Attack of the killer brambles!

I recently moved into my parents’ old house. They haven’t lived there for more than a year, so it was a bit neglected, but hey, I get to live there on my own, rent-free. :slight_smile:

The garden was also fairly neglected, and I had to attack the jungle-like lawn with a hover mower. There’s a bramble patch that’s trying to take over the garden, and it had sent out long snaking runners that were lying over the surface of the grass (not rooted into it). Well, being a lazy type, I just scooshed the mower over the brambles, which got shredded in a fairly satisfying manner.

I then raked up the clippings and went on holiday for a couple of weeks. Big mistake! It looks like brambles have an amazing ability to propagate from the tiniest shred of mangled plant! The area of lawn near where I shredded the bramble shoots is now dotted with at least two dozen little bramble plants, already getting on for a foot high. Obviously I didn’t rake up all of the clippings.

So, two questions: one, how the hell do brambles do this? It’s as if I put a cow through a mincer and each bit grew into a new cow! And two, how the hell do I get rid of them? I’ll already have blackberries up the wazoo come autumn, and I think there are still some in the freezer from two years ago!

All plants can do this, iirc, but some need a lot of attention and care and are called clippings, and some sprout wherever they find any dirt. (Obviously plants have no brain or heart, so cutting doesn’t immediately kill it; the end can sprout roots if it’s in earth and survives long enough)

Dumping the cuttings on something inorganic, or in a bramble patch, should be ok :slight_smile:

It is called vegetative propagation and it is damned hard to get some species to do it- you try it with mistletoe.


SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

Wow. A hover mower? I never knew there was such a lawn-care technology gap between the US and the UK. Here I’ve been using these damn lawn mowers with WHEELS all this time, and you guys are just floatin’ around!

Seriously toadspittle, you’ve never seen a hover mower? That wasn’t a typo: http://www.flymo.com/node78.asp?CatID=16&img=

r_k if these are still small plants I’d suggest some broadleaf herbicide. A Dicamba/MCPA mix is usually the most common, the same stuff as you use for killng dandelions etc. Should take out the brambles without harming the grass, but it won’t work if the plants are too big.