Pacific Northwest Gardening: Weed Wrench for ivy?, 1 by LakeLivingRos

LakeLivingRos wrote:
I will just say.. I hate IVY.. Here are some pictures of Ivy that I removed.. The roots of the ivy formed so thick it was almost like a tree trunk..

While I had my husband help me for some of it.. most of the removal I did myself, and without any chemicals (because I live on a lake and didn't want chemicals to run off and I wanted to plant there).

So what worked for me.. is I took a large curled machete type knife kinda like this one http://mcatool.com.au/?cid=19&toolid=54 (I actually found mine at a rental house I used to live at, and it is really old.. but REALLY sharp). I would grab the ivy, pull it, and cut it. I learned to recognize what the big main roots of it look like and if I would cut those it would basically come out in clumps. I found raking not very useful unless I have my blade in one hand to cut any vines that were catching on other ones or in the ground. Since the blade was so sharp (I have never sharpened it either), I would basically just swing it outward from my body (because it would be dangerous otherwise) hard and it would cut right through it. That was the top process..

For ivy roots.. I would pinpoint in the ground all the different main roots.. and shovel enough to grab it and literally wrap it around my wrist so that I could pull with all my body (sometimes I would fall back once it came loose so be careful!). I spent my whole Christmas vacation, probably close to 18 hours each day removing as much as I could in 2011. I obviously didn't get all of it.. but the next year I made sure to remove any new spouts I saw the day I saw them.. I had my ivy tool bucket sitting out and would do a walk around the areas daily (took 5 minutes apx) and would just pull out. I also had sharp clippers and would cut the roots of the vine as far back as I could, and I don't know if that killed it or not.. but going back the next year to pull out the roots I missed or couldn't pull out the first year were much much easier to pull out. This year (2013) I have seen maybe 20 baby shoots of ivy (they are coming from the neighbor's side, as all of this was done on a fence line) and I couldn't really just weed out my neighbors lawn.. but now I will do an ivy check on my fence line 1x a week and pull any new growth. Where I put bricks against the fence the ivy shoots have not crossed.