Thanks everyone so far...

IF it dies back, I will go in there with long gloves/long pants, etc and pull it out.

Hubby gets terrible poison ivy, but I don't. I even pull out young seedlings by the stem when I find them in the yard! Never had it.

I have seen on the net if you burn it, it can inflame the lungs and even cause DEATH.... we can't burn here anyway...good thing!

So I plan on trying to pull it out if it dies back, maybe with the help of a garden fork...and into a garbage bag it will go! This patch is about 20ft wide and 8 ft deep. It comes up to knee level, while growing so far!

Down at the other end of the street, there was a huge patch too a few years ago. A neighbor requested the city remove it. They sprayed it with "something", and since then NOTHING will grow there. It is still bare dirt!

This is the area I plan to fix. It is 2 houses down and the rocks are new.
The poison ivy wasn't up yet when I took this picture. Today it is covering the right side of the fire hydrant, behind the rocks. (there are two small ones coming thru the front of the rocks now too).

Whatever the city sprayed possibly was a product to make the soil sterile. If that is true there probably wouldn't be anything that grows back for about 5-6 years. They do that around fire hydrants, road signs, etc. Just a thought.

Even though you have never had Poison Ivy, be sure to clean up your tools and your clothes really good. It's the oil that can get you. And yes, one would never want to burn it. I'm sure you know this.

Your pets can also bring Poison Ivy to you. They run thru it and then you pet them and there it is.

I don't get it either. Never once even when the rest of the gang, running right through the same patch with me, suffered something fierce from it.

LOL....

I used Round up for poison ivy, pre mixed. Round up has several kinds of sprays, so it helped me that Anderson's had a chart of weeds to show which type of RU I needed.

It'll kill small trees so be careful. It cost about $30 - totally worth it. Note that it takes a couple weeks, the label says, to kill. I noticed the plants starting to shrivel in about 5-7 days, and some needed more than one spray. Still, it's the only thing I've found that really does it.

I have lots of *wild mulberry* trees that pop up - you just can't kill them any other way.

I was careful, spraying right next to other plants on a calm day and have not killed any good plants. The spray nozzle is really accurate.

I used a general RU weed killer for easier to kill weeds and that worked well for choke weed and such. Again, didn't kill anything but what I wanted to kill.

I never used a weed killer till last year, so this is new to me but I was impressed.

Okay...so the Round up may work? I used the blue label one.
I am not familiar with poisons....I don't use them at all. But with poison ivy you have to.

The poison ivy killer by RoundUp said if you want to plant in 2wks time, use the blue label one instead. I guess the poison ivy specific killer leaves residue. So that is what I did...only not much is happening. I used the squirt setting...and it targeted just where it needed to go.

I shall wait the week. Now some animal found my seedling trays in my yard and is digging each cell out! GRRRRRRRRR chipmunks!

The RU I used came in a one gallon(?) jug that's white with a yellow/gold label and spray nozzle. Says *Poison Ivy and Brush killer*.

I didn't read through the whole label - that could take forever and a jeweler's loupe - but I didn't see anything about being able to plant again in 2 weeks. I think this may be strong than that.

But I only sprayed the leaves and nothing on the ground around the plants died. My gardens are elbow to elbow plants. I just shot at the leaves I could hit and it still killed off what I wanted.


Except the mint bed. I mass sprayed the ivy and elephant ears 2-3 times (I mean I hosed that stuff) so far, and they're about dead. The mint is growing back over the dead stuff though. Mint is like that.



I'm like you, never did poison, just manually weeded. I am just too busy to do it this year and the place needs to be decent - I'm gonna sell it. So far so good.

Good luck.

The Ivy is starting to look sick. I'll take a pic of it later when I go down there.

I had a little surprise too... the other part of the city garden directly across from us ---I had sprinkled some black eyed susan seeds there to see if they would take ---it is soooodry there...and I found them yesterday! tiny yet but doing okay!
I expected a failure there. So once established from my flats with the other seedlings...I think they WILL naturalize themselves.
(one never knows you know )

Having terrible chipmunk problems. I now have to put rocks around anything I plant...they dig them right up! And some are coming now into my seed flats as well...right up on the bench and digging around. I found several emptied! There is no food there. They did it right after I fertilized ..so maybe the fertilizer has a odor for them? The construction across the street along the river --the guys say when they turn on the machines chipmunks come streaming out of the hill --river bank. These must be them? ugh ugh!

here is a picture from this morning~~

Think this is enough to kill it off? I tried to get each plant stalk at least once. But being a poison phobe, I didn't do too much.
This was one squirt bottle in volume. We bought another today for the yard...it is popping up everywhere. We are going to paint it on leaves that are close to valuable plants, with one of those disposable craft sponges on a stick, or a Q-tip.

The poison ivy is dying nicely now. It is just very slow I guess?

I thought you might be interested in reading this article...

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...v&topic=energy
Poison ivy menace grows as Earth warms

OMGosh... Thanks Lara.

I have some perennial sweat pea vines ready to go for that spot now.
As soon as the time passes for the Round-Up --I will put them there, to the left of where the poison ivy is growing, and I hope they will take over and that the ivy doesn't return! My flower seedlings are not quite ready for that spot yet either.

Perhaps they too, will see some stimulus by the CO2.
The poison ivy has been lush here recently. Some neighbors have huge stands of it...and they do nothing. Next door there is one vine right on their front stairs, covering an old stump. It has to be 10 ft across. When lush it can look very nice, but the birds spread it all over to the rest of us. Our neighbors (who I won't get into now ) won't remove it.