Tommorrow I am going to masacre the ivy that growing up one side of my garage and threatening to take it apart.
Once I have it chopped down, what best to kill it off?
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I used to use creosote for that sort of thing. Great on tree stumps anyway.
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I had an Ivy enthusiast, a nasty man, living in the house next door, attached to my modest hovel.
It spread itself along the fence between our front gardens, rotting it. It went from there up the drainpipe to the roof, entwined itself round the gutter, got in the brickwork and all over the pebbledash. It even stuck on the UPVC window frame and glass !
Wanting to paint the house, I got the big ladders out and fastidiously trimmed it back to the drainpipe. I wanted to repaint the pebbly bit but it had left fronds attached all over the place. The only way I found to remove them was to scorch them with a blow lamp and wire brush the ashes off.
I had paid for the fence, so I thought, sod them...I ripped it all off and the waney lap fell apart. Even a concrete base panel and a post were broken. At that point I remembered that I'd had the fence erected 6 inches on my side of the boundary due to a drain. The roots were, technically, in my property.......so I cut the things at ground level. I used engine oil and anything else I could find in the garage to kill them.
The nasty, arrogant guy next door watched all this happening but didn't say anything.
He moved a year later and the new couple were, thankfully, ivy haters. It was also on the fence at the back and one nice day I saw the wife getting ready to attack it with secateurs !
With no further comment I fetched the chainsaw out of the workshop and removed the lot, waney-lap panels as well ! A month or so later he removed a manky cherry tree at the front and had the whole garde membraned and pebbled...adding to the demise of the ivy roots.
Under the pebbledash we have facing bricks, I removed the fronds in the same way and then went over all the bricks with Shellac......that seemed to hide any marks left.
Both houses are now an Ivy free zone.
Horrible man, horrible plant !
Ted
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You can't buy creosote any more - banned as toxic and carcinogenic as are nearly all effective weed-killers other than glyphosate. Glyphosate is not particularly effective on ivy as it is absorbed through the leaves and ivy leaves are covered in a protective waxy coating
First thing to do is to cut through the main stem
Once you have cut through the stem of the plant you should be able to dig out the root without too much difficulty. Any remaining part of the root may start growing again so be sure to remove any new growth before it gets hold
The biggest problem is removing the stems from the brickwork. Cut back as much of the ivy a you can and then leave the stems to dry out - the longer the better. There is no easy way to remove the stems, which have extensive aerial roots, just hours of work with a scraper or similar prising the stems from the wall. I removed an ivy from my house 5 years ago and you can still see remnants.
Best to wear eye protection when dealing with ivy as the sap is poisonous. Do not put it through a shredder - I state this from practical experience as I ended up in casualty after the sap badly affected my eyes
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...I ended up in casualty after the sap badly affected my eyes...
Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller knew about this when they wrote Poison Ivy, recorded by The Coasters in 1959:
Measles make you bumpy
And mumps'll make you lumpy
And chicken pox'll make you jump and twitch
A common cold'll fool ya
And whooping cough can cool ya
But poison ivy, Lord'll make you itch!!
You're gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion
You'll be scratchin' like a hound
The minute you start to mess around
Poison iv-y-y-y-y, poison iv-y-y-y-y
Late at night while you're sleepin' poison ivy comes a'creepin'
Arou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ound
tinyurl.com/n8qlh6
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We had ivy all over the garage wall and roof when we moved in and it had been there years.
We pulled it all off the walls and cut it down as close to the base as possible.
I then drilled a couple of holes in the trunk which was about 4'' across and put in Glyphosate crystals. I covered it with a plant pot, upturned with a rock on top of it, to protect the birds and cats and it killed the roots off well.
Three years on we still have nothing shooting from the base but the traces of the aerial roots are still on the wall:(
Pat
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Thats the American Poison Ivy, Toxicodendron Radicans. The latin name doesn't fit the music so well!
We're talking English Ivy here, Hedera Helix. Not as poisonous but as I found out not good if you get it in your eyes.
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...Not as poisonous but as I found out not good if you get it in your eyes...
CG,
Yes, I've had the same experience.
I think there has been the odd case in which ivy has been used in an attempt to kill someone by poisoning, a battered wife trying to do in her husband rings a bell.
Can't remember which plant she used or if she was successful.
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Cut through the main stem and, if possible, drill holes into the cut face to increase the area of tissue exposed. Immediately afterwards coat liberally with Vitax SBK Brushwood Killer mixed with paraffin ~ 20 ml SBK per litre of paraffin.
The instructions on the bottle specifically refer to ivy.
SBK is available at all good hardware stores and garden centres.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 22 Apr 10 at 09:07
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Does anyone know if there is such a thing as an ivy appreciation society ~
www.flickr.com/photos/43576259@N04/with/4542323537/
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Prefer VirginiaCreeper....lovely girl but she drives me up the wall !
Ted
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Black Eyed Susan is much prettier:)
Pat
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well its all been chopped down, and the TWO main stems drilled into and covered with used engine oil. I was working in a narrow 2 foot wide space twixt a 7 foot high garage wall and a 6 foot high larchlap fence. I had to hack my way through it with electric hedge trimmers.
No one warned me of the dust. I had to get my face mask out, and wear a near NBC suit.
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Thanks ifithelps - that whiney tune will be in my head for the next week!
The only thing I have ever found to completely kill ivy is to burn it with one of those flame guns that runs off a little gas cylinder. It takes time...
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Ivy weedkiller - Alastairw
