Monday, August 17, 2009

Poison Ivy Update

Most of the poison ivy I sprayed last week is dying nicely. But that damn big shrubby one over the fence is reluctant to die. I'll have to give it another spraying (or two). But it is supposed to rain later today, so I'll have to wait.

That tall weed with the purple berries I couldn't remember the name of is "Pokeweed". It isn't the worst weed around here, but it is very large so it stands out. And it is hard to dig up because it has a large swollen root about a foot deep.

The worst one I have is mock strawberry. It grows EVERYWHERE. It isn't hard to kill individually because it depends on a surface stem-knot, but when there are 1,000s it is a real pain. And the birds love the fruits so there is always a new supply of them scatterred everywhere. They get into the thick groundcovers so well that they are nearly impossible to pick out.

I had to finally dig out a large area of ground-cover sedums and dianthus becuase I simply could not get all the mock strawberries out and they just kept growing back (I was able to carefully pick a dozen sedum clean of the "mocks" and replant them. They are spreading again well.

Among the poison ivy, the mock strawberry, the honeysuckle, and the pokeweed, I could go crazy. At least I don't have kudzu!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We have mock strawberry in our yard, too. Our human just took a picture of the little red fruit and wondered what it was. Then we visited your cats and now we can tell him. One more advantage to being cats!

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