Is it actually possible to get rid of morning glories?

July 23, 2022 11:59 AM

Morning glories are taking over my garden and encroaching on my lawn. Can my garden - and my mind - be saved?

My partner and I bought a house 3 years ago, and with the house we inherited a shared chainlink fence with our neighbor that has a weird trellis attached to it, built out of rebar.

The fence/trellis is ugly and pre-dates both us and our neighbors. Unfortunately, along with this fence comes morning glories. Beautiful, prolific, soul-destroying, garden-ruining morning glories.

I'm looking what ACTUALLY works to contain and eventually destroy morning glories. When I google it, I get a lot of contradictory advice: Pull up every little shoot by the root every day! Do NOT pull them up by the root as the rhizomes left behind will grow more and farther if you do! Use round up! Steam the leaves and it will kill the roots! Make sure they don't flower! Keep them mowed short in your lawn and they will eventually die! DON'T mow them or they will spread! Trim them back at the stem and without leaves they can't feed the roots! Don't trim them or they will grow back even more! None of the articles I've found seem to fully agree with each other and furthermore, I have no idea how trustworthy or authoritative any of the things that pop up on Google are.

I hate these things with every fiber of my being. They choke out and kill the perennials I am trying to grow and are infiltrating the patch of (expensive!) sod we laid down for our dogs last year. We try to pull up the little pairs of leaves as they emerge from the ground but just a week or two of illness or vacation or a rainy weekend and we get behind and they're just everywhere.

Thankfully my neighbor hates them too, and I think would be willing to assist in a coordinated approach.

Have you actually successfully removed morning glories, permanently, from your yard or garden? If so, how? I'm about ready to plan for a major nuke from orbit style approach at the end of this growing season, but that would mean losing all of my perennials as I don't think I could successfully decontaminate their root systems from MG rhizomes or seeds. Is there any other option?

Note: I've seen some things online that morning glories are related to or sometimes mistaken for bindweed. I think these are true morning glories because they have beautiful purple flowers. Not beautiful enough to ease my burning hatred, but they are very pretty.

posted by misskaz to Home & Garden (22 answers total)

IME if you pull (and hot-compost, or city-compost) all the leaves for a couple years, you will eventually starve the whole plant, and it will take years for it to come back. This doesn't work if the deep root your vines are coming from can also send leaves into a neighbor's yard; that would require collaboration with the neighbor or sending poison down the cut vine somehow. I haven't done that for morning glories, but AFAIK the minimal-effective way involves dipping the cut end into the right concentration of the right herbicide. I'd ask Extension, if you're in the US.
posted by clew at 12:11 PM on July 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Unless there is more than one kind of plant known as 'morning glories' and you're dealing with something I'm unfamiliar with, morning glories are annuals that re-seed themselves each year (even in climates without a winter freeze). I personally seeded morning glories into my family's yard as a kid and we enjoyed their beauty for several years. After getting tired of the labour involved in removing the dead vines every winter, we got rid of the morning glories entirely in just a couple of years by pulling them out before they set seeds. We did not have to laboriously pull up every seedling and we made no effort to pull out the roots.

Field bind-weed is apparently related to morning glories but is kind of different.
posted by heatherlogan at 12:30 PM on July 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Also, those little pairs of leaves that emerge from the ground? Those pairs of two-lobed leaves that look so different from the subsequent heart-shaped leaves of the morning glory vine? Those are cotyledons (seed leaves) and are coming from a newly-sprouted seed, not from a rhizome or deep root or something. You can totally mow them.
posted by heatherlogan at 12:33 PM on July 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

(googling) Various Convolvulus and Ipomoea are perennial where it doesn't get too cold for them, variously zone 7-10. Microclimates are going to matter too; lots of things can survive with a root next to a heated basement.

Good point that you can kill the new seedlings much more easily than the rooted plants.
posted by clew at 12:52 PM on July 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

I got rid of morning glories in my yard in California, where they grow like a foot a day, and can seemingly reseed all year round, by pulling up the plants by the roots and carting everything off to a green waste facility (it was a 20' long, 8' high fence covered to a depth of about 3 feet, it was A Lot). I kept pulling out new growth as I found it and after a year or so I didnt see them come back in any number. My neighbors all had them so it was not quite a complete eradication, but pretty close, and my lawn was fine.
posted by ananci at 1:37 PM on July 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

I’ve only had success by picking each one as soon as I see them sprout with their two leaves. I pluck the whole thing out. It’s taken me 3-5 years but now I only see one a week or so. These are in my soil garden bed, not grass/yard.
posted by Bunglegirl at 2:16 PM on July 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

Can we see a picture? I have bindweed, and it is a goddamn menace, but it can be controlled. If yours are bindweed (and bindweed can have white OR purple flowers, and can be quite pretty), there are insects that will eat it. I'm on the list to get some bindweed mites from a state ag program.
posted by deludingmyself at 2:19 PM on July 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My grandma said that their backyard used to be full of morning glories. Then they adopted a turtle. The turtle got rid of ALL the morning glories in 1-2 years. My grandparents had a beautiful yard. The turtle lived for many decades.
posted by aniola at 3:07 PM on July 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

As heatherlogan says, true morning glories are annuals, so if you’re seeing rhizomes, you got bindweed. Morning glories do self seed like mofos though, my neighbor has them and I just spend a lot of time right around now pulling shoots out of my garden before they get out of hand. And yeah, letting any flower means more seeds which means more pulling next year.

On bindweed control I thankfully have no personal experience.
posted by goingonit at 5:01 PM on July 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Is it possible that seeds are migrating in from a nearby area? If so, you'll need to take that into account.
posted by amtho at 5:54 PM on July 23, 2022

Best answer: I planted morning glory seeds in a little plot when I first moved into my house. My only excuse was total ignorance. I didn't understand why they were banned in some states. I do now. If I remember correctly, the catalog said I would have to replant every year. They were wrong.

I couldn't get these to stop with any kind of prunning, and didn't want to use chemicals.

The final fix was the bamboo solution: Excavation down 18 inches. That got rid of them.

The only problem was when I dumped the dirt across the street (railroad right-of-way.) They still bloom every year and they add a little color to the random brush there. The railroad brush cutters chop them every couple of years, but they keep coming back.
posted by Marky at 7:06 PM on July 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

I agree that pulling them up should work. Please avoid chemicals like Roundup that are linked to killing pollinators.
posted by pinochiette at 7:30 PM on July 23, 2022

My wife plucked them in our yard every time she saw them and they were gone inside a year.
posted by MonsieurBon at 8:57 PM on July 23, 2022

As to the plants still being in neighboring areas, I understand that some birds eat the morning glory seeds and s**t them all over the place. Here's a reason the vines often appear at fences or under electrical wiring. So, they come not just from being wind born.

As Marky posted, never plant morning glories. Invasive with a capital I.
posted by tmdonahue at 5:32 AM on July 24, 2022

Just pull them. I did that in my previous yard (you must be relentless), and they eventually stopped showing up.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:16 AM on July 24, 2022

Response by poster: Thanks, all. I was hoping there was some magic solution other than spending an hour every day pulling up weeds during the heat of the summer, but it sounds like not. Part of the problem is the perennials in the bed where they grow are much earlier starters in the season, so by the time the MGs come up, they are all intertwined with existing roots and stems. The other part is there are just so many and I don't have the time to weed daily.

Here are some pictures. You can see how the little cotyledons come up from within the base of the perennials. It's just so hard to get them all. These pics are AFTER I spent a couple hours yesterday pulling up enough to completely fill a Home Depot bucket with them. It probably doesn't help that all but one of these perennials are splits from my neighbor so they came with soil that probably had MG seeds in them, even though much of the soil in that bed is new (until last year, our yard was all concrete).

We're in Chicago, so zone-wise it sounds like they really are just re-seeding themselves? That boggles my mind, I assumed they were coming up from existing roots every year because it's so consistent. I need to talk to my neighbor - She's been leaving a few vines to cover the ugly rebar trellis situation but it sounds like we can't do that if we want to get rid of them.

(I'm not 100% sure how to tell if it's rhizomes vs seeding, and this is what I mean about it being so hard to Google because the articles are not clear and are sometimes talking about MGs or bindweed or both without very good explanations of the difference.)

It feels impossible to get them all, which is why I'm considering scorched earth-style just digging up the entire bed at least 18" down at the end of this season and starting fresh with a new fence, new soil, and new perennials (sob).
posted by misskaz at 7:06 AM on July 24, 2022

Best answer: I’m in Chicago too and, yeah, they’re either re-seeding or being dropped by birds. My neighbors and I share a yard and they plant morning glories on purpose and it might be the birds relocating seeds to my plot. I’ve had success getting rid of weeds buy pulling/scraping as much off the top as feasible in the fall, covering with an opaque black garbage bag or tarp and weighing it down with bricks. Leave that on all winter and most of the weeds will be gone. I’m not sure if this will kill all the morning glories but it would be difficult to do around your perennials. It sucks, but honestly, picking them every morning or at least once a week is what you have to do.
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:48 AM on July 24, 2022

To Bunglegirl’s point you might try mulching — your perennials have energy stored in their roots so they will make it through the mulch but annuals need sun to grow pretty much as soon as they sprout. The challenge is that mulch keeps the soil from warming in spring which might delay the emergence of some of your perennials, but you could apply in April or May…
posted by goingonit at 12:40 PM on July 24, 2022

Best answer: Those sure do look like little seedling cotyledons. I think you're seeing seeds sprouting after years (?) of accumulating in the soil and mulch.

Are you both letting the flowers set seed? If not, then there's a lot of seed burden in the soil. If you keep the vines from setting seed you'll gradually see a decrease in the number of new seedlings as the accumulated seeds sprout. That is not the best news to hear, I know, but I think it does make tearing down the flowering vines a routine priority.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 2:59 AM on July 25, 2022

There are harder and easier ways to weed. You might like a wire hoe, designed for pulling up the youngest weeds without damaging bigger plants. And an under-shrub rake to get the pulled up weeds off the top of the mulch, if you find that they reroot there.
posted by clew at 10:25 AM on July 25, 2022

Best answer: The only way I got rid of them was to cover the garden beds with newspaper and dump new dirt on top of that. Some of them still got through and, of course, it means killing your perennials. Fortunately these were vegetable beds, so the only perennial was a huge rosemary bush. I just kept plucking them out of its radius and eventually (years. YEARS.) they went away. I feel your pain. In Western North Carolina they are an absolute menace. If I had it to do again i think I might dig up all the perennials and do what Marky suggests, then replant them.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:41 PM on July 25, 2022

Response by poster: Thanks all! This has been really helpful. I'm going to keep the flowering vines pruned back, and talk to the neighbor about a nuke from orbit solution at the end of this season. It will suck to lose the perennials that are so well established, but I've been wanting to go with more native plantings so this will be an opportunity to do that. I appreciate having a clearer understanding of how these dang things are replicating so successfully!
posted by misskaz at 9:00 AM on July 26, 2022