Several years before I married my husband, he allowed his brother to run his horses on our land. Part of the land they had access to was the woods.
I love horses but they created a mess down in our woods that I am trying to clean up to this day! They brought in every weed or otherwise invasive plant you can imagine. In the spring and summer there's poison ivy and smartweed that seems to overwhelm you. In the winter, it's the japanese honeysuckle and the wintercreeper euonymus.
In the winter, you have full access to just the honeysuckle and wintercreeper since they are about the only things green. Sunday afternoon, I yanked and pulled and yanked some more til I had 4 garbage bags full of mostly honeysuckle. I barely got 200 sq ft cleared. It humbles you really. My husband asked me how many bags I got, I told him 4. He asked how many there were to go, I said 4000. (It's not really quite that bad).
If anyone says you can't get poison ivy in the winter, tell them they are wrong. I must have pulled up some poison ivy and the only spot on me where skin was showing is now red & puckered with a few blisters (on my wrist).
7 comments:
#1, the good news is you're not allergic to poison ivey. what your arm looks like is a typical non-allergic reaction to quite a bit of contact. #2 the best and only real way to get rid of poison ivy is to wait until it has leaves and poison it with ortho poison ivy killer(home depot, green bottle), use 2x's as much as the directions say and spray each plant on whatever leaves you can reach. if it is creeping out of sight(up a tree) cut the vines with a saw and poison the bottom of the plant all over and where you cut the vine. now the hardest part...wait! 2-3 weeks and it will be shriveling. pulling out poison ivy doesn't work because the roots break and the main plant survives. when you wait, you give the poison time to make its way throughout the plant. try to do this early in the season because the only way to keep it from multiplying is to kill it before it grows berries. birds love the berries, eat them and then poop them - thus for supplying them with fertilizer to start anew. when you are in your wooded area, make sure you look up and see what's going on above you. i lost a 90 foot tree to poison ivy. not to mention my cat gives it to my wife at least 4 times a year. when it is above you it must perish at all costs in the aformentioned manner. oh, by the way i have noticed that ortho poison ivy killer also kills honeysuckle! also, don't let your doggy or pussycat out after you spray plants for 12 hours. let them in at night and then go do the deed during twilight. i hope i helped, and believe me if you follow my directions you will find it to be the safest and most cost effective way to get the job done... or you could just buy a goat and tie him up out there.
--kevin
Anonymous -- Believe you me, I am allergic to poison ivy. The picture I posted was the very early stages -- it would have been gross to post the picture of my wrist a few days later. Thank you for your comment. I am in the process of ridding our woods of lots of unwanteds.
Beth
Sorry about your poison ivy, but don't blame it on the horses. They don't eat it, so it can't arrive by their manure. What may have happened is that the horses were allowed to overgraze (your husband's fault), and the birds brought the seeds (Nature abhorring a vacuum). It is common to blame horses manure for bringing weed seeds, but at least one study shows there is little connection.
Anonymous, Thanks for posting. I guess technically, no, the horses did not bring it in. But they definitely wore away existing native vegetation that made a spot for the PI to take over.
I just looked the other day and I am doing a pretty good job on the PI. The honeysuckle is the major problem still....
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