[Herbalist] poison ivy

[Tara]

> Anybody got any good ideas about how to get rid of poison ivy (or poison
> oak) from your yard without using a toxic herbicide?  My grandma asked me,
> and I didn't have any quick answers. . .you would imagine there would be
> something simple you would never expect that would do away with it.

Oh, I wish I could give you a definitive this one.  We have four acres
of land here.  Two of them are poison ivy.  We have one large tree stump
that is so covered in it that we can no longer see the stump.  It looks
like a massive poison ivy bush.

My dad suggested using chlorine bleach.  Yeah, it's still yucky.  But
it's not pervasive in the environment, like pesticides.  It evaporates
as chlorine gas, just like in your swimming pool or drinking water.  Of
course, bleach will kill everything else near it, too, but it will
evaporate and leave you workable soil to landscape.

Massive amounts of salt might work, too.  This will also kill everything
else nearby, but it's less toxic in general.  But it will take *much*
longer to wash out of the soil.

Both those methods worried me, though, because the poison ivy is
encroaching on landscaped areas.  The afore-mentioned bush is right
between two lovely, huge rhododendrons.

What we've done in the past is mow it back (careful touching your
lawnmower blades afterward - wash them down with dishsoap and a hose!)
Then we'd cover the ground with black plastic garbage bags and weigh
them down for a season or two.  Kills almost everything, and leaves you
decent soil to work later.  I wouldn't trust it to be perfect, and
therefore wouldn't till and work that soil right away.  Instead I would
then lay down a thick layer of newspaper and mushroom soil and compost,
and work the ground in raised beds above it for another couple seasons.
By the time the newspaper finishes degrading, everything underneath
should be good and dead.  Or else plant it with something else invasive
- like English Ivy.

We've found that in the areas of our yard that are covered in English
Ivy, the poison ivy can't seem to get a good foothold.  We find
occasional sprigs of it, but not nearly as bad as in other areas.  Maybe
mint would work, too, though mint likes more sun than poison ivy.
Unfortunately, our English Ivy is so out of control that we've been
beating it back, too.  It's damaging some beautiful trees and choking
out some gardens.  We mowed one patch down - three times over it in
different directions.  Then we tilled it twice.  And pulled out the
chopped up roots by hand.  And tilled again.  And pulled up again.  And
the ivy *still* came back.  It's kind of like that Trout Fishing in
America song about the cat...

I always wondered if you could take one of the poisons and inject it
directly into the base of the stem of unwanted plants, with a syringe
perhaps.  Yeah, nobody would want to go to that effort for dandelions or
*god-darned friggin* thistle.  But, for those of us who don't want to
apply something like Round-Up broadly but have very specific and nasty
problems, it might be worth the effort.

Of course, depending on how bad it is, you can just dress yourself
tightly (hip waders, long rubber gloves) and pull it out.  Or find a
good immune friend (like me) and bribe her to pull it out.  But that
depends on how much there is.  I've pulled out a little bit on our
property and for other friends, but there is way too much here for me to
handle manually.

-Magdalena