songbird wrote:
Tony wrote:
Fran wrote:
English Ivy will grow and smother trees in east TN. My parent
...
Hmm. I have some my mom planted on a steep hill and she also made up
some nice big flower pots and the English Ivy found its way in a
nearby crack between the walk and the slab the house is on. The
stuff she planted on a hill could get out of control one day when I'm
not looking, should I kill it all while I can?

is it growing on trees or the house?

if not, i'd leave it alone, killing it off
would mean possible soil erosion problems
on the hillside, weeds getting established,
etc.

if you want to try other plants there
clear an area and plant them and see
if they can manage the soil/location.
if they fight it out with the ivy and win
i'd say you're replacing one problem
with another. get my drift?

i.e. why fix what isn't broken unless
you have other goals for that area?


songbird

This takes a bit to explain but I'll try. The first owner of the house
didn't want to pay for any more excavation than necassary, so the
hill/mountian side came at an angle to within 3 feet of the rear of the
house. The 2nd owners had that bulldozed so there could be a flat area,
a lawn and whatnot behind the house. Two years after excavation hardly
a weed grew in the heavy clay. The new steeper hillside had big ruts
from getting washed out. The flat area for a lawn was still all clay. I
moved here and first worked on the steep slope that was getting washed
out, I kept taking rotting trees and branches from the woods and
throwing it on the clay hillside. What ever grew I let it stay. Over
the years I kept throwing more dead and rotting trees and branches on
it. 5 years later it's mostly green, but lots of weeds, but also many
pine and other trees. The pines are so numerous I let most of them
get 5' tall then cut them down if I don't want to keep them, I'm just
keeping a few pines there. I let them grow first to let their roots
hold the soil, and eventually rot and help amend the heavy clay soil.
The area is about 15 feet uphill and 70' wide. I've cut down close to
100 pines already from 3 to 6 feet tall, they grow like weeds. Actually
it is all mostly weeds, anything to hold the soil in place. In another
year or so I will start working around the better trees I want to stay
and things I planted like mountain laurel and some hardwood trees that
grew naturally. Well if you got this far, behind all this up on the
hill starts the woods. So if it got out of control there is could be a
problem becasue I only own so many feet back.

So after all that, I could start digging up English Ivy without doing
much damage to the hill. It's probably clay underneath so I could just
throw in some more dead rotting logs and it doesn't take long for
something natural to grow up right next to the rotting logs. For now
almost anything goes but soon I will begin to focus on a plan and get
selective about what I leave grow. It's way to big and steep for a tidy
garden, more like leave nature do it's job and try to keep cutting or
digging up what I don't want.