Killing English ivy is a LONG process. this stuff should be illegal. You are on the right track. There is no specific killer for English ivy that will not sterilize the gorund area for a long, long time. To me the best system is to 1) keep pulling, tenaciously, for a full growing season, or 2) every time a new stem emerges, cut it off at the ground and "dap" it with glyphosate. My best experence has been to dig the re-emerging shoot, each time it shows its ugly head. The glyphosate may take the same time frame, but might "feel better." English ivy is not considered (by most) an invasive here in KS but it is to me.
hortster

I've got pretty much the same problem with Asian jasmine, only I've decided not to pull it up before I kill it. Several applications of regular strength Roundup hasn't fazed it. A guy at the Extension Service tells me that the leaves have a waxy surface that keeps herbicides from penetrating. (I've read that ivy is similar in this regard.) He thought I might have better luck by applying it to new growth. We shall see.

The Roundup you get at HD in the gallon jugs with an attached spray applicator contains 2% glyphosate. I've tried a concentrate with 18%, and I see it is killing some of the new growth. I've read there is a 40% version, and I'll go nuclear if I have to.

If I were you, I might think about going ahead with tilling and planting, if you think you can spray new ivy growth without getting any spray on the plants. Once you till, you might be able to turn up and remove major root clusters with your hoe.

There is nothing you can buy that will really effectively kill Ivy. This plant has, according to several botantist I talked with, the ability to stop "weed" killers from traveling down the stems and to the roots, a self preservation techique that many plants share. The only really effective means of anihilating this "weed" is to keep all top growth from being able to absorb any sunlight so those leaves can not manufacture the foods the roots need to survive. You can spend a lot of money buying stuff to spray or try the much less expensive method of mulches and pruning.

I can't post links, but you can access an interesting discussion by googling PCA alien plant working group english ivy. Looks like hortster may have had the right idea about painting the stems. They recommend products other than glyphosate, however. Their discussion about control by mulching is not terribly encouraging. They say the mulch should be left in place for "at least" two growing seasons.

Mulches should be left in place forever and replenished often. Mulches help 1) suppress unwanted plant growth ("weeds"), 2) control soil moisture, 3) control soil temperature, and 4) if of a vegetative nature will add necessary organic matter to your soil. There is no down side to mulches.

Um, hm, and let's not forget about the cardboard and turkey manure. But I really think we were talking about the most effective way of killing ivy prepatory to planting flowers.

I'm using Ortho Brush and Poison Ivy killer and am having good luck. Im also digging and cutting the roots and then spraying it with this stuff. It's a slow process, but it's coming. Just have patience and a good shovel & know you are not alone.

http://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/farmworks-grass-weed-killer-41-glyphosate-concentrate-2-1-2-gal

This is what I have been using it is 41% glyphosate. DON'T GET IT ON YOUR SKIN AND WEAR A MASK WHEN USING IT. It is supposed to be applied after you have cut everything out and pulled as much of the roots as possible and loosened up the soil. I will let you know after this year if it kills all the ivy we have.

Where are you getting your application instructions for the Glyphosate 41%..you're cutting out the ivy and pulling roots, loosening soil?

From the label:

"Product moves through the plant from point of foliage contact and into the roots"

"Reduced control may result when weeds have been pulled, cut, grazed and not allowed to grow back before application"

"No soil activity. Weeds must be emerged. Plants growing from rootstocks of perennial plants will not be affected."

Yes, glyphosate does not have much effect on ivy and brushing/painting on the cut stems is not going to have a significant impact. If you want to try this approach, you need a brush killer type herbicide, which have a mode of action different than glyphosate and tend to be a stronger product when used with woody based plant types. Most of these contain something like triclopyr, which is far more effective than glyphosate.

Since ivy requires sun light to spread, and since nothing sold commercially phases it, I'm jumping out of the box. I'm going down to HD's paint dept. I plan to buy a gallon of decent quality, lusite, exterior house paint and have them make it a nice garden green color. Then I plan to load up my electric paint sprayer and throughly paint the stuff. Suffication should do the trick.

This is very disheartening, I have almost a half acre of Ivy infested trees. If I mow it, spray it with vinegar and or salt, till it, and cover it with wood chips, will that have success. would combining the vinegar and the salt have a greater effect? I fear that as long as there is any living ivy on the trees, it will not die.

rplaisted did you have success with your paint option?

Thank y'all

JK - none of your strategies will work on Ivy and adding vinegar and salt to your soil is a bad idea. If it is climbing trees cut through all the Ivy stems at the base of the tree. Then apply a brush killer to the lower cut ends. The Ivy in the tree will die once its roots are severed.

Ivy that is climbing trees is growing from the ground surrounding the trees. It is relatively easy to kill off the ivy ON the trees by severing the ivy roots at the base of the tree. Everything above the severed portion will die. Perhaps not immediately - there's a lot of energy stored in all that foliage - but eventually without any root access to moisture and nutrients, it will brown, dry and die.

However this method does nothing to kill off the roots that remain in the ground surrounding the trees. Those must be manually dug out and removed (and very completely) or they must be treated with a registered herbicide. Spraying with vinegar and salt or whatever homemade potions you can come up with will not kill the ivy and could very easily have negative impacts on whatever desirable growth exists. Tilling will only spread the roots around and would end up exacerbating the problem, not solving it. And ivy just doesn't smother well. Wood chips will not be the slightest bit effective in this regard and spraying paint on it is likely just as pointless as any other short cut method and can also have negative implications to the environment.

It is difficult to be more clear than this - an established stand of English ivy is difficult to conquer and remove!! It requires time, the correct approach and considerable effort. In the PNW where English ivy is nearly omnipresent in natural landscapes (parks, woodlands, forests and any other native areas), a great deal of time and expense is devoted to clearing it out. Nearly ALL the effort is devoted to manual removal as that is by far the most thorough and effective means of controlling this invasive monster. Simply stated, there are NO short cuts available to home gardeners that have the slightest bit effectiveness other than manual removal or proper treatment with a registered herbicide.

How to remove and kill English ivy.

Chiming in; this has been a very satisfying comment page and hilarious in some places. I say that after 10 years of attempting to combat MY NEIGHBOR'S english ivy that invades everything all the time. So one year I actually resorted to chemicals and bought Bayer's herbicide - which did nothing whatsoever. Called the company; they said buy the stronger stuff. This almost worked after waiting the required 2 weeks! at about $35 a bottle. MY only tip for you is mowing the area if you can - i've found that persistent mowing (and pulling and . . . ) does deter the ivy, and then I've planted periwinkle that actually kept it out of one area. But i've lost the fight because my neighbor does nothing about hers. I actually go TO her property and uncover trees from time to time. So dumb. Painting the ivy really cracked me up. Please let us know how that went! P.S. all the above is true of Chinese wisteria, too.

I have cleared ivy in the past...old...old ivy with damn near tree trunks. I don't even want to talk about it.

However, speaking to smothering like Kimmsr, I still have an area that I contain because it at least gives me some slope stability there. I contain it by bagging my lawn clippings and throwing on the top layer to smother it form the sun. It has worked for two years now. I have made a perimeter that the ivy tries to cross, but never can...because I just dump more.

I am glad this post has reactivated.

I am wondering if lasagna style gardening once you pull up the visible ivy would work. for example laying down cardboard and heaping compost and mulch, leaves, etc and letting that sit over the winter and into the spring.

I am in a new older home trying to get control of all the garden beds and this is what I will use to start is that method. so I am thinking since I'm going to be doing that anyway in other spots that I could pull up ivy in sections and drown it out this way.

Thoughts?

Won't work in my area. Ivy stems just travel underground, rooting as they go, only to pop up beyond where the compost and mulch is. And since the cardboard breaks down so rapidly, I would not be surprised to see the ivy coming right up through it in a few weeks.

IME, only complete root removal works.

What do you think about torching it? I burned the patch we have been trying to get rid of a few month ago. It has come back, of course, but I’m wondering if anyone has had success with just burning a patch over and over again until it is exhausted?

I do believe this stuff is coming straight from the Devil himself.. We just manually removed a portion of it in our backyard, got as much of the roots as possible then sprayed with a high concentration of glyphosate we will see how it does. We also sprayed some existing ivy.

You need to spray glyphosate on actively growing foliage so doing it after removing the ivy is not going to be very effective. Also ivy has an impermeable coating on the leaves so you need to slightly bruise the foliage, maybe by bashing with a rake or something.

Reagan, did you continue torching it? Did it work?

It would take much longer than a month or two to determine if the torching works. All that will do is kill off the top growth but there is a LOT of energy stored in that root system and it will determinedly send out new growth to replace at was torched. You are looking at a full growing season, if not a year or more, to see any definitive results.

Thanks, GG. I ordered some Crossbow since another poster seems to be having luck with it. I figure whatever I use, it’s going to take some time. I just need to at least slow it down.

This is an old but active post. I'm here to testify to just how invasive these are. I'm sitting in my living room and see something under my kitchen counter. I look under and it's a green leaf. It's under the spice cabinet I assumed it was a germinating seed of some sort...I pull off the toe kick and it's English ivy growing thru the floor and and out into my kitchen. There's some right on that side of the house and it occasionally creeps under the siding, but this is incredible. I've spray foamed all along the top of my foundation before, so this found its way in thru a rare opening I guess.

This spot is on the side of my house that I don't see. It's a strip about 30 inches from my neighbor. I'm ok with killing everything there and ensuring NOTHING ever grows back. What's good for that? Salt? Also have to be sure whatever I do doesn't hurt my neighbor's garden beds nearby.

As I think has been stated several times through this thread, the most successful way of removing English ivy involves completely removing the root system. And that involves manually digging up every last scrap of it.

I just bought a older home and this stuff is brutal. It is the devil. I've spent the last two weeks pulling one strand at a time. All of the roots have to come out. I was wondering if anybody could tell me if I put plastic down and mulch over the top If I can stop it? When I bought my home it was growing in the basement and it has crawled up behind my wood siding. I am quite concerned because I'm planning to put vinyl siding on this year. I had read on a site you can put salt down. Softener salt specifically. Can anybody tell me if that works

I’ve had success mowing a path through the ivy, severing the vines on either side of the path, and topping with 6 inches of hardwood mulch. It’s been fairly easy to pull up any tiny shoots that make their way through the mulch. In other areas of the yard, I’ve been pulling English Ivy, poison ivy and porcelain berry by hand for 2 years. Getting there!

Hello all, I have Acres of English Ivy on some property I bought.

the best thing I have found to eradicate the ivy, was to put down black tarps on top the Vines.

this will completely sterilize your soil, anything that is under it will die, then you can plant whatever you want.

you can buy one big black tarp, and continue to move it every few days.

it may take longer but it'll kill weeds, grass ,saplings ,Wisteria ,trumpet vines, honeysuckle everything and anything.

and will leave you with perfect soil to grow whatever you want.

I also use it for weed control in my vegetable garden. It cuts out almost all need to hoe weeds ,in my garden, I only have to weed between the vegetable plant.

The warmer the weather the faster it kills....

The same method works perfect for unwanted weeds in your pond, just float to tarp with PVC pipe around all sides, and move the tarp from place to place after it kills what's underneath it.

You don't want to kill it all at once ,because you'll suffocate your fish, just keep moving around ,and eventually , you will kill all the weeds in your pond .

It's a trick I learned from organic farmers ,for weed control.

No chemicals needed at all.

It is also a great method to sterilize your soil , if you have , "Fire Blight".

it kills all the bad bacteria in your soil.

Been there, done that, and in all honesty, can say without hesitation it doesn't work!! The ivy just travels underground until it outreaches the tarp. In fact, only surface rooted annual weeds are effectively addressed by this method.

And the fire blight bacteria doesn't live in the soil so tarping has no effect on that at all.

Always best to do a little independent research on your own before you follow some suspect method :-) There are plenty of science-based websites out there that can help with valid instructions on how to tame English ivy!!

What suggestions do you have besides pulling it out by the roots. I have not found workable suggestions, and this forum seems to come back to ... pull it out by the roots.

Manual removal of the root system is by far the most effective method. And it is entirely workable....but with 'work' being the key word!! There is no easy way to remove an established stand of English ivy.......it is a time consuming and labor intensive process.

Herbicide applications are NOT effective!! Ivy foliage has a waxy cuticle that prevents absorption of the chemicals. You can get limited control by cutting the ivy back hard now while in active growth to about 4-6" above the ground and then treating/painting the cut stems with full strength triclopyr or other brush killer. But you will need to do several repeat applications for full effectiveness

RoundUp Poison Ivy Brush killer will kill it after a few weeks (month?). BUT...you do still need to pull it up. Mine has been dead for a few months, though, with little regrowth so far. The Poison Ivy RoundUp at least gives me a possible chance to get the ivy up before it spreads as much as it does when the ivy is fully alive, and the vines seem to come up more easily, too, since it's dead. :)

Dog Lovin Woman

Bob Vila has an online “article” about this subject. How To Kill English Ivy. Pulling it up seems to be the best method. He suggests using white vinegar if you want to avoid a herbicide. Some of my ivy looks really pretty “spilling over” an unsightly block wall. But it is a struggle keeping it in check as all of us know. I had a huge pine tree in this same area. The ivy had taken over the tree. You literally couldn’t see the tree. I decided to have the tree removed. The tree removal guy took away TWO loads of ivy before he could even get to the tree. The tree was already covered over when I bought my house. Now I just keep watch on all my other trees in this area. It is a never ending job.

Roundup will kill english ivy quickly. The leaves have to be bruised and broken to ally it to penetrate. You can accomplish this by stomping and grinding the plants down. A heavy pair of shoes will do the trick. This also works for nutgrass, honeysuckle and other tough invasive plants. And it's great therapy too!

I have tried to spray the ivy roots with herbicide with no luck. What I did have some luck with is finding one of the main stems that supplies the ivy roots. I cut it with a sawzall. Then I sprayed it heavily with Bayer brush killer. I believe the herbicide made it to the ball root and killed it. I have seen no growth in the area I’ve done this.

Just wanted to update that my English Ivy is still dead after several months. I used Poison Ivy RoudUp and Crossbow. I am slowly pulling it out of my yard.

We have experienced similar frustrations as have been expressed here. We discovered a product called "Cut n Paste" a strong solution (120g/L) of Glyphosate in a blue Gel. Our Tomentosa tree was completely covered. We used a small very sharp Japanese Adze to cut each stem (about a hundred of them) running up the trunk. Liberally dabbed on the product on both the the upper and lower cut stems. Achieved 100% death including the ground cover. Applied in Winter (June in NZ.) Very Satisfying.

Hi... Everyone. I have a simple solution for killing Ivy...Love. Love is the answer. I needed ivy for the front of our house. I am fully aware of the drama. I needed it to kill and cover. Ok. Simple fix. Over Water. It causes Root Rot. Almost all my beautiful Ivy. Is dead. I stopped iver watering and i saved only a few. The rest have not come back. Because I was concerned that it was to hot and they would die so ya Love and kindness. Go figure. Try seriously Overwatering. Just soak it good. Till it dies. Root Rot. Look it up. Bye guys. Tiffany O.

I read an article that compared rhe Effectiveness of roundup with two other herbicides. Roundup was not effective in the study (30-45%). If You wanted to use an herbicide, the most effective was metsulfuron (available at Amazon) mixed with a sufficant. The sufficant is used to penetrate the waxy leaves. Goats eating at the vines prior to application, or line trimming, was supposed to raise the success rate. metsulfuron with a sufficant was rated at 98% effective.

However, the article stated the preferred method was and continues to be manual pulling.

Just updating....going on about 4-5 months with Crossbow. I had a little bit try to come back, but fixed it. Manual pulling plus Crossbow is working super well!! Thanks to whoever recommended it.

Hey all -

We bought this acre property here in ATL that was overgrown with English Ivy (totally agree this stuff is straight from hell). I recently cleared an area by hand & am treating the area, along with the areas I want to contain with RoundUp Quick Pro (granules), which I get from Amazon. I’ve had pretty good luck getting other areas under control in other parts of the yard. Browning the leaves pretty quickly.

Good luck!

Update: Tried painting some with an oil based spray paint - nothing. Didn't phase it at all since last year. But the vinegar/epsom salt/dish detergent mix did some real damage & I'm planning on doing that this year on a larger scale. It surrounds my property on 2 sides from neighbors who just don't care. Killing trees. :( So good luck all & avoid using Roundup. I can't even use that stuff anyway coz it rains too much here. Has to stay dry for it to work.

Hi,

I would like som advice please. I have 3 large and unsightly ivy root systems making a mess of my 6x3 foot garden. Yes, 6x3 foot. Its tiny and all i can see is Danged Ivy and roots. I cut it back, it grows back. It is growing so voraciously that it is destroying my fencing. I've watered the area with vinager and salt daily for almost a month and aside for a few brown leaves it is basically unphased. I am aware that the first thing everyone is goin to say is dig it up. I am unfortunately not strong enough to dig it out. BELIEVE me, i tried. It has networked so deep and under laid concrete on the other side of my fence that i just cant.

I've heard it all, cut it all away leaving just the root then hammer copper nails into it, Burn it, (the cops would have a field day) slaash the roots and spray the roots with WD40. And many others that defy belief.

One thing that was suggested was to cut everything away and leave flat top roots, drill into them with a wide drill bit and pour boiling salt water directly into the hole every night. That made some kind of sense to me but can anyone attest or deny?

For starters stop putting salt on your garden. Even if you kill the ivy, which is unlikely, you'll make it unsuitable for other plants in future. And don't use wd40. If you want to use herbicides use ones designed for the job. If it's only 6 x 3 you could try covering with a tarp and leaving for several months. When you remove it it should be much easier to dig over the patch and remove any remaining roots.

Is there any chance if a picture? It would be good to make sure you really have Hedera helix and not some other vine which goes by the same common name.

Thank you for your concern but I am perfectly happy using salt, I don’t want anything to grow. As soon as those godforsaken root bundles are gone I’m putting chips down. And as I mentioned, digging it out isn’t really the most viable option. I won’t get it all, it’s partially under concrete. Ill try and remember to take a picture When I get home

I have a property with it on it and it must have spread across the back year over decades and is on most of the trees. I plant to cut all the trees in the backyard down, they are past their peak anyway. I'll keep mowing the grass so anything that pops up will be cut back. There will be ivy that will grow beyond the fence out into the field but nothing I can do about that. English ivy should be illegal to plant.

I started trying to remove a 12x4foot patch of ivy about 10 months ago in the fall. I did not want to use chemicals, so I died digging it up. This spring, bed was full of tender ivy shoots. I took a week off of work and spent every day working section by section turning the soil with a shovel, then sitting in the dirt painstakingly sifting through the dirt pulling out all of the roots that I could find. The bed is currently has an ample supply of weeds, and minimal regrowth of ivy. In the fall I will probably repeat my grid eradication method. I should be able to complete it in a long weekend this time around. I agree with other posters that say this stuff should be illegal to plant/sell. It would not surprise me if I found the hand of Satan grasping a root as I try to pull it out. I have a negative physical reaction when I see this stuff for sale at the garden center. There should be a waiting period and required counselling before anyone can buy this stuff. Oh, P.S. I tried 30% vinegar /dish soap/table salt on a second, smaller patch. This killed the above ground plant in a day, but the ivy appears to have been emboldened by my effort, and returned with a vengeance. No substitute for elbow grease if you want to eradicate this stuff without using damaging chemicals.