oh Lord, what to do! I would be gutted to think I'd sat back and done nothing to save the English Bluebells, but it sounds like it's going to be a loooong job eliminating these tenacious Spanish ones, still going to try roundup gel, they're too deep for me to get to without breaking bones in my hands and ruining my whole borders!
I found some spanish ones in my garden when I moved in, quite a sizeable clump, but I perservered with the digging and got them all out. Now I have some lovely english ones
rosemummy - I console myself with the thought that, for as long as I'm preventing the Spanish bluebells flowering, I'm doing my bit to ensure they don't cross-pollinate with the English bluebells.
Obviously it's best if you can dig up the bulbs, but simply pulling out the green each year or chopping off the head before it flowers will be effective for that season - and you can have another go at digging it up next year
true, though they're also taking up valuable space! grrrr! maybe I'll just plant loads of hardey geraniums on top of them then remove the flowers too so I won't get beds just full of their leaves!
I had a border just filled to overflowing with the damn things and just couldn't get rid of them.
Tried all the proprietary weedkillers as well as industrial strength stuff from a farmer but they just came back stronger. It wouldn't have so bad if they produced a decent flower head but they are more just narrow leaves which cram out everything else.
I did what I did to a rather insistent ivy a few years ago. I used a dilution of 50/50 oven cleaner acid.
Of course it killed all the grass in the same border but at last I have got rid of them.
If you can do similar where they have managed to invade a lawn, you might be able to use a brush to dab on dollops of acid saving the grass.
I'm leaving the border clear this year and will dig it all out late summer after I'm, certain no bulbs have escaped death. I'll replace with a good quality compost instead of the normal soil present right now.
Hopefully I'm more or less sorted now though.
About the ivy: I chopped the base and it started to sprout again, so I hacked the trunk (around 4" thick) into a mash of wood then applied the same neat oven cleaner. Killed it right away.
I have another small area that I'm trying something else on.
I have only just, like a few minutes ago, poured boiling water over them, then applied a standard weedkiller. I'm hoping the boiling water has broken down the leaf tissue enough to allow ingress of the weedkiller.
Won't know if this has worked for a while yet though.
Lynnzer, how did your method work on the Spanish Bluebells. They seem to have really invaded my garden this year. I am trying to dig them out with a spade as deep as I can, but I just know, when I get a bulb up that all the little root threads are there and I'm possibly just spready then for next year
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oh Lord, what to do! I would be gutted to think I'd sat back and done nothing to save the English Bluebells, but it sounds like it's going to be a loooong job eliminating these tenacious Spanish ones, still going to try roundup gel, they're too deep for me to get to without breaking bones in my hands and ruining my whole borders!
I found some spanish ones in my garden when I moved in, quite a sizeable clump, but I perservered with the digging and got them all out. Now I have some lovely english ones
I've given up digging year after year. Started "pulling" last spring. Still popping up, but I will persevere.
rosemummy - I console myself with the thought that, for as long as I'm preventing the Spanish bluebells flowering, I'm doing my bit to ensure they don't cross-pollinate with the English bluebells.
Obviously it's best if you can dig up the bulbs, but simply pulling out the green each year or chopping off the head before it flowers will be effective for that season - and you can have another go at digging it up next year
true, though they're also taking up valuable space! grrrr! maybe I'll just plant loads of hardey geraniums on top of them then remove the flowers too so I won't get beds just full of their leaves!
That's hardy, I can spell, really!
I had a border just filled to overflowing with the damn things and just couldn't get rid of them.
Tried all the proprietary weedkillers as well as industrial strength stuff from a farmer but they just came back stronger. It wouldn't have so bad if they produced a decent flower head but they are more just narrow leaves which cram out everything else.
I did what I did to a rather insistent ivy a few years ago. I used a dilution of 50/50 oven cleaner acid.
Of course it killed all the grass in the same border but at last I have got rid of them.
If you can do similar where they have managed to invade a lawn, you might be able to use a brush to dab on dollops of acid saving the grass.
I'm leaving the border clear this year and will dig it all out late summer after I'm, certain no bulbs have escaped death. I'll replace with a good quality compost instead of the normal soil present right now.
Hopefully I'm more or less sorted now though.
About the ivy: I chopped the base and it started to sprout again, so I hacked the trunk (around 4" thick) into a mash of wood then applied the same neat oven cleaner. Killed it right away.
Last edited: 24 March 2017 14:26:09
interesting Lynzzer, just bit worried asd mine in heavily planteed beds, if I dabbed on with a brush that could work, what product did you use?
Just standard oven cleaner from Home Stores.
I have another small area that I'm trying something else on.
I have only just, like a few minutes ago, poured boiling water over them, then applied a standard weedkiller. I'm hoping the boiling water has broken down the leaf tissue enough to allow ingress of the weedkiller.
Won't know if this has worked for a while yet though.