Xref: kermit uk.rec.gardening:194112


"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
In message , Roderick Orr-Ewing
writes

My apologies - another question about ground elder but I have looked
back and can't find the answer to this one in previous postings.
(Although there have been so many I cold have missed it.)

I will be shifting some soil in my garden soon to make a bank. Some of
the soil I will be using has ground elder in it and I was wondering
from what depth the dreaded stuff can still survive and grow.

Hit the stuff with glyphosate a couple of weeks before you start digging
and it probably won't grow back at all. My guess is anything more than a
couple of feet under will not easily grow back. But it depends how much
ground elder root there is in your soil.

The bank will be about 5ft high with a base of about 8ft so stuff in
the middle at the bottom will be 3 to 4ft from a surface. I would be
sorry if in a few years/months time I discovered that it had crawled
back out to haunt me again!

Thistles do that...

So will ground elder IMHO.
Being shallow rooted and not heading a good distance to the surface are two
very different things, and as we've all experienced, weeds can go to
astonishing lengths to survive.
Also in your digging you're almost certain to get small bits of the root
system breaking off and finding that you've inadvertently planted them in a
very nice situation.
I would hit them with the glyphosate like Martin said, and if you can, cover
the bank with black polythene for a month or two to hopefully exhaust it
before it reaches the light. Still no guarantee though, it's persistent
stuff.

Steve