Invasive Ivy Roots
trish-ecogardener
Posts: 5
Hi, I'm new on here and I could do with some help please. I have a long 'raised' veggie bed. It's raised at the back and slopes to the grass at the back. The back and sides are held in place by brick walls that were concreted in and a little way behind the back wall is a privet hedge. This hedge (from our neighbours side) has loads of ivy growing mainly along the ground and the roots have grown through, under the wall and invaded the bed. Some are really thick and all the soil is impossible to dig or plant because it is a mass of roots. I don't want to destroy my soil or the organisms and creatures that live within it. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can rid my veggie bed of this problem once and for all please? This year I want to plant a cutting garden along this bed but as it is at the moment I don't see how I can.
Posts
dig a trench nice and deep (12 inches minimum) and line it with weed suppression membrane, roots can't come through it.
Hi there and thanks for coming back to me, I do appreciate it. We have tried doing exactly that but the roots did come through and invaded the whole bed. It took ages to clear the bed of all the roots and that's why my husband concreted a wall all along the back and he dug down further than a foot and filled it with the concrete plus another lot of liner and the bed is as bad this year as it was last :-(( We just don't know what to do next.
My guess is that you water the plants in the raised bed and that the ivy roots are inexorably drawn to the moisture. I've found tree roots growing upwards into raised veggie beds for the same reason.
You can buy a membrane to control tree roots. Don't know the name but I've seen it online.
Good luck
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Sbk brush killer painted on the roots will kill the ivy.
Thankyou both for your help and ideas. I will google both and pass the information to my husband as he will be the one to tackle the job :-)
Thanks Philippa for the advice. The ivy isn't one that our neighbour planted, it's just the common ivy that grows as a weed and is so invasive :-( They will be as pleased as us to be rid of it to be honest.
I've been reading up on the Sbk and we think the weed killer seems too dangerous for us to use in this instance. The veg-bed is near the house, we have a Border Collie and I have a long term lung condition so its vapours/chemicals in the air would be really a problem for me. My husband says he would not feel comfortable with it. I'm sure it would serve to clear the ivy though :-)
If you dont want to use strong chemicals vinegar will also kill ivy. You might need to do several treatments if you choose to spray or if possible try to leave the end of the root lying in a small jam jar of cider vingear for a couple of days.
Thanks Sussexsun, that certainly seems a good possibility and one to have a go at. If hubby digs and I spray and if we can, we'll try the jam jar method too
Vinegar will certainly kill off soft foliage and young seedling; however the information I've seen is that leaves with a waxy cuticle, such as ivy, are only minimally affected.
Also, unlike glyphosate-based herbicides, vinegar does not translocate from the leaves back to the roots and therefore even if the leaves are killed off the plant will regrow.
Much as I understand and agree with your wish not to use glyphosate or similar, I doubt that vinegar will do the job - it would be interesting to know if you have any success with it.
We dealt successfully with a large amount of ivy in this garden by thoroughly digging it out. The occasional new bit of growth was then treated with glyphosate gel.
Good luck
Last edited: 18 March 2017 17:19:57
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
My old mum used to swear by cider vinegar to kill bramble, bind weed and ivy. She used to put it on cotton wool balls and stick them around anything she wanted gone.She always had a,lovely garden and veg patch so there must be some truth in it working.
dovefromabove I have just dug out 9 black bin bags full of ivy root. The house at the back of mine landscaped a overgrown garden last year and put a new fence in. What I didn't,t notice at the time was that all the old ivy growing up the old fence was not killed off but the roots pushed over to my side of the fence and then grew over my low wall into my rockery beds
they also managed to damage my wisteria which I have had to cut right back and hope it will recover. They now have a nice concrete garden without a flower or shrub to be seen.