Brambles and bindweed ....and now ground-elder

Where it is, is right by the pond where the ducks sit so I think weedkiller will have to wait until they've gone, which may be too late in the season, but I can certainly exfoliate and try digging it up in big clumps. If I lift each lump into the barrow, I can tease in there and seive the soil back for replacement once I know it's clean.
My thougths are to try and keep the foliage down bar a few leaves and blitz those later in the year, in the theory that all the sap will need to be taken down from those few leaves. Along with the nasty stuff.

Rob

I've watched others rotorvate the ground, then plant potatoes to get rid of bindweed - well they "clean up the ground don't they"? - then wathed their crop getting swamped with bindweed - so much for loosening the soil to get rid of it.

Where I suspect bindweed will be a problem I've always rotorvated several times in hot weather, but as this method is not as effective as with couch grass, I've gone on to thickly mulch with newspaper covered with heavy duty black polythene dpm (the dpm lets light through).

Then if you plant through it choose a crop like cucumbers, marrows, etc., so only a few perforations around the perimeter will be required (with the crops growing into the middle of the mulch).

And repeat cultivating in hot weather, etc. the following year will gradually decrease the bindweed without using chemicals.

I had someone ask me if I wanted to use a rotovator after I'd just said I had bindweed, I looked at them as if they were nuts ha ha

I do have a tip I read in several books now.  All the bindweed roots that you collect just chuck em in a bucket of water and cover with some dark and heavy for a couple of weeks until they stink and use the liquid as a fertiliser and the roots are so definitely dead you can stick them on the compost heap.

Your revenge on this weed is that when they're growing they nick all the nutrients etc out of the ground and so what you rot down is returned in your bindweed brew!