Drawing the Line on Vinca and Hedge Bindweed

I’ve already finished up most of my dry season tasks for the year– working on patches of first-year Herb Robert and setting up a new area to weed in the wet season by establishing a trail, building bases for new compost heaps, and making ring cuts on Ivy growing up trees. That leaves me with just a couple of dry season jobs — removing any invasives growing on old compost heaps and working on “weed breaks.”

Like a fire break used to control the spread of a wildfire, a weed break is a narrow line of cleared ground separating the forest from invasives that spread by rhizomes — like Vinca and Hedge Bindweed. Once I have established a weed break around an infestation, I focus on keeping the invasives from spreading beyond that boundary.

The picture above shows a short section of weed break I maintain around a bed of Vinca. Teri Chace in How to Eradicate Invasive Plants, Timber Press 2013, writes that Vinca is an “aggressive spreader in moist shade, it forms a dense, ever-expanding carpet that invades and chokes, or excludes, other plants.” Because a bed of Vinca is so hard to dig out completely, I think the most practical solution is to create a weed break between it and the adjacent forest.

I also use weed breaks around Hedge Bindweed. Unlike Vinca, which is perfectly happy to continue its slow, methodical march into the shade of the forest, Hedge Bindweed is so desperate for sunlight that it actually tries to escape the canopied forest! Imagine that – something positive to say about Hedge Bindweed.

The dry season may soon be over. According to NOAA, in my zip code we’ve already gotten 4.6” of rainfall since the beginning of September. Once we pass the 6” mark, I think the ground will be saturated enough for me to resume my battle against the worst backyard forest invaders — Ivy, Holly, Laurel, Himalayan Blackberry, and Scotch Broom. Let the wet season begin. I’m almost ready.