On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:54:37 -0400, John McGaw
wrote:

brooklyn1 wrote:
"John McGaw" wrote in message
...
Phisherman wrote:
On Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:12:25 +0100, docusk
wrote:

I have a huge bed of ivy which is now highly visible after I removed a
fence panel. How can I get rid if this? It is threatening to strangle
other plants.
I don't mind if it destroys everything else; it's an eyesore at
present and climbing my trees!
docusk

You must not have any deer. They ate all the ivy they could possibly
reach.
Could you please ship me some of your deer? If they've eaten all of your
ivy they should be hungry enough to tackle my 1/2A of ivy-choked trees. I
know that nothing else I've tried including potent herbicides had any
effect on it...


How much ivy can you possibly have on a 1/2 acre? Don't you own a pair of
loppers? You should have gotten to it last month before it leafed out.
What kind of ivy are you talking... English ivy roots are not very deep,
they're pretty easy to yank out of the moist spring ground. When you have
poison ivy and thorny vines then complain.




How much? Well, on my 1-1/4 lot there is at least 1/2 acre which is solid
English Ivy which is growing up the trees and covering the ground without
gaps. In fact it is usually several vines deep over most of its range. Oh,
and I do have poison ivy (there used to be vines as big as my forearm going
up some trees) and thorny vines too. But the English Ivy is not so easy to
kill as you let on. I've chopped it down to ground level in patches. I've
uprooted it. I've poisoned it. The problem is that it will grow back so
quickly that after I clear one area and move on it starts growing back
covering everything I've done in short order.

The only saving grace in the whole yard is that a large portion is covered
in Periwinkle (Vinca minor) and when the Periwinkle and Ivy fight it out
the Periwinkle sometimes wins. And at least the Periwinkle doesn't climb.
Of course some seeds of Wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) have apparently
been dropped by birds around the yard and it is capable of outcompeting the
Periwinkle and Ivy and it _does_ climb trees. Without close examination it
is sometimes difficult to tell Euonymus from Vinca when they are growing
thickly together so getting it under control isn't easy either.

BTW my English Ivy does not "leaf out" -- it is emphatically evergreen
around here and actually seems to grow during the dead of winter. I know
for sure that I had cut it down from some trees last Autumn and it is at
least six feet up now on a few of them.

You've probably tried just mowing it but that's what I do when the
English Ivy grows where I don't want it. The wintercreeper and I
occassionally didi battle, probably when I felt I need humbling. I
got one tree (silver maple) cleared and then straight line winds came
and split it in half and the next year a tornado dumped the other half
across the house. Now I just trim it back...

Kate - middle TN