Weed Wrench for ivy?

I am gearing up for some ivy removal this spring. Has anyone used a Weed Wrench for this? They are designed to uproot upright tree trunks, so might not work on the prostrate ivy 'trunk'. The Weed Wrench is expensive, plus you have to pay for shipping as it must be ordered from the manufacturer in Oregon. Might be totally worth it.

That looks like a similar (if not the same) tool my sister and her husband rented to pull up scotch broom from about a half acre area. Sorry I can't remember where they rented it from. It might be worth checking if someone has one you can borrow to find out if it works on your ivy. I just read about the West Seattle tool library, where you can join and donate or borrow tools. it seemed like a good idea for those things we use infrequently. You might want to check if there is one of these organizations any where near you.

Sometimes your local county extension office Master Gardeners have them for loaning. Ivy is fairly easy to pull by hand but a weed wrench might work. They can close tightly on small scotch broom.

Thanks mhf and ww- I looked and my county (Snohomish) does not seem to have a loaner program, but others looking for this tool should try the county extension agent and conservation districts. I have done well pulling ivy by hand if it is a several years old, but at this house I think it was planted over 20 years ago, in clay and rocks- some of the stumps are 5-6 inches diameter and well rooted! Those would still be too big for the Weed Wrench, but I guess I can use brush killer on the stump-I have done this before and it seems to work. I have decided to splurge and ordered myself the full size Weed Wrench. It must be ordered directly from the manufacturer in Oregon. I will report back here how it worked.

That's where I purchased mine also. I bought it for the golf course where I lived. We pulled broom in our spare time. I got the smaller one but they don't take much effort to use.

Sometimes I wind a weed like ivy around my forearm tightly, while squatting a little, then "lift" with my legs and back.

And I try not to fall over!

My DH and I pulled a big patch of ivy once and it never came back. We put a heavy layer of chips over it right away.

>> My DH and I pulled a big patch of ivy once and it never came back. We put a heavy layer of chips over it right away.

Oh, WOW! If it's not hopeless, I;ll have to try that.

Yeah, we just pulled and rolled it up like a carpet.

Thanks!

Hi everyone-
the weed wrench was not helpful. One of the smaller ones might be ok but I got the big one. In this area the ivy had not been there as long and the "trunks" were much smaller. The roll-up method worked best, but it does require 2 people. One stands and "rolls" it up while backing up, the other on knees crawls along and cuts the attaching root/branch thing. Then you go back over it on your knees and pull up as many roots as possible. They are brittle, but many do come up whole. I plan to do ivy patrol all year for resprouters (also the bindweed aka perennial morning glory) that infests this patch). Now what to do with the huge roll of ivy!
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. And if you need to borrow my weed wrench let me know.

We did our 25+ yr old ivy with a loggin' chain, Tpost (sunk in at an angle) and a come-a-long ........... Still took 2 of us, one 'sittin' on the T post ( remember, at an angle) and the other workin' the come-a-long....................... We removed 15 of that vile stuff...............

Heavy duty!

Maybe I got off easy!

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.

I pronounce you Queen of all the Ivy Pullers. Great job!

Haha thanks Willow! I certainly would say I have the ivy pulling down.. Here is some photos of the same area as the previous photos I posted.. withOUT ivy now..

Oops edited what I forgot to add -

Oh, and I realized my photos make it hard to tell it's the same exact location.. so as reference.. we had to remove the ivy so I could put up a fence, put up arborvitaes, and also built a retaining wall (because the ivy was I am sure to cover the bank/slope). I then just this past weekend put 8 yards of beauty bark in (it's a big area..and I ran out..) planted 2 fig trees (brown turkey and desert king) and a dwarf cherry tree and 2 dwarf apple trees (those three I plan to espalier so that I can be efficient with space). I also planted a few blue carpet junipers, blue star juniper, california lilac, gold star juniper, tamarix juniper, and lithodora grace ward.

Adds -

On the other side of the arborvitaes I moved a burning bush that was at the house to in front of the dead tree stump, my mother-in-law gave me a whole bunch of lavender (2 varieties of Spanish) which I planted near the street, there was some variegated periwinkle (which I might remove the last one considering it reminds me too much of ivy..) and there are some herbaceous perennials, where I plan on sowing seeds for a delphinium mix and lupine mix (I bought 4 seed packs for each) so next year I will have some really pretty flowers up there too.

This message was edited May 20, 2013 11:14 AM

poobear I feel your pain! Your place looks 1000% nicer now. Interesting about the big bricks-I may try it where my neighbor has the ivy.
I agree that brief frequent ivy patrols are adequate to do the final eradication- it seems to initially grow slow enough that pulling or clipping for a year or two is enough.
What did you do with it after you got it out?
I have no pickup truck or trailer to take it to the mulch company ($20 a pickup load). I managed to get some in the big green yard waste bin I have picked up weekly, but there was way too much. I can buy huge paper sacks for $1 apiece at ACE, that the waste company takes for free, but it is REALLY hard and time consuming to get it in the bag because it is a huge snarl. Yesterday my kind neighbor (or possibly just sick of the huge pile) volunteered his truck for the final haul.

cross posting!
wow what fun (the planting is soooo much more fun than the prep work).

oh mlmlakestevens.. I live right next to the dump.. (I live off military on Angle Lake in SeaTac) and the dump is off the 188th exit on i5 so I am no more than 5 minutes away.. So my husband as a truck, which we sold and then got a subaru and bought a large wagon off Craigslist for under $100 bucks (we had to repair it with new wood we had laying around). Anyways, we would be making multiple trips to the dump and deposit as yard waste daily during the beginning.. Since it is fairly light.. we basically would load it into the truck bed.. and jump on it to pack it down.. Since there is a minimum weight fee, we would want to get enough weight so we wouldn't be just throwing away money. My father also has a really heavy duty wood chipper that we borrowed for like 6 months.. every day during my lunch I would come home and feed that wood chipper.. for almost 6 months.. I also took old cedar siding and old wood from the cabin we tore down.. so that 6 months wasn't just ivy, but it was a good chunk of it. The thing is that you would want to make sure you get a heavy duty enough wood chipper though, and since I had my machete I could cut up the ivy into manageable sizes so that it wouldn't clog the woodchipper... My father had bought the woodchipper off a gardener for $50 bucks, but it was only a year old and it is one that is probably 2x the size of a 96 gallon garbage can..

Also, search around on Craigslist, you can find people to pack and haul the ivy for you to the dump. It would cost more than taking to the dump yourself obviously, but it might not depending on if you own a truck or wagon and have a far distance to go to pay for gas.. Since we did it during the stormy season in 2011 where there was the wind/ice storm, the yard waste was free down further south at a dump farther away, which we did 1x, but the gas was so expensive that it was actually cheaper to just go to our dump (and saved time too).

But, if you don't own a truck, try and borrow one or a wagon, make a big pile and then try and get it all into one load and take to the dump. Just remember, it compresses down significantly, you just need to jump on it, taking a shovel and waking it as hard as you can with the back side also helped compress it down too..

And.. my back and arms were completely muscle buff after doing all of that.. haha, I went from being 128 lbs (at 5'7) to 115 lbs with crazy muscle tone! The benefits of pulling ivy are that it makes you work and get you into shape in a way you never thought before (and I am a cyclist who races too, so it's not like I wasn't in shape before!). The thing about ivy is it get's sort of addicting to remove because you just want to go "a little bit more" before going to bed.. and sometimes I would be up until 2am with a flood light pulling ivy in the pouring rain. It was so worth it though, because we were able to plant the arborvitaes and establish them before the summer of 2012 with the hot season (as they are water whores the first year I found out..).. so removing the ivy in the winter I think was the best time because by the time spring came it was manageable to cut back any new growth. You also then can keep track of the "hot spots" where the ivy likes to come.

And about the bricks.. I would cut back the ivy as far down into the ground as possible (sometimes feet down..) and if it ever became just too much, I would take a towel and dab a little bit of chemical poison on the cut part and then place a rock over it. If I didn't dab it with anything, and just placed a rock over it would (so far anyways) keep it from coming up.. but the bricks keep many weeds away surprisingly.. as my neighbor house was abandoned for a few years (along with ours before we moved in) and the owner now doesn't do ANYthing.. so there are blackberry bushes and all sorts of weeds that try and come over.. where the bricks are (2 high) the weeds don't come over.. where they are not.. I have to manage back ALL the time.. the morning glory or ivy will literally grow a foot high on the chain link fence in what seems like only a few days.. (there is a section where we had to build a retaining wall along maybe 100 feet long.. where there is a space of 3-6 inches away from the fence and the retaining wall where I do not have bricks, but I have to pull weeds that start to get too close (I plant on putting vines such as honeysuckle or kiwi in the chain link, so I want to keep it weed free so I can put plants there).

Oh, and with the chemical dab, I did this maybe like 5 times at most? It was only for the REALLY far down ones that I just couldn't pull up.. but for the most part, was able to pull up or with the neighbor, like I said put bricks or big rocks.

Since you don't have a truck, have you considered renting one from like uhaul or something?

Once chipped, could you have composted the ivy? Or do you think it would come back from uncomposted roots or wood?

Do not ever compost Ivy.

I composted the cedar shingles and branches, but never composted the ivy into that for my garden. I would shred the ivy into compost material to make it more condensed to load it. I would compost the ivy in the area that I was removing it, and then shovel it into a pile. I did this especially for where the ivy had taken over a few trees that we cut down. So I made sure that a larger branch went in with the ivy to help prevent a clog of the shredder. This made it much much easier to transport. I was able to find a picture of the wood chipper I used pic #1 , pic #2 & #3 in the background are the initial piles I would make (they would get about 4-5ft tall), pic #4 & 5 is all I could find to show you the set-up we had (before we sold the truck, after that like I said we just had to use the trailer and our subaru). We bought some cheap very large tarps from costco to help contain it, especially since it was seriously raining and bad weather most of the time (which adds weight). I was not too concerned with the "ivy compost" since I was doing it in an area that was largely "infected" with ivy, and every day I would make sure to clean up EVERYTHING.

But like I said, the compost I used for my yard was cedar shingles, and wood from a cabin we took down. We took down a few trees, but all of that people wanted for firewood. There was a few hedges and such that I composted, but it was used mostly as filler for areas that were eroding. We had to bring in a lot of dirt to fill those areas in the end because any usable compost was just not enough (which is surprising because you will have piles and piles many feet high, but the wood chipper breaks it all down to a garbage bag full it seems! Sorry if I didn't make it clear about the wood chipper! Hopefully the pictures help out a little more!

Thanks.

I just spent about 15 minutes reviewing this thread-It looks like:
1- the curved sharp machete would be very helpful for this and other whacking jobs. I had been cutting each branch individually with secateurs and this seems much quicker, especially when I get the huge roll that is 12 feet long and 6 feet around. This is way too heavy to pick up and toss in pickup so must be separated into smaller chuncks.
2- I have never had a chipper, but I have drooled over them. They are expensive and would take up a lot of room in the garage, and seemed like overkill for a suburban quarter acre. But really it would be nice to just chomp everything up. I will reconsider this.
3- poobear you are amazing! You need to add the 2am ivy episode to the "you know you are a gardener when..." thread.
p.s. poobear I recently hosted 2 tandem cycle tourists riding from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska. Amazing enough but they are both almost blind! Check out 2blind2ride blog for an amazing story. I should have made them clear ivy at 2 am for cross training and upper body fitness (not really, I actually just fed them spagetti). Anyway the yardwork should keep you from being at risk for osteoporosis which is afflicting pro cyclists.

mlmlakestevens -

Have you ever considered purchasing a wood chipper used off craigslist or from home depot's rental department? My husband and I constantly with buy the more expensive tool that we may need, and then sell it on CL when we are done with it for the same price we bought it for. I would totally would have let you borrow the wood chipper if it was mine, but it's not and it is back at my parents who are using it!

That is so cool that you hosted some tandem cyclists! My husband and I have raced our tandem bike a few times, and we actually rode it all around the Middle East! We were like celebrities over there because of it (and we even had a Turkish guard ask to guard our tandem while we were at St. Mary's house in Ephesus Turkey! My friend Shelly O. went to the para Olympics with a blind cyclist and she was the captain on the tandem. It is amazing to see single speed tandem track cyclists.. who are blind, racing! Sadly, most of the women in my field don't even ride their bikes long enough in the pro field to see osteoporosis like the men.. It's either you are taken off the bike because of a crash, you realize being a pro cyclist is not glamorous because you make no money, get no glory and quit, or you can't get on a UCI team because of the average age requirement being 25 or younger (it's a retarded stupid rule! as most women don't peak until mid to late 30's!). I am on a great team so I love cycling!! I attached some photos in case you were interested #1 is of me riding for Washington State University 2 weeks ago at Nationals where I was featured in the Utah newspaper (I got the silver medal for the individual time trial!!) and #2 is me doing the hill time trial at San Dimas where Cycling Illustrated featured me [I like to climb hills ;) ].

Hi poobear-Wow I am impressed. Hope you avoided the crash. I never raced (I could never sprint in any sport) or even was in a club, but I used to travel by bike for fun (sadly not for years). I still dream about it though. That is weird about the 25 y/o rule for women- I know in the Tour de France the "best YOUNG rider" award goes to the best rider who must be under 26. Sounds like sexism to me.

Yes I did avoid the crash! (There were a few that I avoided). The 25&U rule is for men as well, for any team registered as a UCI team, which is basically all the good teams. I actually found out yesterday morning, that I am invited to train with the Olympic National Development Team this July! They are going to do some testing on me to see if I make the cut! They have the "young rider" jersery for a few stage races, most of them are for U23 though. That is cool you used to travel by bike, and there is no reason why you can't start back up again now! If you can pull ivy you must be in decent shape anyways! ;). My grandma for example just turned 86 and she rode a bike in Spain for the first time in 60 years last week!

Btw, did you figure out a way to get rid of the ivy once you pulled it out?