food waste goes out, I’m horrendously reminded of how much of it could have gone towards our future soil. So, while Shem (that’s my husband!) continues to tackle the main de-weeding, I decided to focus on a smaller project: getting the top corner of the garden ready for a compost bin.

However, this week I discovered that the corner is absolutely filled with bindweed.

What is bindweed? 

Bindweed is an invasive plant that grows quickly and can twist around other plants, choking and stunting their growth, or even killing them. Not something I would like in my garden! 

There are two types: hedge bindweed and field bindweed. According to The Wildlife Trusts, the way to distinguish between the two is by the flowers. Hedge bindweed has large trumpet-shaped flowers, while field bindweed’s flowers are much smaller. 

When our garden was growing wild over the summer, we had both large and small flowers growing. So it seems we’re infested with both field and hedge bindweed! 

Why the purge? 

Bindweed is difficult to get rid of. It’s an irritatingly intelligent and stubborn plant. If you leave any trace of the plant or its root, it will sprout back into a new plant.

Quite an amazing part of creation, but rather frustrating if you’re trying to rid your garden of it!

Dealing with bindweed (without chemicals)

According to Love the Garden, the most straightforward and effective way to remove bindweed is to use weedkiller. 

But we’re keen to keep our garden chemical-free, so it looks like it’s going to take more time, patience, and digging.

Thankfully, Gardeners’ World has given some helpful ways to tackle bindweed organically:

• In beds and borders, dig out the roots completely. Winter to early spring is the best time, before new growth begins.
• Remove every last bit of the root (a fork helps avoid snapping them).
• If it’s tangled around established plants, carefully loosen the soil on either side and pull out the roots whole.
• In summer, when digging isn’t possible, cut or pull off new shoots regularly to weaken the plant.
• Homemade weed killers and weed burners can help reduce top growth but won’t kill the roots.

My experience with bindweed

Although it takes a lot more effort getting out at this time of year, it looks like October is a good time to tackle bindweed by digging up the ground. 

So that’s what we’ve been doing – digging, digging, digging. I’ve gone about an arm’s length deep, and I’m still finding more roots! Especially in the corner where I’m planning to place the compost bin.

On the bright side, I think I’ve located where a lot of it stems from. The downside? It feels endless. And because it’s where our compost bin will be, I really want to make sure the soil is clean before we start. It would be awful if our compost becomes infested with bindweed. 

It does feel like I’m making some progress, at least there are a lot of bindweed weeds in my little bucket… 

But a lot of the roots seem be coming from under our fence to the neighbour’s garden. I’m not sure how to stop them creeping back without using chemicals. 

Help, please?

Have you had any experience with bindweed? Do you have any advice for getting rid of it naturally – or keeping it from coming back? Please do let me know in the comments or messages! I’d love to hear your experiences.

The other morning, whilst lying in bed, my husband and I decided it was time to make a start on the garden. He was very excited to go out and buy some wood to build the veg boxes. After discussing, we realised we would be jumping the gun a little bit. We had a much bigger problem to tackle first… 

When we first moved in, we had a small tidy up of the garden. My husband mowed the lawn and we gathered plant pots left by the previous owners. When I say “we”, I actually mean my husband – I was 36 weeks pregnant at the time! Then our little girl was born in May, which meant we were a little preoccupied over the summer and the garden had to wait. 

It turns out, this was a blessing in disguise. By letting the garden grow free, we were able to discover what plants already existed, and what weeds needed to be dealt with. 

We discovered that bindweed has taken over our garden. According to our neighbour, this is what’s making our lawn bumpy. Plus, because of their deep roots, removing the dandelions that cover our garden is going to be hard work.

Essentially, we need to overturn the grass areas of our garden and start afresh, otherwise any veg boxes or flowerbeds will quickly be overrun by weeds.

Getting the job started 

In order to make the project doable, and a little less overwhelming, we’ve mentally split our garden into four parts: Veg patch, section opposite the veg patch, flower beds, and the rest of the garden. We’re starting with the veg patch – roughly 3m x 5m – with a hope to have boxes ready for planting in spring.

Our immediate aim is to dig up the area by hand and remove as many roots as possible. We’ll be trying to avoid the use of chemicals during this whole process to protect the wildlife in the soil, plus it keeps the garden ecosystem healthier overall.

We are on day five of digging and about a quarter of the way through the patch. Here’s what I’ve learned so far: 

• Dandelion roots go deep! We’ve dug about one foot down and still haven’t gotten to the bottom of some of them. 
• Free medicine. Did you know about the health benefits of dandelion roots? Chucking them all away feels like I’m wasting free medicine – perhaps I’ll make some tea with it in the coming weeks. 
• Bindweeds roots travel far! Not usually as deep as dandelions, but tug one root and there’s movement over a metre away. 
• An irritatingly intelligent plant. I read somewhere that if you leave any part of a bindweed in the ground, it will grow again – you need to be thorough with your digging! 

Any advice is appreciated

So far it’s been enjoyable getting our hands into the dirt and having an excuse to get outside – even though we’re getting less and less daylight in the evenings now!

But it’s also been a bit of an eye opener of just how much work we have to do. We’ve made good progress, but when you compare it to the rest of the garden? We have a very long way to go. 

If you’ve ever battled bindweed, dandelions, or just the chaos of an unkempt garden, I’d love to hear your tips. How did you survive your first digging adventure?

An update on our digging, and some discovered roots:

If you can identify the last two photos, please help!

I’ve always dreamed of growing my own veg and filling a garden with bright and colourful flowers. And now, after buying a house with my husband, I finally have a garden!

The only catch? I don’t know a thing about gardening – and it’s currently far from ‘grow your own’ ready. Between the infestation of invasive weeds, the bumpy lawn and the flowerbeds that look like they’ve barely survived an explosion, it’s going to take a lot of work to bring this garden back to life. 

But it’s an adventure we’ve decided to take on – so here’s where it begins, with more enthusiasm than expertise, and a hope to share some helpful insights along the way.

As I embark on sharing this gardening journey, an introduction is in order. I’m Poppy – 28 years old, two years married, and we’ve just welcomed our first little one into the world. We live in the beautiful city of Bath and bought our first home at the beginning of the year. 

I grew up in North Devon, surrounded by rolling countryside, so since moving to the city I’ve longed for a little green escape of my own. But now that I finally have the opportunity to create one, I need to figure out how to make it thrive.

So why a full-blown garden project instead of just a tidy-up and some nice patio furniture? Well, the idealistic goal is to grow my own food.

I’m tired of fruit and veg that are coated in chemicals, or the disappointment of bringing home greengrocer produce to find it’s already gone bad. I want fresh, trustworthy food straight from my own back garden.

But this is going to be quite a journey, because my current gardening knowledge goes as far as helping my mum in our front garden as a child – she somehow managed to rope a bunch of other kids from the estate to help her too. I loved the sense of community it brought – everyone working towards the same goal, whilst tending their own little patch. 

That memory has always stayed with me, and it’s partly why I want to share this journey here – not just to document the process, but to rediscover that same sense of connection and joy that comes from growing something together.

So here we go. I’m clueless but excited, and ready to get my hands dirty. 

If you’ve ever started a garden project – or at least attempted one – I’d love to hear your best tips. What do you wish you’d known when you first started gardening?

The current state of the garden: