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.
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!