wild blackberry vine problem

i have two patches of these on my new property. one of them is right in a bed of plants and cannas.

we tried roundup but that didnt get the roots. is there a plant that would naturally take care of these ?? i am tired of pulling these torny devils after today and would love a natural way to defeat them with out hurting the other plants.thanks

I had a flowerbed in TN that had blackberry vines in it. I just kept digging them out every time they would sprout. After several years, there weren't as many, but I never got rid of them all.

My new hosta bed is now where the wildblackberries grew-lots of digging and lots of scratches and im watching for any sprouts-will dig and pull them out too!!!

With ours that come up in the relatively loose soil under the pines, we can pull them and follow the roots - thereby getting a whole chain of plants. In the GOOD soil in the full sun of the garden beds - it's just one at a time - over and over. The best aid I've found are the blue "Atlas" gloves with the rubberized palms and fingers. Takes the sting out of the job.

If you can keep it off your other plants, a herbicide called Remedy will do the job for you.

Kay

Kay, that's the new one they're using down here on water hyacinths and water lilies in the irrigation channels and resacas. It's supposed to be good.

I think it is selective, but it does the job on wild blackberries. (They are called "dewberries" here.)

Brush B Gone is supposed to work....Remedy is really Expensive. Crossbow is a bit less. Get anything that will go after dicots. A good way to do it is with a spraybottle in one hand and a machete in the other...chop vine as close to the ground as you can and spray the newly cut vine immediately. Get the stuff on the cut portion within 20 secs or less and the vine will suck in the herbicide. Gotta be careful of the other stuff around it...usuall it takes a small army to do this...

HTH, Carol

Hey Carol, we buy Remedy and a bunch of those herbicides by the gallon and 5-gallon jugs. They are probably cheaper that way, but we are doing pastures as opposed to a yard.

The one (not a herbicide, but a miticide) that gets away with me so bad is Avid. They finally started putting it up in 8 oz bottles that you can buy for a mere $100. Before the cheapest one you could find was nearly $300.
Kay

Something someone on here suggested a few months ago for applying liquid herbicides is to use a small artist's paintbrush instead of the spray bottle. This helps you to make sure you get the herbicide only on the plant you want to kill....and there isn't a danger of a sudden gust of wind blowing the stuff everywhere like when you're spraying. I killed most of my thyme with Roundup when I was trying to kill weeds in the area we were preparing for the grass. All because of wind gusts despite my spraying very close to the ground and spraying abotu 12 feet away from where the thyme was! In any case, I've decided that I'll be trying the paintbrush method (or even an eye dropper) next time I need to use Round-Up or any other herbicide.

HTH

-Julie

This message was edited Dec 28, 2004 3:09 PM

i guess its gonna be an ongoing battle here. i tried roundup and it only killed the tops. thanks everyone for the advice. will get some gloves and starts pulling. any one want to help??? LOL

I'll help with yours if you help with mine, eh? LOL One other nasty thing I found out with them last year is that the japaneese beetles absolutely swarmed over them. Ick.

well i have 4 o clocks for those critters. i hate these things( blackberry vines). as bad as kudzu

Well, sometimes when you try to eradicate a very invasive species...spraying the tops is all you will kill. We have Melastoma running amok here...Tibuchina...a virtual pest. The young ones we can kill with a shot of roundup...the large ones we need to slash the trunk between 1 and 18" from the ground and hit the slash with RoundUp or an herbicide for dicots.... So often it is not the product but the application that needs to be changed.

If you have Roundup...it will work on Blackberries if applied correctly...but BrushBGone is better...or Remedy.

You are right...Remedy is worth it because it works right off the bat!

Carol

Tordon is a root killer. I've had to use it on poke weed and it did pretty well. You cut the root at ground level and paint the stuff on or just pour a bit on the exposed end of the root. We mix ours 1/2 / 1/2 with kerosene even tho it claimed to be Ready To Use(RTU). It will kill wild trumpet vine and Creeping Charlie.