Out, out damned ivy

Yesterday on a whim—and because the internet clearly knows all—I Googled how to get rid of English ivy. Wow. I am not the only person who dislikes the stuff. In fact, I have a lot of company*.

While I like the idea of ground cover, and I’ve even put in ivy before myself (in a small space that was pretty contained), I’ve always known it’s incredibly invasive. Our yard has ivy up near the house and along at least two of our three fence lines and unfortunately, the ivy keeps trying to grow up under the siding. That’s not good at all.

A couple of weekends ago, I spent a few hours outside pulling up the ivy. Other than having very sore hands and very nearly tweaking my back, it didn’t seem like I made much progress. I didn’t know if that just how it goes with ivy removal, but after reading I realized nope, that’s just how it goes. One blog post I found said on average it took her two hours to remove two linear feet of ivy from her seven foot tall fence. Yikes. So I’ve reframed my expectations for ivy eradication and now hope to have it mostly gone by the end of summer.

I say mostly because another site said you have to stay on the removal process. It takes less time in succeeding years (yay) but you do have to be vigilant. So next year, we’ll need to get on the slash and burn before the rest of the plants grow in.

*In case you’re curious, my favorite site for ivy removal was called Ivy Out – Rip It Out.