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Tennessee Gardening

Poison Ivy...

17 years ago

Boy oh boy, poison ivy is no joke down here. I'm used to the stuff being a nasty and aggressive little vine up in Southeast Michigan but I've never seen it grow as a free-standing bush until I moved in to my property down here.

I have no less than three 12-15' tall "bushes" of the stuff growing on my property - not counting the actual vining types...complete with berries and all.

I got all that I could see with several treatments of round-up and tonight I'm hoping to cut down the stuff to just a foot or two above the ground and paint more full-strength concentrate on the stumps to try to really *ZAP* the root structure of the crap but we'll see.

Any advice for ensuring the root structures actually die and the berries don't seed?

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Comments (4)

ladybug37091
17 years ago
I hate to tell you this but I have not been able to kill it here, especially when it is close to the house. I have hit it full strength with everything. It dies down but comes right back in the same spot. If you have better luck, let me in on your trick. Rhonda
brandon7 TN_zone7
17 years ago
Poison Ivy can be killed with RoundUp mixed double strength or with the RoundUp Brush Killer. The trick is to do it at the right time of year. There are times that it responds much better than at other times. I'm not sure when that is, but the guys at the UT Ag Ext Office should be able to tell you.

I have killed bunches of it with only a single or double treatment of RoundUp mixed double strength. I can't remember exactly what time of year I sprayed it. Check with the people over at UT.
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arjo_reich
Original Author
17 years ago
What I had read, and what I am trying to do is...

1. Apply several applications of premixed Round-Up Brush Killer to all the leaves, until the entire plant seems to be dead and wilted to the point where the leaves a crumbly - although I'll let you figure out how to determine that by yourself, lol.

2. Cut all of the plants away so that only a 12" stump of the plant is sticking up out of the ground and place markers in the ground next to this spots identifying these stumps as being poison ivy.

3. Apply the Round-Up concentrate, without diluting it at all, over the stump as directed in the stump removal technique and leave it be for the rest of the year.

---

Then, periodically, check the area near the markers and apply more round-up to any new shoots you see coming up out of that area. Over the course of a year or two, you should be able to get it under control to the point of it just being sproutlings and not *** FIFTEEN FOOT TALL BUSHES *** -- lol that still kills me that it was that pervasive in my yard.
arjo_reich
Original Author
17 years ago
Here are some of the pictures I took of the poison ivy in my backyard if anyone wants to see some comparison pictures. I also submitted them to the archives at http://poisonivy.aesir.com for an official ruling.

I'm never certain it's poison ivy until it gets me but I'll let you decide. If it's not poison ivy, I'm going to feel a little guilty for the bushes of whatever-it-was that I've been poisoning for the last week. =/

[click through for larger images]
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Here is a link that might be useful: Poison Ivy Resource Site

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