Folks,

Poison Ivy is a very hard plant to deal with. Gloves and shears is about
one of the only ways to get rid of it and then spray the injured stems with
Round up or other plant killers. We have a liquid that the Feed Store
sells, but I don't remember the name and it will kill just about every thing
you put it on.

Of course you have to be careful no matter what you use.

The important thing that you don't want to do if you kill the climber is to
rototil the soil or disturb the roots in any way. They release a chemical
that kills anything else that tries to grow where the plant was disturbed.
You can plant flower gingerly in the area, but disturb on the very top of
the soil. Natural decomposition of roots seems to destroys the chemical
that kill the plants if you disturb the roots.

What ever you do, DO NOT BURN the stems or leaves. The oils can become
airborne and will affect individuals and even people who normally are not
affected may be affect if the oil ladened smoke gets in their eyes or in
their noses.

Tom L.L.
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"Galen Hekhuis" wrote in message
...
I'm showing off some of the plants I put in at the edge of one of my ponds
and the person I was showing them off to pointed to another plant and
said:
"Uh, isn't that poison ivy?" Now I'm not allergic to poison ivy or any
other stuff like that (I would have known, I planted some stuff right in
the middle of a poison ivy patch, there's no way I could have avoided it.)
so I've never really tried to watch out for it or even learn to identify
it
too well. I Googled up a bunch of stuff on it and the pictures look like
it so I'm pretty sure that's what it is and even though it doesn't do
anything to me it still creeps me out. The past few weeks I've been
looking around for it and have found it only in three places.
Unfortunately they are at the edges of ponds and places that I have bush
hogged recently. I've bush hogged lots of other places where poison ivy
has not sprung up so I don't think the bush hog is infected or anything.
I
do wonder if I am creating especially inviting places for poison ivy (and
if so, how to avoid doing it) by creating tree/pond/grassy interfaces.
What is the best way to get rid of what I have growing? I took a squirt
bottle of Round-up (tm) to it and then thought that Round-up might not be
the best thing. I'm not really opposed to the "Kill them all, let God
sort
it out" theory of scorched earth weed killing, but there are a bunch of
neat little critters that live in those ponds and I'd really hate to screw
up their home. Short of digging out individual plants by the roots (I may
resort to that) is there any kind, gentle way to kill the evil weed?

Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
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