Yeah, that makes sense! Dandelions in my yard seem to be pretty well-behaved, so I don’t mind them. They flower a bit, they spread a bit, but they don’t often end up in my garden beds. Mostly they’re just an evergreen ground cover that’s of more value than the grass with quite pretty leaves year-round and quite pretty flowers in spring. If I could have bindweed that behaved in much the same way, I’d be okay with that.
Sheet mulching with many layers of cardboard doesn’t work on bindweed. The roots can continue to live for over a year under that. And, they actually just run out the edge and then up. However, it does become slightly easier to weed if you have the time to do that. Leaving a dark tarp over a patch of it for a year seemed to kill most of it except the roots at the edges, but this means not growing for that long. It seems to struggle without irrigation in the southwest here, however in a wet year, it’ll grow in our hardpacked gravel driveway. The garden is nutrient rich, and that doesn’t stop it – it’s flourishing. There are two species. I believe the one here is field bindweed – don’t know what requirement differences there are between the two species. I’m not sure it’s a typical pioneer species – we don’t till the soil, and it still loves life there. We’re back to weeding it. Red clover seems to out grow the bindweed, but then it also crowds the garden plants, but maybe I’d rather have the clover?
Clover is edible, and it’s a nitrogen fixer, so I’d say clover is miles better!
I’d rather have a clover lawn than a grass lawn, no question. Grass is useless to me, and it gets tall, and nastily prickly foxtail grass can hide in it easily. Clover is much like the dandelions – I’m not wild about eating the species, but I know I could if I was hungry, and it’s perennial and drought tolerant and has flowers that attract bees. I don’t want them in my garden beds, but I’m happy to have them in my lawn.