Ive been clearing the garden (10yrs overdue) and in the process removed an ivy-choked tree that was next to the garage.
The ivy is thick across the roof & I’m loath to climb up & physically rip it off as I’m really not sure how strong the roof is.
What’s the best poison to use that will make it all shrivel up & die without killing wildlife/rest of my garden?

Cut each stalk at ground level, and pop in a bucket of water and weedkiller. Then wait.

Cut it a near the root, then dig out the root.

Resist the temptation to kill it with poison such as Glyphosate. It’s bad news for you and the environment

Ive chopped the stalks, well all the ones I can find anyway. Its that thick on the roof I suspect its rooting up there so want to poison it all.

Glyphosate is only bad if you spread it about, if you do as I suggested, the plant sucks up all the weedkiller, and it’s only the plant that is subjected to it.

It won’t be rooting in the roof.

I had a whole 4 bed semi covered in the stuff in 2007, and that’s how I got rid. Pulled it all off In a monstrous sheet when it had turned brown and dried out. Then 3 of us spent a whole weekend with drills and rotating wire brushes getting the dried in tendrils off of the render, before I could paint it.

Horrible stuff.

Its rate away all the woodwork around the windows in the shed, now I’m going to have to replace the whole front end and door, this gardening lark isn’t supposed to cost this much is it?

There’s bloody trees rooting up there! Well, saplings anyway unless the ivy is going arboreal .

Clearing ivy can make you feel sick and give you headaches even if you Wear mask and gloves. eeugh! Done it once.

We had a similar problem with ivy up the wall and across the roof of our barn, turned out that it just peeled off in one big ‘sheet’ without us actually having to go any further than going up a ladder at the gable end. We ended up with so much ivy it made a pile the size of a van. Bonfire was ‘fun’ 🙂

That would be a great title for a film 🙂

Just cut through the trunks, it should pull off easily enough after dying (though do be careful with slates). Our garden is overgrown with ivy on walls and trees (though not the house itself) and we’ve had about 4-5 trips to the tip with a van full of it, 4-5 builders bags each time.

You can also drill into the branches and pour in glyphosate. Note that in contrast to what was said above, glyphosate is pretty safe stuff in normal use really, degrades quickly in soil. I’m not a fan of toxic chemicals in general but this is one I’m not bothered by.

Can you still buy glyphosate btw?.

Horrible stuff.

But Ivy is very good for nature – the horrible part is clearing it

I’ll just leave this here..

[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRfRITVdz4k[/video]

Glyphosate. Ignore the hippies, they don’t even wash.

How long does it take to die off?
I cut the trunks a couple of weeks ago but the thick mat on the shed roof looks suspiciously healthy.

I’ve cleared it from a few trees, cut through the boughs at ground level and it dies off in a few months. The tendrils don’t seem absorb much water or nutrients unless they’ve got back into fertile soil and taken root.

I’ve tended to leave it for a year or so and then pulled it down when it’s brittle. Weed killer won’t speed the process up at all. As long as it’s cut at the base (and remove a few inches so the cut can’t rejoin) it’ll die back in due course.

Ours also pulled off in a ‘big sheet’, try to use its own weight to pull itself off. There are some bits that I couldn’t reach when I pulled ours down in January, they have now gone brown and are falling off of their own accord.

Cut each stalk at ground level, and pop in a bucket of water and weedkiller. Then wait.

Would that work with brambles as well?

I did it the opposite way with brambles, put the ends of each branch in the bucket, then hoik the whole lot out when they’ve died.

Brambles are a different prospect altogether. You need to dig the roots out with a fork and burn them. They’ll keep coming back though, just keep pulling/digging 2 or 3 times a year.

They tend to put down additional roots wherever a stand touches the soil so they can be very invasive. A foliar weedkiller like Grazon 90 or a glyphosate will help if you use it around this time of year…

Looks like I wait til spring then! That’ll do – I’m a lazy gardener at best 🙂

they can be very invasive

I noticed 😥