I may be a bit biased, as I dislike the plant to begin with.

Waste it. I would trash it for the reasons that you mentioned; mushy in the late winter and fall, and invasive spreader. If you can't get rid of it by digging it out, then hit it with some round-up, following all application instructions.

i would get rid of it too as its too much a pain to maintain. i have however opted to go with the big ears cultivar ( aka helen von stein ) it is more of a clumper rather than a sprawler and the new foliage tends to hide any yuckky looking foliage (called 'melting out')
it also rarely blooms so you dont have an army of bees buzzing in your face either. the foliage is larger than that of traditional lambs ear too and it makes a very nice edging plant.

Sue
"The one thing all gardeners share in common is a belief in tomorrow"

I find lambs ear very easy to control. After it blooms, I cut it all back to the ground and it grows fresh new leaves. If it begins to sprawl, I just pull it out.

Not completely unrelated....

...When the funeral passed the market square
Such a smell of fish was in the air
Though his burial was slated,
Meow, meow, meow
He became reanimated,
Meow, meow, meow
He came back to life, Don Gato!

Here is a link that might be useful: *This* camp song about the cat?

Dig, pull, Don't till !! Any little bit of root leftover is a new start...I inherited a MESS of lambs ears which I tried to get rid of in the spring of 1997. Yesterday, I pulled up a sprout of it...but it does go away for the most part eventually!

You must have the ideal spot for it. It speads quidkly. Do not allow it to flower. It re-seeds it's self more that just comming up from root.
So Don't let it flower, pull it, spray it. if all else fails burn it.

I find that it helps if it is in the veggie garden. it grows well and looks great under and aroung tomatoes and peppers. the bees love it and they pollinate everything in my garden while they are there! I just pull up any out of bounds growth and top it occasionally to control growth. So use it or share it with others.

The bees love it that is why I grow it. Last year my two plants didn't make it through the winter, but I have four coming up from the seeds that the plant dumped. There were more seedlings, but I thinned them out. There are always bees on the flowers. It spread about four square feet, in full morning sun and partial shade in the late afternoon.

Durgan.

Thank you for the help. I will try some of these ideas but mine are under a dogwood tree and spreading into the lawn around it, it is making the lawn look lite green all around it. Any help here please.

If you want to keep the lambs ear, but not have it go into the lawn you may need to consider a barrier to contain it. You could try a deep plastic or metal one that pushes below ground to block roots from spreading and keep the grass on one side and the lambs ear on the other - with luck it may not be very obvious to the eye. Or you could try a decorative stone, brick, plastic, metal border to separate the areas. Good luck.

I figure I could add something years later since other people added comments a year later.

I moved into a rental house in Boulder, CO that had very well done perennial beds around the time this original post was written. It's been neglected for 7 or 8 years or so, especially the last 3 years. I can tell from Google maps the last year the lambs really took out for the rest of the beds and even the yard. I've been digging, pulling and now have covered an entire bed with clear plastic to kill the seeds before I'll consider planting there. The roots have formed an impenetrable mass and are sometimes thicker than my thumb. They have smaller roots finding them all together. I think if I were building a prairie Sod house I would be thrilled to find these. I'm constantly facing masses of sprouts and churning them over with hopes of killing most of them. We live in a Bee Safe neighborhood, and I don't think Round Up would have helped much anyway. I put an ad on craigslist and I've had many people haul garbage bags of plants away but eventually I got tired of answering the text-I think I had probably 50 people take A wavering amounts of these plants. I've never had them spread before but I stay on top of them, possibly since I use them in flower arrangements or pull them out as soon as they stray out of their designated area.

I've discovered I now despise them and I don't think I'll ever let them grow again. I see them downwind from our yard and I'm tempted to go pull them now to spare them future agony- especially since it's likely the seeds came from here in the first place.

I like mine which is that of giant leaf plant with small flowers. Its hardly invasive. I did have the regular variety but I dug them up becuase i didn't like the post flower look. It was easy to remove too.

Dont rototile anything that you want to rid of because you'd have made more plants. Just dig them up or cut off its access to sunlight.

pour a little boiling water on it from the kettle. easiest way I know.

I have tried booking water by the bucket load, I have tried doing to China (the roots spread one ft below ground), I have tried poison as early as three days ago... Forget plastic. The roots are so deep they even travel under concrete. I am to the point of digging up anything I want to salvage from its stranglehold, buying the absolute poison, and just leaving that formally wonderful garden bare for a couple years... See attached photo to see how it is not only jumped across my sidewalk into my lawn, remained alive after poison, and is strangling some amazing plants

I took some from my house (that I grew from seeds) out to my property and planted it around an old stump that has wild roses growing out of it. The next spring the moles ate it all. Oh well. Here it is a year and a half later and I found a sprout growing in the compacted rock parking area in front of the barn - 40' from where I planted it. I know this is an old thread but I now dispise Lamb's ear. I sold the house where I started it from seed this spring and it was taking over everything!

hi there .. i know nothing of gardening and have learned the hard way with this plant!! Could someone pls guide me ... when is the best time to get rid of it? Now in the fall? (october), or wait until next spring?

I have tried EVERYTHING MENTIONED! A friend gave me a handful about three years ago and now I am stuck with the whole right side of my garage full of them and now they are spreading on my grass. I have been through bottles and bottles of Round up and it doesn't touch it. Someone please help me! I need some more suggestions. The roots are thick and deep!