Sodium Chlorate is a NO, NO, NO!! It is illegal to sell it now and you will not be able to grow anything where you use it for years. Many years.
Brute force is best with brambles. Dig them up and burn the roots. There will be some minor regrowth from any roots left in the soil, but cultivation will deal with that.
Agricultural Roundup is a possibility - expensive to buy initially, but much much cheaper in the long run - but it will not kill brambles outright. It will stop the shoots growing but you will not kill the bramble outright with one application.
I cleared a large garden of 8 ft high brambles by digging them up. It is an excellent scheme to take you into the Autumn/Winter. Do it regularly but do not overdo it in your enthusiasm.
Cutting and digging, cutting and digging - at least it's cheaper than a gym membership! If you work on it over the winter then you'll have got the worst out at a time when it's not actually growing, so you'll be able to see the progress you're making and feel encouraged.
Then in the spring, when the soft new growth begins to shoot, that's the time to spray it with glyphosate - it'll absorb the spray much better then when it's actively growing than if you spray it now which won't actually do much good at all as it'll be shedding its leaves any time now.
Good luck, you'll get there and the chickens will finish the job off for you
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Roundup should kill them if you spray it on the young growth in the spring.Follow the dilution rates on the label.You need to leave it on three weeks for the spray to translocate from the leaves down to the roots.I was given a large old Hydrangea a few years ago, complete with large old bramble growing through the middle of it,I cut each stem and applied neat Roundup with a small paint brush to the end of each cut stem and just left it,being very careful not to drip any onto the Hydrangea.
It worked a treat,just be sure to leave it and not cut off the top growth for three weeks. Good luck with whatever method you use and don't eat any of the berries if any should survive.I remember being told that Roundup dous 'nt stay in the ground, but not not convinced.
A mattock is an excellent tool for easily removing bramble roots. You do need to cut down the long growths first, but leave a foot of growth so you can lift the root. A convenient way to dispose of bramble is to put the long sprays through a shredder.
And don't think of using fire. Bramble is very flamable, partly because the plant is so open, so there is plenty of air to fuel the conflagration.
Thanks all. Think I was hoping for some sort of miracle cure, but it looks like I'll have to carry on with what I'm doing at the minute, I've been leaving a couple of inches of the shoots sticking out of the floor so I can see where I need to concentrate my digging, and I suppose if I do manage to get to the end of the garden by the end of the year, any digging that gets done early next year will help to kill the dratted things if we have some sharp frosts. Although with the weather we've been having lately, I have no idea if this is on the cards (although some of the weather lore I've learnt from my Mum and Grandad has all pointed to a VERY cold winter).
Lots of advice you've had but at the end of the day I'm afraid it's down to hard work. But like I said, do it in small chunks, another tip I found very helpfull is to cover the ground you clear with old compost bags, carpet, even cardboard and that will stop the weeds seeding and that will save having to do it again. Frost will never kill off brambles but it will certainly kill off some of the many slugs and snails the wet weather has brought out in force.
If you can borrow a couple of pigs for a few days or so they will eat the roots and rotovate and manure the ground at the same time. Take off top growth first.
One more thing - infection. Unless you are very lucky you will get lacerated by brambles when removing top growth. I was tackling a similarly overgrown garden and picked up a nasty bacterial blood infection through cuts. Nothing exotic just common bacteria found in any garden but it took 9 weeks and three different antibiotics to clear it up. So wrap up well with industrial strength welders gauntlets and a strong face guard.
Ha! That made me laugh, steephill! Not the pigs (although that did get a chuckle, unfortunately I don't know anyone who keeps pigs, the farmer at the back of us has been banned from keeping them through neglect!). No, the thing that made me chuckle was the scratches I've had from them, the only time I've been as badly scratched is when I helped my friend give her cat a course of antibiotics!! I have an over-active immune system (to the point where it's started to attack my thyroid glands), so with a bit of luck I'll avoid getting anything nasty. I discarded the gauntlets after 20 minutes (hubby's welding gloves), they were far too big, and it's too hot to wear a coat, let alone my old scruffy bike jacket.
We had same problem and sorted it by cutting down all brambles and other overgrown stuff with a powerful hedge trimmer - the bonfire burnt for 4 days - and then digging over an area at a time deeply. and havingmore bonfires. Some areas I sprayed with Roundup plus but have found roots still need to be dug.Ihn fact our bonfires became a joke with our neighbours!
We then kept them cut dwon in areas we were not working on and have slowly beaten the stuff. In the cultivated areas we still have weak brambles but are easily sorted. You do have to keep going over what has been dug.
21/2 years on we still have areas to 'un-bramble' in fact I have started on the last bad area today.
I don't think there is a quick fix really, just hard and persistant work.
Now in the area started today i have found a few (4) newts under some builders plastic. Replaced plastic for now but does anyone out there in garden land know where I can put them without harm, blue builders plastic is right where new rhubarb bed will go
Posts
Sodium Chlorate is a NO, NO, NO!! It is illegal to sell it now and you will not be able to grow anything where you use it for years. Many years.
Brute force is best with brambles. Dig them up and burn the roots. There will be some minor regrowth from any roots left in the soil, but cultivation will deal with that.
Agricultural Roundup is a possibility - expensive to buy initially, but much much cheaper in the long run - but it will not kill brambles outright. It will stop the shoots growing but you will not kill the bramble outright with one application.
I cleared a large garden of 8 ft high brambles by digging them up. It is an excellent scheme to take you into the Autumn/Winter. Do it regularly but do not overdo it in your enthusiasm.
Cutting and digging, cutting and digging - at least it's cheaper than a gym membership! If you work on it over the winter then you'll have got the worst out at a time when it's not actually growing, so you'll be able to see the progress you're making and feel encouraged.
Then in the spring, when the soft new growth begins to shoot, that's the time to spray it with glyphosate - it'll absorb the spray much better then when it's actively growing than if you spray it now which won't actually do much good at all as it'll be shedding its leaves any time now.
Good luck, you'll get there and the chickens will finish the job off for you
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
It worked a treat,just be sure to leave it and not cut off the top growth for three weeks. Good luck with whatever method you use and don't eat any of the berries if any should survive.I remember being told that Roundup dous 'nt stay in the ground, but not not convinced.
Good Luck
A mattock is an excellent tool for easily removing bramble roots. You do need to cut down the long growths first, but leave a foot of growth so you can lift the root. A convenient way to dispose of bramble is to put the long sprays through a shredder.
And don't think of using fire. Bramble is very flamable, partly because the plant is so open, so there is plenty of air to fuel the conflagration.
Thanks all. Think I was hoping for some sort of miracle cure, but it looks like I'll have to carry on with what I'm doing at the minute, I've been leaving a couple of inches of the shoots sticking out of the floor so I can see where I need to concentrate my digging, and I suppose if I do manage to get to the end of the garden by the end of the year, any digging that gets done early next year will help to kill the dratted things if we have some sharp frosts. Although with the weather we've been having lately, I have no idea if this is on the cards (although some of the weather lore I've learnt from my Mum and Grandad has all pointed to a VERY cold winter).
Lots of advice you've had but at the end of the day I'm afraid it's down to hard work. But like I said, do it in small chunks, another tip I found very helpfull is to cover the ground you clear with old compost bags, carpet, even cardboard and that will stop the weeds seeding and that will save having to do it again. Frost will never kill off brambles but it will certainly kill off some of the many slugs and snails the wet weather has brought out in force.
Pigs!
If you can borrow a couple of pigs for a few days or so they will eat the roots and rotovate and manure the ground at the same time. Take off top growth first.
One more thing - infection. Unless you are very lucky you will get lacerated by brambles when removing top growth. I was tackling a similarly overgrown garden and picked up a nasty bacterial blood infection through cuts. Nothing exotic just common bacteria found in any garden but it took 9 weeks and three different antibiotics to clear it up. So wrap up well with industrial strength welders gauntlets and a strong face guard.
Ha! That made me laugh, steephill! Not the pigs (although that did get a chuckle, unfortunately I don't know anyone who keeps pigs, the farmer at the back of us has been banned from keeping them through neglect!). No, the thing that made me chuckle was the scratches I've had from them, the only time I've been as badly scratched is when I helped my friend give her cat a course of antibiotics!! I have an over-active immune system (to the point where it's started to attack my thyroid glands), so with a bit of luck I'll avoid getting anything nasty. I discarded the gauntlets after 20 minutes (hubby's welding gloves), they were far too big, and it's too hot to wear a coat, let alone my old scruffy bike jacket.
Thanks for the giggle!!
As is mentioned in one the posts above, brambles spread by means of the long arching sprays. Where they touch the ground, then you get a new plant.
One consequence of that is that it's quite easy to keep brambles in check, simply by nipping out those long sprays, and that can easily be done now.
I keep a patch in my garden, because the blackberries are very useful.
We had same problem and sorted it by cutting down all brambles and other overgrown stuff with a powerful hedge trimmer - the bonfire burnt for 4 days - and then digging over an area at a time deeply. and havingmore bonfires. Some areas I sprayed with Roundup plus but have found roots still need to be dug.Ihn fact our bonfires became a joke with our neighbours!
We then kept them cut dwon in areas we were not working on and have slowly beaten the stuff. In the cultivated areas we still have weak brambles but are easily sorted. You do have to keep going over what has been dug.
21/2 years on we still have areas to 'un-bramble' in fact I have started on the last bad area today.
I don't think there is a quick fix really, just hard and persistant work.
Now in the area started today i have found a few (4) newts under some builders plastic. Replaced plastic for now but does anyone out there in garden land know where I can put them without harm, blue builders plastic is right where new rhubarb bed will go