I mixed it with Bishop weed, (variegated form of Aegopodium) because I was covering a very steep hillside at the back of the property and the bishop weed won.

I am confused why you wanted the Houttuynia gone. If you are panting another aggressive plant. Are you looking for something prettier? Are you changing the look from ground cover to garden plants in the area?

I hate this plant!! Ugh it grows up in everything!! I actually managed to "think" I got all of the roots. I have been working to free myself of this plant for 5 years now.

It grows in my hosta it grows in my other flowers if I let it. As soon as I see a sprout of it I am digging it up along with the underground runners. I have a few spots where it is still coming up but I have managed to keep it at bay, at least on top of the surface.

Good luck on keeping it managed, cause the only thing working here is a lot of digging and plunking and chunking.

i too am mystified at killing one invasive with another invasive..

but hey.. if it works.. and you are happy.. then i am happy for you

ken

I have been trying to kill this plant for at least fifteen years.

Frank

A gardening friend of mine tried to give me a piece of this 'beautiful ground cover' she had just planted in her garden. I took one look at it, recognized it as houttuynia and said NO THANK YOU. I also advised my friend to go immediately and yank it out of the planting hole. She chose to ignore my advice. The next year she was singing the blues and has been trying (unsuccessfully) to eradicate it ever since.

I guess (even though I titled this thread "Die...") I really have no hope that I will be able to kill it, but rather, I'm trying to keep it from growing so tall, deep, wide, etc. Have you ever seen two-ft tall houttuynia? Or roots from this thing so thickly tangled that they fill half a garbage can from just a few shovels-ful of dirt? For whatever reason, by the end of last summer, in the spots where I planted the strawberries, mostly just the strawberries showed - and the houttuynia that were still there were barely visible and of small to normal size (instead of the plant-from-hell-on steroids). That to me is probably the most success I can expect!

I once met Ed Hume (popular Northwest gardening guru) at a Q & A session at a local nursery and asked him what I could do to get rid of houttuynia. His one-word answer? Move!

roundup will take care of it ....

and just like poison ivy.. you have to respray it.. EVERY TIME it releafs.. 3 to 5 times per year ... until it is gone ...

you just have to be more aggressive than it is in reapplication ...

trust me.. been there .. done that ...

the PI took me 3 years to kill ...

ken

This sounds like the fight I have had with the lavendar-blooming oxalis that my mother accidentally gifted me with in a potted begonia. It has totally taken over her beds and grass and is trying to do so in my garden.

Only, RU won't work. It has many little bulblettes (is there such a word?) on each plant and it also seeds everywhere. You cannot spray it with enough RU to kill the little bulbs. When you're digging them up, if you miss one little bulb, you have a whole new plant in what seems like days.

Maybe I should try the strawberries?

I'd love to know if this works for anyone else! I don't know if any old strawberries would work, or if you have to use the particular variety that I did (Italian Musk strawberries; see link below). In any case, the triangular area of approximately 135 square feet that was one thickly covered with - by the end of summer - two-feet high houttuynia is now completely covered with these berries. Yes, there is bare ground showing, and yes, there are sprouts of houttuynia pushing their way up, but by the end of last summer, when I had far fewer strawberries, there were no longer any giant houttuynia stalks on steroids, I don't know if this is due to any chemical change in the soil that's due to the strawberries, or whether the strawberries are simply "out-thugging" the houttuynia, but so far, things seem to be going in the direction I had hoped for. And this summer I may even get the benefit of a decent crop of berries too!

Here is a link that might be useful: Italian Musk Strawberries

Bam! Pow! Thunk! Sounds of two invasives duking it out.....

The title of this thread had me crackin' up. My nemesis here is raspberry vines, was variegated bishop weed in OH. Most people have that weed that becomes a personal battle of epic proportions and strong emotions. Cheerin for you - good luck!

Yes one man's poison is another man's cup of tea.

I love Bishop weed and Chameleon for slops and areas I want to not have to mow. They are both a plant that should be used for a specific purpose and will work for you for that purpose. But I have a couple of acres of land and know some plants can be difficult if you have limited space.

I have been lucky with both Bishop's Weed and Houttuynia, unlike many. I had no idea that either of the plants were invasive when I purchased and planted them quite a few years ago...

The Houttuynia died - it came back after the first winter but didn't survive the next season - probably due to lack of water. (Note that I originally purchased it for one of my container water gardens because I thought it was so pretty, then planted it in the ground after the season was over so I could use it as a ground cover. Guess I should have known it needed lots of water, right?) The Bishop's Weed comes back valiantly every year, but has yet to cover even a square foot of the area where it is planted; just by chance, I planted it under my bird feeders and I believe the toxicity of the sunflower seed shells has kept the 'Weed' in check.

So, it was due totally to the luck of the ignorant that neither of these plants took over my yard, as they have done to many other unhappy gardeners. Needless to say, I have no plans to plant either again now that I have learned how invasive they can be.

Holly

Yes, I fell for that "oh, what a pretty colorful plant" as I was perusing the local nursery. Brought them home, but by then I learned to research before planting, and thankfully so.

I got rid of them right away. I sold them on Craigslist, and told the guy they are known to be invasive, but he wanted them anyway.

I remember reading, if you even break a piece of this plant off and it lands in another area of your yard, it will root itself.

The only way I got rid of the pre-existing bishops weed on my lot was by planting a bed of Pachysandra. Within three years, the bishops weed choked out and never came back. I then replaced the pachysandra with geraniums and other plants. But, I still think bishops weed is nice, in the right setting, in a contained area surrounded by concrete.

"I once met Ed Hume (popular Northwest gardening guru) at a Q & A session at a local nursery and asked him what I could do to get rid of houttuynia. His one-word answer? Move!"

LOL! That's what I did. :p

I fell for the pretty, colorful foilage too, when we bought our first house. I'm surprised no one has mentioned the smell. Ours was planted around the hose faucet, and when I had to bend over and get my nose near it, ack! I can't even describe the smell. Stale, sickly...?

My aunt bought the house when we moved, and it's still there, as I'm sure it will forever be. :: Maybe I'll tell her about the strawberries.

Ha! Even most hated plant has it's place in our world..... just not in my yard please.

Here is a link that might be useful: Houttuynia is a herb and it inhibits cancer!

Wow. That info's worth sharing, thanks. That link made a bunch of other windows pop-up, though. I recommend the next person just do their own search.

Is it the edible one? If it is edible one we use the roots to make salad with a lot of hot chilli. Even I tried to buy it from Australia.

What's the story on folks' battles with this? Success? Failure? Gave up & moved?

I dug mine out, this was many years ago when I was extending the size of the beds back when I still had a lawn and a more conventional landscape. I dug out the main parts, shook out & sorted through the dirt carefully and tossed the roots/plants, then I spent the next two years digging out any that popped up from roots I'd missed but it wasn't that bad really. I don't think you can dig it out in one session or get completely rid of it in a single year. Actually, I've had worse-- namely some type of campanula that was here when we bought the house and pink Mexican Primrose, both have lots of small brittle roots and any left in the ground will sprout.

The stuff smells so bad I couldn't stand it especially when weed eating around the beds but it also got ratty looking in summer, it was coming up mostly green and invading the lawn. The smell was a big reason I wanted it gone. I had 4 fairly large areas of it.

I started this thread 4 years ago, and here's what happened since. The houttuniya plus bishop's weed that migrated from another spot have definitely won. The Italian musk strawberries look like they're going to make it in early spring, but then the other two monster plants start coming up like gangbusters. The area in question is a triangular space surrounded on all three sides by a low stone wall ( on two sides the wall goes up about a foot or so, on the third side the wall goes down about two feet. It's a very hilly neighborhood, both north-south and east-west). So I can't even hire a backhoe - which is probably the only way I could get rid of the damn thing. I give up.