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September 28, 2011 at 5:56 pm #600714
Mac in FauntleroyMemberI am new to Seattle and love the work that most people do with their yards. However, my neighbors don’t do much to keep up their yards and they have a morning glory ivy that attacks my plants, trees, and house. I have asked them numerous times to get their weeds under control. Does anyone have any advice or if I have a legal leg to stand on?
September 28, 2011 at 6:19 pm #735450
jwwsParticipantMac,
My neighbor too is a “perennial weed grower” so I feel your pain. I constantly pull up new weeds that come from his yard and have had some success using white vinegar to kill certain weeds – not sure it works for morning glory. Here’s some advice I found online for getting rid of morning glory:
Getting rid of morning glory is an uphill battle as you may already know. My mother unsuccesfully fought it for eight years before she got some real good advice two years ago.
If you leave one little piece of the root it will “Root” as nature unfortunately wants it to. So by pulling it you only make matters worse. Killing it off with pesticides doesn’t work well as it is very resistant to it.
A master gardener here in Washington was able to help us understand why. It gets all its energy to survive the winter from its leaves. So this years leaves hold all the energy to survive and start producing leaves for next year. By removing the leaves to the plant as soon as they appear you will remove a link in the growth process. It takes patience and vigilance but can be done. Two years later my mother has completely eliminated all morning glory. I have passed this advice to anyone who needed it and it has proved sound over and over. The first summer is the hardest with the following spring much easier. The key is to get the leaves picked off. Don;t touch the roots as you’ll only end up spreading the problem. Leaves are the key link in the plants growth now and later. Good luck and yes it will seem like your only going two steps forward to have to take one step back. It can be done and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Although with a neighbor having it rampant in his/her yard can almost guarantee a constant source of misery for you. I can’t believe they even sell seeds for this noxious weed instores. Good luck!
September 28, 2011 at 6:26 pm #735451
DBPMemberSeptember 28, 2011 at 6:40 pm #735452
shihtzuParticipantjwws, thanks for the info. I’m going to try that next year.
As for the original poster. Just whack it back if it’s on your property. I think it’s just a part of living next to people.
September 28, 2011 at 11:09 pm #735453
anonymeParticipantFirst, is it morning glory or is it ivy? Both are on the King County Noxious Weed List, but control is not required. I feel for you, as it is almost impossible to completely eradicate either one without some cooperation from the neighbor.
I second what jwws said about morning glory control, although it is very difficult and time-consuming. Vinegar sprays have not worked for me, and I don’t recommend chemicals. I’ve also had some luck deep “smulching” morning glory. Smulching involves placing a deep layer (6-8″ or more)of wood chips to the root area. It’s impossible to pull out the runners from regular hard soil. However, morning glory (like bamboo) is lazy; it will move happily up into the deep, soft layer of mulch, where it can easily be pulled out along it’s entire length. I discovered this method by accident, and I’ve all but eliminated the morning glory on a shared fence by diligent pulling. It’s actually quite satisfying pulling out a 12 ft. runner, complete with all the little suckers and roots.
Good luck, and here is a link to the King County Noxious Weed info pages:
http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/animalsAndPlants/noxious-weeds.aspx
September 29, 2011 at 1:45 am #735454
jMemberI feel your pain and wish there was a solution to this problem. My neighbor’s yard is full of blackberries, ivy, morning glories, and another vine that I haven’t been able to identify. The worst part is, the entire yard is now taller than our 6ft fence.
September 29, 2011 at 2:57 am #735455
IrukandjiParticipantI had an attorney friend of mine help me draw up ‘paternity’ papers to give to the guy across the street with the VERY fertile birch trees. I HAZ HIS BABIES! We got a good laugh out of it, and eight years later I’m still managing the little bastards.
September 29, 2011 at 3:00 am #735456
hammerheadParticipantya know I used corn meal, all year long especially spring. I had a hill side in my back yard and it seemed to work, it was cheap, we tried burning one year, and um yeah that did not work.
that is just my .02 cents:)
like everyone else said I feel your pain.
jwws good advise but I have a HUGE compost pile full of morning glory:)
September 29, 2011 at 7:52 am #735457
WSBKeymasterLOL to #7.
It really is a case of what goes around, comes around. An alder seeded by one across the street on our house’s north side is now 25 feet tall. Our buddleias seem to have parented at least one in the house east of us, but their cherry tree had about a dozen offspring in our yard. The only thing I can say is just keep after the stuff you don’t want. Having seen what ivy has done to so many trees in our area, that is the one thing I will not tolerate, and I pull sprigs on sight. Re: legal leg to stand on: The only thing the Seattle Municipal Code allows for is if the weeds are blocking right of way (sidewalks, streets, etc.) Just growing into your yard? Nope, no law against that, but also no law against you protecting your turf, even if it means cutting branches etc. that hang over your property line. – TR
September 29, 2011 at 2:03 pm #735458
GenHillOneParticipantSo this might be a dumb question – no laughing! – but if the key to morning glory is removing the leaves, how is picking them off different than cutting the vine back to the ground? Leaves are gone and far less tedious. My apologies to the OP for the stray, but I’ve never heard this strategy!
September 29, 2011 at 2:19 pm #735459
JoBParticipantgood question
September 29, 2011 at 3:18 pm #735460
anonymeParticipantGHO, you are correct. Cutting them off at the base achieves the same effect with far less effort. The major key to success is persistence.
September 29, 2011 at 4:34 pm #735461
The Velvet BulldogParticipantCheck out King County’s Noxious Weed factsheet:
http://your.kingcounty.gov/dnrp/library/water-and-land/weeds/Brochures/Bindweed_factsheet.pdf
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It talks about Field Bindweed, though what we typically have around here is Hedge Bindweed. Control methods are the same. Cutting to starve the plant in combination with some chemical control is recommended. A note regarding chemicals, which I know most of us are trying to reduce or avoid: Glyphosate, which is the active chemical used in Roundup, is a less environmentally harmful chemical than many. It has a fast half-life (breaks down into harmless molecules quickly) and is considered to be four times less toxic to humans than aspirin. It must be used very judiciously of course, and not sprayed all over, just applied carefully to the target plant.
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One story told to me ages ago (and I cannot verify its veracity) was that someone took small baggies partially full of herbicide and stuck the ends of the bindweed into them, tying the neck of the baggie around the bindweed. If done in the Fall, when the plants are storing energy in their roots for the Winter, they would be absorbing this herbicide directly into their vascular systems. Again, I have no way of verifying this or knowing whether it worked. Seems like a lot of work though.
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If you choose to use Glyphosate, now would be a good time to apply it because the plants are storing Winter reserves.
September 29, 2011 at 5:00 pm #735462
JillParticipantVelvet Bulldog, we have tried that technique of sticking the ends of a couple of vines into a plastic container with glyphosate in it. It had some success, but without the persistence, the roots that it doesn’t reach just overtake the area where the previous ones were.
So in our experience it didn’t make much of a difference over persistence alone. What worked best for me before that was what anonyme described with the mulch, or with more compacted soil, using a fork to lift it out. I started out being all careful, cutting it at the base to try not to disturb the roots. But with vines on top of vines on top of vines, that got old quickly, so I started pulling. Might not have been the most recommended, but it was definitely more satisfying when I really got ahold of one. And I was *very* persistent. But it only took me two seasons to get rid it, and then occasional maintenance if a shoot sprung up.
As far as it coming over from the neighbor’s, the best solution for us was to build a fence (cedar 2×4, not a chain link or anything the vine can wrap itself around). So the weeds grew up it on the other side, and the ones sneaking over didn’t get a chance to root on our side before we were able to pull them. Not ideal, but the best we could do.
Now if anyone can tell me how to get rid of *blackberry* coming over or springing up…ugh.
September 29, 2011 at 5:51 pm #735463
MarySheelyMemberThe other thing with morning glories is that they reseed like crazy, so definitely get them before they go to seed.
September 29, 2011 at 6:04 pm #735464
dawsonctParticipantFirst thing, it isn’t morning glory. The plants aren’t related at all.
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Second, if you have the patience to denude/cut back the vines, yes, eventually the roots will use their energy stores and wither and die. I don’t have the patience, nor does it give me the nearly instant gratification of watching the vines wither and die. After the plants in the bucket appear dead, I cut the vines at ground level, in case the glypho is still working on the roots.
I have been using the glyphosate and bucket method VERY successfully for the last couple of years, and my long neglected yard, as well as my neighbor’s yard, are just about completely free of them.
You can use the same method with blackberry vines, but you need a heavier bucket.
September 29, 2011 at 6:49 pm #735465
sacatoshParticipantIf any of you are my neighbors, SORRY! We just moved in and are tackling the overgrowth as fast as we can. :)
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