New homeowner trying to get some curb appeal, and I guess I should just let the ivy take over my life at this point. I’m new to all this, and I was trying to do it by hand. After two days and not a lot a progress (as seen in one of the pictures), I’m calling for help. Not sure if you can tell, but the roots are THICK and plenty. It was seriously neglected for at least 5 years. It’s only looking this “good” after weed wacking it and trimming down the overgrowth.
Now I finally came back to deal with the ivy and I’m struggling. Anyways, please HELP.
by yyyllluan
33 Comments
I’m thinking goats
🐐
Glyphosate will make it all go away.
Seriously, goats. See if anyone has a few that want to spend the day in your yard. Or, commercial mulcher. Slope will make that difficult. Satan’s spawn will very quickly devour that.
More goats, particularly the climbing variety…
Put on a pair of gloves and keep at it. 5 years of neglect is going to take several days/ weeks of hard labor
Start with the easy stuff like plucking out the weeds and other smaller vegetation that have shallow roots.
Saw off the thicker trees and either dig out the roots or continually chop off new growth
Put down mulch on the entire area to prevent future weeds from growing/spreading.
Do a little each day/weekend.
Or hire a landscaper to help out
Goats would actually be very effective, would be all gone in a day. You can rent them.
I found landscapers to get rid of it quickly. I heard you can also use a mixture of (water, vinegar, and dawn dish soap). I would not try to pull this yourself. I have gotten the poison ivy and sumac poisoning three times and it’s not fun.
herbicide, farmers do rent goats out for stuff like that, hire a landscaper to do it
“Seriously, I don’t know how the fire started, officer. I see the plants, then I don’t!”
-Some Pyromaniac in California.
Hey OP I have a similar issue in our front yard, which is about 30 feet deep, 50 feet wide, and on a 2-to-1 slope which is really steep.
English ivy, japaneese honeysuckle, poison ivy, and some weird vine that puts up stalks and down deep roots every 2 feet or so. Raspberry shurbs and multiflora rose bushes which both are thorny.
Its the pits.
I live in a City where goats probably arent allowed.
So I gear up multiple times a year and work on it by hand.
I wear chemical resistant gloves that go to my shoulders because of the poison ivy, and I pull what I can of that. Goes into a trash bag to be disposed of in the landfill, you can’t really compost that.
Then I use a string trimmer, brush clearer, and chainsaw to go after the rest.
It gets a little bit better each time you go out there.
It will take years.
Fall and spring are really the times to invest your effort. Summer is maintenance.
Flamethrower?? 🤷♀️
If only I could post the screenshot of the dewalt ad below your post:
“There are no shortcuts on the job-just hard work and the right tools for finishing”
😆
That’s not as daft as you think, my uncle got a goat to eat waist high grass in his garden after moving in, it worked after a couple of weeks he had nice short grass with out the back breaking work it’s been manageable for many years since.
I vote for long horn sheep, goats, cows, rabbits, pigs, anything but me, i have poison ivy now. Its such a bother.
Do not let this opportunity pass you by. This is an opportunity to buy a machete.
If you’re gonna go at it by hand get yourself a jumpsuit and a higher powered weed eater. I got a 52Cc Wild Badger one that can with blades. It’s was around $180- it is heavy. Cuts right thru all that crap. Then I use a bailing pitchfork to pick it up and put it into paper lawn bags. After that I’d let the city know and it would get picked up. Just mow over the area and keep it cut. It will be a constant battle.
Goats do also help for real
I’m gonna have to say goats here
Goats – as others mentioned. You might have to go the chemical route – Crossbow, RM 43, etc.
Rent some goats. I rent mine out all the time. The trick is you have to have some temporary fencing up around it, for mine anyways. They are way to ridiculous to be able to tether 😂
Napalm
Ah, I’m also battling ivy and virginia creeper. Grape vines, as well. My least favorite out of everything we’re battling is greenbrier. We moved in just over a year ago and although we’ve made a lot of progress, we’re definitely no where near done. Our yard was neglected for about a decade aside from the grass being cut, and it definitely showed.
Unfortunately my best advice is to hydrate while you work and make sure you get as much of the root systems as you can… we’ve been ripping out as much as we can, giving the area a bit of time to grow back so we can see what we missed, ripping out everything you see again, and then putting down cardboard to hopefully smother any remnants with pine needles on the top.
Spray round up on poison ivy and any other, kills right down the roots, so next spring you will be ready to plant
If it were mine, I would take a few hours every day. I use two seat cushions and sit and pull and cut. Start at the top and let gravity pull you down. Push all the waste down with you to the bottom, let them sit there and dry out, easier to clean up later. Get yourself some heavy duty scissors and an electric limb hand held cutter, it will cut through a lot of the smaller branches of trees, like two inches thick. Good also for cutting the thicker ivy and other undesirable growth. If it were mine, I would cut all the ivy around the trees at the ground and let the ivy die off. Later you can pull the dead down. Never let anything climb your trees or buildings. I would encourage all the ivy on the ground. Once ivy under control, it is easy to maintain as long as you do regularly. I have a similar area and now I love it but it is always a work in progress.
PS. It is going to be stunning when finished.
Just use glyphosate and pull what it doesn’t kill.
If you’re gonna downvote me for recommending the most efficient method – grow up. Vinegar and salt are both chemicals and wildly stupid to use and deleterious to soil health. There’s a reason “salting the fields” is an expression.
Long sleeves and pants, gloves, and a podcast — something of the Dan Carlin Hardcore History – Blueprint for Armageddon https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-series/
RoundUp is what you need. Put it in a backpack sprayer and just spray all the groundcover. It has a surfactant so it will stick to the leaves, which will take it down to the root system, and goodbye groundcover. And it looks like you have plenty of sunlight, which helps. And it won’t hurt the trees, because it only goes through the leaves, any overspray that hits the ground or their trunks is not going to hurt the trees.
Brush trimmer. They are made for this sort of thing, and would make quick work of it.
Metal head for the weed Wacker. $15
Super goats
More goats sent
I mean how many goats can you wrangle in a 100 mile radius?
Hey, get out of my yard!