Pulaski

That's what this is for.



[Pink survey marker "flagging" tape]

Nutek

Spot on actually.. it was a boundary marker.

Pulaski

No kidding.

Mine was too, of course.

WEBlue

Ok, here's another question. Not sure if it should go here, but what the h....

I struggled against English ivy around (and on!) our British house for years and years. Mostly the ivy won.

Now I move to the USA and we buy a house with--you guessed it--an English ivy problem. What do you savvy expats do against it? I've already cut the vines and dug up many of the roots I can see, doused everything left in Roundup, and that has calmed it down considerably. In fact it may even have solved the problem of the ivy trying to climb the house and chimney. (Though I can't believe I have solved that problem so easily!!! Next spring may tell a different story.) There are bits of it where I want to put a garden & I will attack those soon, but probably can't use the Roundup, only digging it up by hand.

But the big problem is there are woods abutting us--not our property--that are full of it, and it's trying to cross the boundary at many points. We have permission from the (absentee) woods owner to kill any ivy we see on his property edge as long as we don't damage the trees & flora. (Owner agrees that English ivy is an invasive horror.)

Now that all the trees' leaves have pretty much fallen, we can see how disgustingly healthy and green that ivy is in those woods. It covers trees, stone walls, and large patches of ground. Any tips for fighting it as it marches towards us?

Nutek

Fire.

No idea... We just keep cutting it back / pulling it out each year.

WEBlue

Are you SURE? I think some of my ivy in the property in southern England had actually survived a bonfire gone amuck in the far back garden before we moved in. I think burning had strengthened the ivy if anything! Those vines were thick as saplings--though charred--and still happily sprouting shiny green leaves everywhere.

OK, this is what I feared. Will carry on as long as I have breath, I guess.

Nutek

Pulaski or someone will probably be along with some better plan. I just sort of flail away in the hopes that I can keep the outdoors as far away from me as possible.

SultanOfSwing

Well established English Ivy is hard to control with pesticides. You'll need multiple applications (use the RoundUp poison ivy/tough brush killer as a more specialised herbicide). If you combine repeated applications with manual removals, that should work.

Vines of any kind are pretty hard to deal with when well established in a garden, we have the same trouble with wild grapevines in ours. You just have to be persistent.

Pulaski

+1. I use a combination strategy of Roundup PI/TBK, and physical removal. In some areas the ivy is gone, in other areas the battle rages on!

I am also fighting on a second front against perrywinkle. Dämn I hate that stuff, it's much harder to kill than ivy, and attempting physical removal is futile.

SultanOfSwing

Oh, the battle rages on with our wild grape but it's significantly better than it was when we first moved in four years ago. Ours has all been manual removal, albeit aggressive. I did speak to one of the foremen at the office and he said there is a herbicidal oil that is effective with the vines but I never got around to following up.

Maybe next season.

Mrs Danvers

Oh yeah, the leaf issue. I just got done raking 10 bags worth because my electric leaf blower/sucker thing sucks and died after two seasons of use.

Is there seriously no brand of electric leaf sucker that's any good? I hate the smell of gasoline powered appliances. Got a reel mower, a Ryobi wire trimmer which do OK for me.

Pulaski

See posts #15, #16, and #10 above in this thread.

Electric leaf blowers are a joke, utterly useless for anything other than an apartment or condo balcony. I am surprised the one you had lasted two years. .... If I owned one it would be lucky to last a week because my frustration with the pathetic puff it makes would likely see me smashing it on the driveway.

WEBlue

Thanks SoS & Pulaski. I'll search out the specialized Roundup PI/TBK and keep up the good ivy fight.

This is my husband's attitude too.

He's always been aghast at the idea of mulch mowing, and would prefer to rake up all those messy leaves or lawn clippings and heave them over the fence into the forest nextdoor. I had to do some fancy talking to about soil nutrition to change his mind.

Pulaski

Roundup PI/TBK has a yellow cap, and costs about $25 for a quart of concentrate. Bayer Avanced make a competing product, in a blue bottle, that is around $20 for a quart with exactly the same herbicide in it, at almost twice the concentration, ..... so it goes a lot further.

Also a tip I read for spraying waxy-leaved weeds like ivy and periwinkle, is to put a dash of dish soap in the sprayer to help the spray stick to, spread over, and penetrate the leaves. However that might make it wash off more easily if it rains within 24 hours.
I'll be interested to hear how you do over the coming years, because while I am 100% behind your sentiment, (I use my leaves to make mulch for the garden) I have a couple of concerns that prevent me doing that. I believe that the leaves will make the ground more acid, especially if you have oaks, which have a lot of tannins in their leaves, so you may need to apply lime to correct the pH. And the mulch layer can become a breeding ground for various grubs and insects, though that may not be as much as a problem for you with your winters being longer and colder than the ones down here.

WEBlue

Excellent info, thanks!

Yes, I'm not sure it's advised for all kinds of lawns, although the US gardening forum I linked to previously recommends it across ALL the American lawn types. The idea is to chop the fallen leaves up fine and return all that good nutrition sucked out of the lawn soil by the tree roots. They say you must never simply leave them as they fall (that will absolutely hurt grass growth and promote diseases, mould, etc.). The leaves need to be raked evenly over the grass and mowed once or twice over, depending on the volume or toughness of the leaves, to reduce them to something resembling rough mulchy bits. We've done it only twice, but it's amazing how quickly the leaf bits sink down out of sight and the grass looks unchanged.

Our lawns were in very bad shape when we moved in, very sandy soil under sparse poor grass with strong weed clumps. All summer I've been digging weeds, and we did a fertilize and reseed session last month. IMO, the leaf mow-mulching can't hurt such a struggling lawn, and it might help beef up the sandy soil. And re-raking the leaves to get them distributed more evenly over, then mowing them once or twice seems somewhat easier than bagging and dragging.

But that's an interesting point about the oak leaves being too acid. We have two huge sycamores in the front (I've been told they look like sycamores), with an oak & elm in the back. I do definitely need to test my soil, because I haven't a clue what it needs in the way of supplementing for healthy PH.