Getting rid of Morning Glory

I have tried pulling, chasing, weed cover, but it just keeps spreading and coming back. Any helpful suggestions of how to get rid of it? Thank you.

I keep digging out some that I think I brought in when I moved from Federal Way. :(

I try digging it when the ground is wet so that I get as much of the roots as possible. Any little piece will start a new plant, :(

I burn the pieces I pull so that there is no chance they can rejuvenate. I have heard that if you put the growing tips in a baggie with a paper towel soaked in Round-Up that will kill them back, but my DDH tried that and it just didn't take care of the problem.

Good luck, and don't give up the fight.

I'm not much for spreading chemical controls, so I pull and pull. You need to make sure you're pulling before they bloom and go to seed so you're preventing the next generation. I try to get down to the base and pull straight out from there to make sure that I'm not leaving anything.

I either put them in a plastic container to make sure they're good and dead before they compost or use a plastic bag to do the same.

I hate hate that stuff. We had it at our office building. After about ten years of weeding we pulled all the plants except a large weeping tree, put down two layers of ground cloth and added rocks. If one of those vines pokes there head out we spray with round - up!

I think you will never kill that stuff if you have it. Not what you wanted to hear.
Why do some of the seed places sell seeds of morning glory? Is it a diffrent kind or do colder winters kill it?

I hope someone out there has a good solution.

I think many of the morning glory cultivars you see are either not as aggressive or infertile. Same with the buddleia - many of the new cultivars are sterile.

I recently visited a friend, who had a lovely bulkhead garden planted with young shrubs and trees. I noted but didn't say anything about all the morning glory running rampant through the bed. Later he commented on the 'pretty little ivy' that just showed up, I identified it for him and informed him it is a rather invasive weed. He shrugged, said he likes the looks of it, and reports that he just pulls it out when it get too close to his plantings.

In my own gardens, for some strange reason, I only have MG in one island bed which contains a crabapple, potentilla, and azalea. The MG winds its way through the shrubs and looks pretty when it blooms. I do pull it out on a regular basis, but don't get too overwrought about it.

Perhaps embracing some weeds actually does work.

I understand that the invasive morning glory we all hate will come back from any little piece of root that is left in the soil, so the recommendations I have read say not to pull it. Allegedly this works:
Pure roundup. You don't spray it, you either paint it onto the leaves or you find a way to soak the vine in the stuff. Somewhere I read about someone who cut a hole in the top of a tupperware container, threaded the vine through the hole, put roundup in the container and then closed the lid and left it for a few days. That's a lot of work, but if I had a large infestation I might try it. Seems like it needs to be treated a bit like the blackberries which will grow back from any little piece left in the soil.
I never had any in my yard until this year when I got a load of weed seeds in the compost. Now I am noticing it.

To everyone that has made suggestions re: the morning glory, please keep them coming. I am at the point where getting rid of it seems impossible, so unless I get a sure fire way, blessed without real fire, I am just going to start training it into Topiaries. It has even taken over my compost. Hope this winter it will die and I can find a solution. Thank you again, please keep the suggestions coming.

Try the roundup/paintbrush method after cutting the vine back to a manageable size. Pick a nice warm day and water it well before you do it. You want it to be actively growing when you do the treatment.

Have you considered moving? I see this stuff all over and it seems that without it in other peoples' yards they would have nothing. Ha

I drove by a property today and they had MG growing along chain link all around it - they were using is as fencing material, I guess . . .

I was just reading in an English gardening magazine last night about morning glory and they said round-up, but even better just keep pulling it. Any time you see a tiny piece just pull it. Plants need leaves for photosynthesis and no leaves no energy to grow. I have a tiny patch of horsetail I have done this with. I do have a patch of morning glory I need to work on.

Heidi

And it's out everywhere right now . . .

Reviving this thread to ask for advice, even though I think I know, and dread, the answer.
We have a garden at the elementary school where I work that has become infested with morning glory. My bed (for my class) was the least troubled because I just kept pulling it out and kept at it with great persistence. However, the wood sided garden beds were really falling apart by the end of last year and we decided to re-do the whole thing. The other teachers were so fed up with the morning glory that they wanted to remove everything, put down garden cloth and construct new beds on top with brought-in soil mix. I went along with this plan to keep the peace, even though it hurt to see my good soil taken away. It did still have a lot of morning glory roots along the side, even after years of pulling.
So, now we have the cloth down. The school ground crew did this after removing the old beds and soil with a tractor). My husband and I have been working on putting in an irrigation system. I noticed there are still a huge number of morning glory roots underneath the cloth. My question is...should I put up a fuss and tell the other teachers we really need to have a work party to dig up as many morning glory roots as possible before continuing? Should I just get the irrigation in and hope the ground cloth will keep the morning glory at bay for a little while and not bother anybody? If I make a fuss, we go to all that work digging it up, will it just come back and invade pretty soon anyway?
What do you think?

The more roots you can get out the better! I have found that morning glory and other plants that propagate by running roots are only too happy to run UNDER the landscape cloth. Have ripped a lot of it out and found all of those happy happy roots!

Are all Morning Glory seeds at risk for becoming invasive....or is it just the invasive variety (white flowering)? What about the blue bloomers or pink bloomers? Grandpa ott's or whatever that one is called....I confess I have some MG seeds....should I not plant it? (I love the blue flowers on growing up the mailbox.)

Grandpa Otts comes pretty close to being invasive at our vacation house in Eastern Washington. But that is when it goes to seed. I haven't had that experience with some of the others, but I will guarantee that the Japanese ones are NOT. The white one is mostly invasive by root segments and runners.

Well, I put up a fuss about the roots, and the other teachers agreed we should dig them out. It is somewhat difficult since everything needs to be moved out of the way to get at them, and many are buried slightly under the ground by the tractor that moved the old beds out, so you can't tell where they are and have to dig around to find them. I have faith it will be better in the long run, but I still miss my good soil that was hauled away. I do wonder about having landscape cloth down under the beds and having boughten soil mix. I've never gardened that way before, and I don't really like the idea all that much, though I understand the need to do something to prevent the morning glory from taking over the world. I prefer the worms to be able to come in from underground. if I cut the ground cloth out from under my class's bed, will I be sorry (ie. the first one to have the morning glory take over)?

Don't know if anyone is still following this, but we've dug out yet more roots, replaced the cloth, moved the beds back into place, and my DH is seen here drilling a hole for the future irrigation pipe to go into a bed. The pipes are all in now under the ground along the ends of the beds, with an individual shut-off to each bed. My son helped dig the ditches, and I had a crew of kids from my class help me at each recess time for a week (their choice!!) to clean the ditches out a bit more and roll the pipe into place.

Here's a far shot of the newly built beds. We have a load of soil coming next week to fill them, which will be done by bucket brigade.

Nice!

that's a beautiful gardening spot.

That is an incredibly beautiful school gardening area! Nice work!

Thanks for the compliments. I can only take credit for the 6 newly built rectangular and 3 square beds. The most complicated part of this has been the irrigation system. A number of years ago, several other teachers put in the greenhouse, pumpkin patch, and several themed ornamental gardens. At the time, I had a back injury and was only able to maintain my one rectangular veggie bed with my class.The gazebo was built by an explorer scout as his project. It has benches for kids to sit and read or draw.

I plant MG from seed as an annual over on the this side of the hill. I like the blue one in particular. I've never had it come back or even self seed. We don't have the white wild stuff here, but we do have a smaller version of it called bind weed. It's not really a big problem, but I pull it when I see it. I've actually always liked the look of MG growing on a fence, but I guess it can get out of hand.

Lauri, we have a vacation house on your side of the hill (by the Potholes) and our Grandpa Otts (I think) is pretty invasive and reseeds itself readily. I have it on a fence on the back of my veggie garden area and I have to dig out lots of babies in the spring. That doesn't mean that I will give it up, however, as it is so very pretty. (I do believe your "bind weed" is the same stuff we are talking about on this side of the hill. It probably flourishes a little better over here.)

Edited to say that the purple m g might be "Star of Yelta' instead.

This message was edited May 7, 2012 6:54 PM

Confession: I ended up planting my pink MG seeds and blue seeds (turned out not to be Grandpa Otts) around the base of my mailbox the other day. I did this 10 years ago when I owned my first house. And it made getting the mail very pleasurable. Very pretty growing over the mailbox. I might put some rudbeckia there, too. Or thumbergia. or both.

I had the invasive perennial morning glory (aka Bindweed) throughout an area of English Ivy, untended under a big Pine tree. I tried multiple ways to get rid of it, including baggies with full strength Roundup and coiling the tip in it, leaving it there a week or so when plant was in rapid growth, that helped, but it did not really fix the problem and was a pain in the neck. Finally I had enough. I hate English Ivy too, so I confess I heavily sprayed the whole area with Brush Killer, which supposedly kills both. I did it in September, because I read somewhere it works best then, and planned to plant nice stuff in the spring ( spent the winter planning it). Lo and behold- the morning glory did die, just a few sprouts I have resprayed, but the Ivy only got a bit dull looking for a month, now growing again. Now the area looks OK. (I still might get rid of the Ivy by the old fashioned method of pulling it out. I have done this with ivy before and it works pretty well. I just patrol a few times the next year and get rid of any sprouts.

I think the perennial morning glory or bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) is quite different from annual morning glory vines like Grandpa Otts and Heavenly Blue (Ipomoea). I can't really get the annual kind going here, I think it does not warm up quickly enough in the spring here, but the bindweed kind will eat your house.

"Bindweed will eat your house" It really is scary stuff. It took down an apple tree in our school garden.

Knock on wood...for some strange reason I only have it in one island bed. It grows up through an azalea and cinquefoil and then into a crabapple tree. So far it has not traveled any further than this one bed and is easy enough to pull out occasionally. (Hope I have not jinxed myself with this post...)