In article .com,
"Mike Lyle" wrote:

Alan Holmes wrote:
[...]
I've just remembered that I've got ivy growing on a couple of my apple
trees, I've tried, not very sucessfully, to get rid of it.

Interesting. Did you try very hard? I'm imagining a grassed-down apple
tree, where the ivy's very shallow roots would be quite hard to get
out, or where the apple's feeding roots were very near the surface; but
in clear soil I've found they come out pretty well. I can't remember
your position on chemicals; but how about cutting off, and painting the
stumps with something nasty? (I don't like it, but I've done that a few
times with neat SBK where there really was no way to get a bramble or
tree seedling right out without disturbing something cherished.)

When I'm not hosting root parasites on ivy, I try to kill it.
I have to admit I have an awful lot of ivy and I've only removed
about a tenth of it yet. My technique is to cut through the
bigger stems with loppers and remove all the upper foliage
I can get to. Its utterly impossible to remove all the roots
since they go deep into rocky, rubbly soil, through walls etc etc.
I wait until there's some regrowth then I paint the leaves with
a mix of roundup, wallpaper paste and washing up liquid. The idea
is that the ivy leaves are waxy and spray just runs off. Then
I wait until it has a second go at regrowing and repeat. This seems
to work, even if it is a bit labour intensive. Has anyone got
a better idea.