Battle of the weeds

hwalkerh

We have loads of brambles, stingers and bineweed in our new houses garden. They are growing inbetween loads of lovely plants so i obviously don't want to kill everything off. I have bought systemic weedkiller and were possible i have sprayed but the majority of it is to inter twined. I have been out and painted with a paint brush the liquid onto the leaves were i can. Will this work?

For some brambles i might have only got about 10% of the leaves, is this enough? Do you think I need to do it again in a few days?

Thanks

DaftyDuck

It's only necessary to get a bit on each plant, but the more the better. Where spray would hit other plants, I use diluted glyphosate in glass pots, and dunk the tips of brambles and bindweed. I leave them in for up to an hour, then move the pot on to the next area. Lightly bruising the leaves helps them take up more. You can get large areas cleared quite quickly, as you only need to get one or two shoots from each root in the pot, and all from that root will die.

A pair of tweezers or pliers helps dunk without getting glyphosate on fingers.... and keeps bramble prickles at bay.

Davesnave

What Dafty says is correct, but well established bindweed and bramble won't succumb to a single or even double application.

They will come back. It can take years to fully clear an area of bramble if people don't dig and just rely on glyphosate. That's what I did on a part of my plot which had no plants of value, so I know. Had I been dodging valued plants as well it would have been impossible.

With bramble, bindweed and couch grass + a few others, like ground elder, the only long term solution is to clear the area and start again. I have friends with very posh houses & gardens, but these are spoiled by the simple fact that they have never done these basics.....just piddled around. They never will either; digging stuff out far too much like hard work!

Sorry!

lostinrates

Davesnave wrote: »

What Dafty says is correct, but well established bindweed and bramble won't succumb to a single or even double application.

They will come back. It can take years to fully clear an area of bramble if people don't dig and just rely on glyphosate. That's what I did on a part of my plot which had no plants of value, so I know. Had I been dodging valued plants as well it would have been impossible.

With bramble, bindweed and couch grass + a few others, like ground elder, the only long term solution is to clear the area and start again. I have friends with very posh houses & gardens, but these are spoiled by the simple fact that they have never done these basics.....just piddled around. They never will either; digging stuff out far too much like hard work!

Sorry!

We dug and seived and bits still survived ( though less each time)

Would the best attack have been multiple sprays then digging?

We sprayed a new border end of last season and beginning of this but didn't get to digging over. I plan to spray again then dig in early autumn.( just looking at dead strip til then...sound ok?

jenfa

You could wait until autumn and then try and pot up the plants you want to keep and then clear the bed. I too moved like you to a garden that hadn't been looked after for years. It is back breaking work and I went through lots of pairs of gloves, pulling out ivy and digging up brambles, we also had lots of ground elder which people told me would take years to get rid of but I just persevered and dug up bits as they raised their head. Glysophate goes back to the roots so I would have thought if you can get in and spray lower down the plants it would get to the roots quicker. Bindweed is as you say a pain because it grows up things but if you keep at it you can reduce it. It may take a couple of years to totally get rid of it but when you look at those beds you'll have forgotten all that hard work.

Davesnave

lostinrates wrote: »

We dug and seived and bits still survived ( though less each time)

Would the best attack have been multiple sprays then digging?

We sprayed a new border end of last season and beginning of this but didn't get to digging over. I plan to spray again then dig in early autumn.( just looking at dead strip til then...sound ok?

The short answer is I don't know, but leaving it as a dead zone certainly helps. It's a long battle whichever way. Out at the front it took 3 years with spaying alone to fully bump off the brambles.

At the back we used a digger(!) sprayed, dug and sprayed again, but it was an overgrown field to start with, so no surprise.

Two full years on, we are still getting survivors, especially nettles, couch and a few docks. The bits we did first give us confidence that it gets easier, year by year.

DaftyDuck

I don't think the glyphosate route will entirely clear an area in one go. However, the bruise-leaves-and-dunk method is far, far, far more successful than either spraying or painting on leaves. I guess the quantity absorbed -and directly into the plant, none on soil - is just so much higher. You certainly can completely wipe out a large bramble of several metres with only ~ 1/3 of the shoots ever seeing glyphosate. Same with an ivy-covered barn. I'd say 80% of the ivy cover died in one go, and there was minimal regrowth from the treated stuff. Admittedly, with the ivy, I just left tendrils in buckets for a few days.

The key to this being so successful (and often this is impossible) is that it must be done before any digging attempt, as this breaks up the root system. Dig, and you'll have to treat each and every separated part of the plant. Treat first and treat for a long dunk, the plant will happily glug down the glyphosate for a couple of days if needed, passing it down to the roots and on to any other connected stem.

It's incredible to see with, say brambles or bindweed, a completely untreated tendril some feet away start withering five or six days after treating what you assume is a separate plant.

The solution does not need to be strong, indeed weak seems better, as it doesn't kill the plant before sending glyphosate all over the root system. Bruising the dunked plants helps, and use tweezers or pliers to manipulate the plant into the pot.

I've no idea why I started doing it this way. I may have read it elsewhere, I may have started in a spate of depression at spraying not being more effective. I've not seen it recommended elsewhere - except where I probably started the trend. However, where people have done it on new (old) untamed gardens and allotments, it seems to work near-miracles.

Obviously, it isn't 100% effective, there will always be some left to spray, dig, pull out or ignore, but it does work several times better than spraying.

There's certainly still a place for hard graft, but this is a good way to save early effort.

DaftyDuck

LIR & Dave,

I cleared a 40 metre garden/field boundary of the brambles, leaving the hedging bushes intact using this dunk method. Brambles were huge, untouched for at least 10 years. ALL the main brambles were killed with one long dunking session. That's all of them. Yes, there certainly was regrowth, but most was from shallow-rooted seedlings that could be pulled by hand. Some regrew a year later, but pretty weakly. None of the huge stems recovered at all.

From previous sprayings on other brambly areas, yes, I'm sure it would have survived many sprays... but much of the established hedge would not.

The imperative is, use this method before digging around the roots. If needed, repeat on different stems. Then, and only then, physically attack it.

There is a (worryingly) intense pleasure from watching the unwanted brambles in a hedge just wither and die, whilst the hedge itself survives!

hwalkerh

Thanks.

We only have a little bineweed so that should be ok to sort. all the nettles and docks are in places that are easier to dig out so I will do that first and then treat the repeat offenders with weedkiller.

It is the brambles that are the main problem. Unfortunately the plants they are inbetween are not ones that can be dug out they are well established large shrubs and trees. I will try the dunk method in a few days and will just persevere until we have took back control of the garden.

Davesnave

Thanks for the extra advice on dunking. I've used either wallpaper paste and a cotton glove (over a pair of Marigolds) "glove of death," or I've painted a similar mix on. I'd certainly give dunking a go if I needed to kill more brambles.

Although I do still have them, they're in roadside/field hedging, kept as wild as possible, so no problem.

Eenymeeny

DaftyDuck wrote: »

LIR & Dave,

I cleared a 40 metre garden/field boundary of the brambles, leaving the hedging bushes intact using this dunk method. Brambles were huge, untouched for at least 10 years. ALL the main brambles were killed with one long dunking session. That's all of them. Yes, there certainly was regrowth, but most was from shallow-rooted seedlings that could be pulled by hand. Some regrew a year later, but pretty weakly. None of the huge stems recovered at all.

From previous sprayings on other brambly areas, yes, I'm sure it would have survived many sprays... but much of the established hedge would not.

The imperative is, use this method before digging around the roots. If needed, repeat on different stems. Then, and only then, physically attack it.

There is a (worryingly) intense pleasure from watching the unwanted brambles in a hedge just wither and die, whilst the hedge itself survives!

Thanks for a great tip. I'm thinking that it might be useful for the brambles that are finding their way through the fence from behind next door's greenhouse :T