Creeping Jenny/Bind Weed

Sounds like what you need is an ATV mounted sprayer with a wand so you can control where the spray goes.

I don't know what kind of trees you planted, but some are REALLY touchy with 2-4D alone much less 2-4D and roundup mix (especially fruit and berry trees have been susceptible around my place).

I suggest waiting until the trees drop their leaves and spray with an ATV mounted sprayer with a wand.  That can help minimize your tree loss.  Hopefully you will still get a kill on the weeds.

I would suggest the same as Allen and I will do some checking on a pre-emergent for spring or something you can apply this fall and get some control next spring. I will PM when I find something...

Banvel and Round-up.  Protect the trees from the spray.  Best kill will come in the fall of the year.  Field bindweed is a pain in the a$$.  Good luck, I to am fighting with the plants in my garden.

Couple things to remember with creepying jenny is that tilling simply replants it if moisture is present. A leaf or vine partially covered with dirt will result in it taking root and quickly.

2-4D Amine is a better choice if that is what you chose to use, Less drift, higher volitatiy rate than Banvel or 2-4D Ester. Not as quick a burn down but just as effective.

You might check into a low pressure high volume sprayer for application. We used a couple in spraying trees and in and around flowers and veggie plants with very good success. Using an additive in the mix to hold the spay down decreases risk of it turning to vapor and drifting as well.

Not sure how high the trees are at this point but  we cut the bottom out of  5 gal buckets and set them around the trees if we had any concerns about having to get to close to the tree. Also remember that because the plants spread out, you do not have to spray the entire plant to kill them. This gives you a bit of room around the tree area as well!

I too have to deal with this stuff each time I plant new tree rows.  What I've found is that you will be dealing with this for several years until the trees get large enough to produce some shade, then Jenny seems to go away.  I control it by using mechanical cultivation as much as I can and then taking a hand sprayer with generic Round Up and spraying as much of the Jenny foliage that you safely can.  Sometimes a second application is necessary.  Once I've got it all killed I go through the rows once every two weeks or so with my sprayer and spray the emerging Jenny (easier to kill when small).  This is a lot of work but it has been working for me. 

Thanks for the responses so far.  I did know that we would need to be spraying in the fall, I was told after the first light frost.  I suppose if it was a day with little to no wind we could use a low pressure high vol. sprayer and maybe not need to worry about covering the trees.  Don't get many days though with little to no wind.  The trees we have are mostly fruit bearing, i.e. juneberry, buff. berry, etc., with a good mix of some hardwoods and spruce.  Sounds like we are pretty much going to just have to fight the fight and get through it.  Gonna suck a little bit but in the end it is always worth it.

Creeping Jenny and Bindweed are tough weeds to fight. Been at it for a couple years in my tree rows. I quit tilling and used a cultivator instead where it will dig up the weeds and bring em up to the surface hopefully getting more of the roots. I also spot spray with a 2-4D/Roundup mix and it seems to help. I still have an ongoing battle, but it's not nearly as bad as it was when I first started. I did spray last fall and I do believe I did it at the right time and there was noticibly less weeds this spring.

Best advice I have is keep up on it as the more it spreads the tougher it is to kill and control.

Juneberries are what I put the serious harm to last year.  Lost darn near one-third of them after spraying 2-4D on a windless, but hot day.  The vapors alone were enough to clobber them.

Some came back this year but I ended up replanting a bunch.

I will now wait until a cool and windless day to spray around them.

So if we want to use 5 gallon buckets to cover the trees when we spray do we need to go buy all of them or is there some places anyone knows of that maybe has a loto of them that they typically dispose of?  Don't need to cover all of the trees at once but would be nice to at least be able to cover a row or two at a time.

NDSU has an online "weed control guide" that might answer your questions the best. A county agent is good too. Roundup doesn't vaporize, the problem comes from particle drift so you want low pressure on the spray and low volume, 5 gals or less per acre of solution. Don't soak the plant with Roundup.  Banvel does vaporize but there are formulations of it under other trade namesthat do not. A methilated seed oil added to the mix will increase the chemical action. Rich Zollenger (sp) is the authority at NDSU on this subject and he does answer emails. Since there are so many questions on this weed please post up your results.

Tordon

Tordon is a great brush (brush=trees!!!) and broadleaf weed killer but for some reason it doesn't have much effect on bindweed.  It will volitalize on hot days and it has an affinity to water so will leach down to the root zone and it is also very persistant in the soil.

Thanks again for all of the comments.  We are becoming real leary about using chemicals but don't really have much of a choice.  We have other weeds withing the tree rows too and are now trying to figure out what other type of chemicals are out there that could be used for the other weeds without harming the trees.  Heard about a granule type that doesn't harm the trees but can't remember the name of it.  Doesn't get the bindweed but at least we could get the rest of the stuff with it. After looking at the trees yesterday I don't even think using buckets to cover the trees is an option due to how many weeds there are.  One of our neighbors did not feel the Roundup/2-4D option was smart because of how even the fumes can damage sensitive trees.  At this point I am thinking we should have just said the hell with it and added the weed barrier to everthing or just scrapped the trees and planted nesting habitat.

a little late on this... but, as long as you can mow or till up the dirt to within a reasonable distance of the tree (like a couple of feet) to keep the weeds and grasses from growing taller than the trees, i think you would be fine without spraying.  trees are extremely tough once they get started.  sure the weeds will steal some water and nutrients and make you trees grow a little slower.  but, it beats spraying them and risking killing them.  i planted a 5 row belt by my place about 3-4 years ago.  i don't have the equipment to keep things tilled or mowed (mowed a few times for the first few years) and most, if not all, of my trees are still alive surrounded by so many weeds it makes it hard to find them.  they are shorter than i would like at this point.  but, they are still alive and kicking.  anyway, good luck.  let us know what you choose to do and how it turns out.  thanks. 

espringers,  that's kind of where we are at right now.  The trees, especially the smaller ones, are pretty hard to find but when you do find them they are looking good, mostly due to the nice rains we have been getting this year.  We are going to fight it but in the end we may just have to hope for the best.