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bluebirdpeony

Ground cover won't die, harboring poison ivy

BlueBirdPeony
10 years ago

Shady bed under a pine tree. Gives me poison ivy if I'm anywhere near it. I actually don't even dare take the tractor in the grass around the bed because just the grass clippings have given me poison ivy before. Last year we actually hired someone to spray it, kill it, and then pull as much of it as possible. It's officially back with a vengeance.

The intent was to totally overhaul the bed, changing the growing conditions to make it less hospitable for the poison ivy. With this ground cover, the ivy gets interspersed throughout and we can't really spray or pull it (can't see what we're working with). Our ideas were 1) let the bed go to grass (grass will typically win over poison ivy) or 2) kill the ground cover, get the ivy under control by spraying/removing and then start over with some hostas, etc. that would still let us remove any ivy that took.

So, now that this ground cover seems un-killable, what do I do to evict the ivy?

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