Update
3 days ago
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
The Aggressive Vine In Question
I wasn't entirely accurate on the leaves, they're a little saw-toothy and tend to grow in pairs:
The smaller ones are about 3/4 of an inch long, call it 18mm if you lean that way. Any ideas? The stem grows lots of fine, aggressive roots on a vertical surface, and it makes long horizontal runs just under or just above the soil. The stem gets brittle as it grows larger.
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16 comments:
Winter creeper?
http://www.invasiveplantatlas.org/subject.html?sub=3024
VegasChris
Looks like poison ivy to me.
Overload: Um, the leaves don't grow in triplets and don't have any asymmetry or "thumbs." There's some poison ivy in my yard but I am pretty sure this isn't.
VegasChris: Winter Creeper certainly looks likely. Thank you!
Winter creeper, a eounymus (I can't spell that this early) family member. It will climb quite well too.
I've found a broad leaf herbicide makes short work of such plants. Roundup, or any of it's generic brands can be placed in an inexpensive spritzer bottle, and the fine mist directed only to the leaves of the offending plant. It may take awhile to finally eradicate, since most have subsurface creepers that won't be affected by the spray. Trees are not affected, and the aim of the spritzer bottle, once mastered, allows application to leaves hidden among those of wanted plants.
I concur on euonymous. When those things turn invasive, they turn INVASIVE. Poison is probably the way to go. Something like Round-Up. You'll probably have to hit it a few times.
(I am generally anti-poison, but I have used it on poison ivy, because I'm NOT cutting or pulling that stuff, even with gloves and long sleeves on)
Ah. This is not my invasive vine, unfortunately. Mine has an elongated heart shaped leaf and now that I read your description again, it doesn't climb walls; it climbs other plants and my neighbor's chain-link fence. So I'll have to keep looking for that.
If you're reluctant to use Roundup, high test vinegar (20 or 30% "cleaning" vinegar, I get mine on amazon) will do the job just as well. Keep in mind that it WILL kill anything green you spray it on, just like Roundup, so similar care is required. And I recommend gloves while using it, as its potentially capable of skin burns at that strength (though as long as you rinse it right off you're fine, based on my experience). However the next rain storm will wash it right out of the area and no permanent damage is done.
Vinegar is an excellent knockdown treatment, though it doesn't kill the root. As Ruth notes, it knocks down everything, because the mode of action is cell-wall disruption.
As for what your weed* is, I vote triffid. :-p
*A weed is anything growing where you don't want it (like volunteer corn in a soybean field).
I'm not reluctant to use anything but this stuff is all over parts of the back yard -- I will have to hunt each one back to the recalcitrant root, then hack it and poison the root. It will be a long-term project.
Ken, the high test vinegar WILL kill the root, though I've had a few stubborn things that took multiple applications (but then, I've had Roundup not kill the root a few times, so all's fair).
The nice thing about the vinegar is that it smells badly enough that the dogs won't go near it till its dry, so I don't have to worry quite so much about where I apply it.
You can go to a farm store and buy generic glyphosate herbicide a bit cheaper than Roundup, and it is the same product. We buy it by the gallon of 41% concentrate, but that might be too much on your city lot. You mix that at 1% for killing grass and weeds; 5% for foliar spray on woody plants, such as poison ivy and bush honeysuckle. Those plants pull it in much better in the fall and you might get a kill with 1% mix this time of year, and you surely will if you hit them two or three days in a row. That is important because the pre-mixed glyphostae products you see on the shelves will be the 1% mix for killing weeds and grass.
Since some of us are into that electricity thing, just how conductive *are* those roots? Maybe you could borrow a nice big isolation transformer.
Rich P: impractical, for multiple reasons, satisfying though it might be.
David: This is very tempting. I worry about the feral cats, though, and will probably start with cleaning vinegar. I do use Round-Up along the fences and in my "jungle alley," a yard-wide strip of presumably mandated setback between my garage and the fence the gets overgrown more quickly than I can clear it, but I try to be sparing with heavy-duty weedkiller for the sake of the critters. Their lives have enough hazards without me adding more.
If you use glyphosate, use it early enough in the day that it is dry before the cats roam at night. It is on the safe end of the pesticide list, but I know a guy who screwed up his liver by exposing himself to too much drift.
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