Anyone who has ever tried to remove ivy knows how difficult it can be. I’ve got a patch growing next to the house I’d really like to eradicate, so I went to Walmart to see if they had any plutonium available for that purpose. As luck would have it, they were completely out.:mad:
What other sure-fire ways are there to permanently get rid of ivy?
This seems to be pretty comprehensive.
Here we are in the future and plutonium STILL isn’t available at every corner drug store.
I have found that fire works pretty well at removing unwanted ivy (is there any other kind?), but if it is near your house you may want to try some other option.
Plutonium unavailable for removing ivy? Shucks. And I had such ambitions.
Those are some of the most unhelpful illustrations I’ve ever seen.
Wait for a warm day at least in the 70s, then spray the leaves liberally with Roundup. It will take awhile, but eventually, the killer is drawn to the roots and kills the plant. Worked well for the fucking bamboo in the back yard.
Or any OTHER kind of bamboo. 
Worthless. Why did they even bother with pictures?
I don’t know from experience (thank goodness), but I’ve always heard you do NOT want to breathe in those fumes. I would not want to be within two football fields of that fire. Ivy in your lungs sounds like some very bad business.
It could be worse. It could be tires instead of ivy.
Slightly more seriously–what does a burning rubber plant smell like? We have a rubber plant in our front yard.
That “Ways to Remove an Ivy Plant” page says:
And then a little later it says
–Mark
I had good luck getting rid of a hearty Oregon grape plant by cutting out the plant and then painting the cuts ends with undiluted Roundup. I used a little glass dish and a small cheap paint brush from the dollar store.
That’s not the right way to use Roundup. Roundup is absorbed through the leaves, while the plant is growing. If you cut off the leaves and apply it to the stem, it won’t be absorbed. Your cutting off the leaves probably killed the plant; the Roundup was irrelevant.
–Mark
I was told (can someone confirm) that the leaves of ivy ‘breathe’ through their undersides. Therefore, you should try and rake the leaves back or something to expose those, and get the Roundup on the underside.
I learned that if I touch an unidentifiable blob of green stuff, I wear brown gloves.
Thanks WikiHow!
Umm, this is quite standard advice. For large or old stumps, there is even a version of Roundup for killing stumps.
Full strength on freshly cut stumps works well. The user has to be well gloved, etc., and throw out the brush in a bag afterwards, etc. Older’/bigger stumps, drill some holes in it first.
This is extremely well known advice in vegetation removal.
Whether it’s well known or not, it’s not what the manufacturer recommends. They say to spray Roundup on the leaves.
How do I properly apply Roundup
Nevertheless, I do see a lot of advice from other places on the net that say it will be absorbed through stems, but more slowly than if applied to the leaves. It has to be applied to photosynthesizing tissue, which is more likely to be found in the leaves than in the stems.
–Mark
Glyphospate or Roundup is good stuff, it’s not supposed to persist in the soil, absorbed through leaves. Be careful, it will kill anything it touches, it’s not a selective herbicide. If you get some on a plant you don’t want to kill wash it off right away. Don’t spray on windy days. You should see the offending plant start to wilt and die within a day or two. I bought a quart of concentrate probably ten years ago, it’s mixed 3oz to the gallon with water and a little dish soap. Lasts a long time for the suburbanites in our ricky ticky homes. I just mixed up the last batch, time to buy more before it’s banned. The price tag was $27.75 I noticed. Use in a pump sprayer or old windex bottle etc. I just nuked some patches of fescue that has invaded and will replant with bluegrass.
No, they do not.
They say that when using Roundup Weed & Grass Killer, and only that specific formulation, and when applying as a spray, and only as a spray, to apply to the leaves.
In contrast the manufacturer recommends cutting close to the ground and immediately wetting the cut surface using spray, swab, or paint brush for other formulations and other application methods
If by “other places on the net” you mean the extension division of every major university and every state and national agriculture department in the western world.
These aren’t random, obscure sources. They are the premier sources of information for herbicide application worldwide, and they *all *disagree with what you are saying.
No, sorry, that is just flat out wrong.
Glyphosate doesn’t target photosyntheic systems and it can be applied to any live tissue and work equally well. In fact it works *better *if it can be directly applied to the roots, but that is rarely practical.