Ignore woofie, how would she know? The sun never shines in the PNW

Soil solarization
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG...

http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/ag...

Karen

As far as covering something with plastic, both clear and black will kiil effectively though I don't know if one will kill better/faster than the other. If you have some lawn or landscape you want to kill, simply lay a sheet of plastic over it for a few to several days of sunny weather. Whatever is underneath will be cooked. Both the high humidity (think steam) and the heat will do the job. I found this out the hard way by leaving some clear plastic film over some of my yard several years ago. I thought that because the grass was getting plenty of sunlight, the plastic film would do no damage. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I ended up resodding the entire area that was covered with plastic. That's my opinion for what it's worth. Ken

I read that horsehair can't be mulched or solarized: the surface foliage may die, but it comes right back from the roots. I wonder how deep you can cook the soil, and whether horsehair (and ivy) roots are more heat-resistant than soil fungi and other microbes.

Thanks for the You-Tube link to the gardening version of The Green Mile!

Speaking of electricity and garden pests:

the 9-volt slug deterrent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?N...

serious slug fence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Nah, nah, Karen, you have me confused with Rick. HE lives in the PNW where the sun never shines. *I* live in the far NE corner of the state where we alternately freeze our noses off in the 6 month winters and turn into crispy critters during the blistering hot summer. I think spring fell on a Tuesday last year.

I liv e in the Pacific North WET, and Woofie just lives in the North Western part of the country. My SO lives in the Oregon high desert.

(I was just astonished to find that my SO and I are both Koppen Climate zone "Csb" despite her much colder winters and much hotter summers. Also, I have mostly solid overcast and drizzle 8 months per year, and she has mostly clear dry skies. Maybe she just has a few days of real RAIN and my drizzle doesn't add up to many inches. I'll have to figure that out! ... I'm Sunset Zone 5 "Marine influence along the Northwest coast, Puget Sound, and South Vancouver Island". She's Sunset Zone 1A: "Coldest mountain and intermountain areas of the contiguous states".)

Climate - it's wonderful. I may have moss on my roof and driveway, but at least I don't have to chip ice off my car (well, maybe a few times per decade I'll get a week or so of REAL winter).

Ok, Rick. If you tell me she lives in Ritter, OR.......well, I'd believe you! That is, however, the exact geometric center of Nowhere.

Ummm, Jefferson County? Bend-ish?

Everything looks like sandy, gritty desert with a few scrubby evergreens. I WISH I could have 20 cubic yards of her chunky pumice "soil" to amend my heavy clay. I also wi9sh I could drip irrigate her backyard just a little, because that raw volcanic soil must be really rich in minerals. But apparently anything even slightly green immediately attracts 500,000 hungry deer. They come around anyway, inspecting the brown grass to be sure there isn't even ONE green stalk. I feel sorry for them, and probably WOULD irrigate if she let me. Then I would probably curse them for eatin g everything that sprouted..

To be more exact: Terrebonne. Crooked River (but it looks more like a brook to me ... a teeny-tiny brook at the bottom of a huge gorge / canyon.

Ah, we were farther north and east than that. But I have to agree about the deer! Little rascals would peer in through the living room window at night....and that's with us having two wolf-hybrid doggies, plus a bird dog, and a dobie-german shepherd mix. Darn deer would weasel through the fence and take one bite out of each of the tomatoes that looked even slightly red. I think they kept hoping at least ONE of those things would turn out to be an apple! Grrrr, and they stomped on my rose bushes, too. And I don't even like venison!

At first, all those semi-tame feral Bambis were cute. Then they seemed like really big rats.

Then I realized they were starving big rats. Then the community hired professional slaughterers (can't call them hunters) to cull the herd, and now they are back to being great big, cute rats.

Round up resistence has become wide spread. So that may be why you are not getting results

Really? I hadn't heard that. I've had good results with it here, but I haven't used it excessively.

Many of the more recent herbicides are not as detrimental as the older ones which did not break down.
Using them as a last resort on tough weeds is okay to my mind.
Glyphosphate breaks down into glycine, and phosphate which are plant nutrients.

My neighbour goes hysterical if I use it near the property line, so I am painting it with a brush on the weeds and grasses along there.
I want some dead grass stubble to remain as it is a slope where i want to seed wildflowers. The stubble helps to keep the seeds from
being washed to the bottom of the slope.

I have a bad infestation of bindweed and quack grass in one part of the yard.
Digging and also covering the area just spreads both out into a wider area so I will use herbicide this year.

Eeewww, nasty stuff all. I have some quack grass in one of my beds that I really need to spray. And I think it was regarding bindweed that I saw the recommendation to spray it in the fall.

Well, y'all chat on.
I still await some solid info on the dissipation time of ammonia.

For those of you panicking about the salt idea, Google map this:
108 bruce street, 15136
Note that the south wall of her house is only about 2 feet from the fence surrounding the adjacent asphalt and that the neighborhood is highly commercial, NEVER likely to be planted with anything.

It's BOSTON Ivy. Not native here, and very invasive.
I plan to salt it, spray it, spray it again, cut it off of the house, and then smother it.

I do use cardboard and newspaper to kill grass/weeds where I want to make a garden bed. I don't want to wast it on the ivy. But I WILL if it doesn't die from the other insults I throw at it.

Neither of the places I'm working on can be physically dug. There are fences and rocks and the fence line at my own property has a DOUBLE fence I can't physically get between.

Roundup is the only chemically manufactured weed killer I ever use (because it WORKS and you can replant the area later) and I only use it on places/plants that don't lend themselves to manual removal,

My best guess is that it's breakdown in soil would depend on such factors as soil temp, soil pH, levels of other compounds and minerals present, amount of organic material present in soil...

Your best resource is probably your county extension agent.

Karen

OK.

It sounds like you do have a chance with Boston Ivy & Roundup:

"Choose an herbicide containing glyphosate, which is harmless to soil but will damage or kill any other plant you spill it on. Brush it onto fresh cuts in the plant stems, spray it, or apply it with a watering can.

It's best to use an herbicide when new foliage starts to grow, or in the autumn when the plants are moving sugars down into their roots for the winter and the glyphosate will be transported there.

Be patient, as it will take a couple of weeks before you see any progress, and may even take a few applications to kill the ivy. If the ivy is well established, you may need four or more applications over a two-year period."

Read more: The Best Way to Kill Boston Ivy | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/way_549209...
"

I am new to this site, so "Hello" to all. I consider myself a novice gardener, so please keep that in mind when I pass along some of the things I have picked up to solve some of the problems in my garden.

To answer your specific questiion, "I still await some solid info on the dissipation time of ammonia." , I did a Google search "amonia to nitrate' and came up with this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

I will readily admit much of it is over my head.

I can confirm that my own research shows that Round-up must be used in the active growing period of the plant to be effective. (For some plants that is a very small window.)

I am battling poison oak. It's a war I intend to win as I am very sensitive to poison oak ... think docs and hospital visits.

I, too, am very reluctant to use chemicals in the garden as my town is located in the midst of a forest.

My most successful methodology is to use concentrated Roundup, alcohol, weed barrier, and black plastic.

Since PO is often spread by bird drops, I don't bother spraying the plant. I cover the plant with a garbage bag for disposal and then I cut it as low as I can. Since PO emits a sap as soon as it is cut, I swab the trunk/stump with the alcohol and then apply the Roundup. I put the weed barrier around the base of the plant with the stump sticking out and weigt it down with rocks so that it won't move. I then place a rag soaked with Roundup over the stump and cover the whole thing with heavy black plastic. I make sure the black plastic is weighted down, too, so that nothing will move it away from the plant I am killing. Since my summer temps are usually in the high 90s and low 100s for months, the remaining stump gets thoroughly cooked.

So far, I have never had to go back and treat a PO plant to kill it ... just to remove the unsightly plastic and weed barrier. PO sends out runner roots underground, but this method seems to get to them and I have never had new plants come up from a plant I have treated, nor have I had to go back a re-treat a plant.

I hope this helps. I honestly don't know if this method will work with ivy, but it sure works on poison oak.

Smiles,
Lyn

Wow. Thanks for posting this. I have some invasive shrubs that I'd like to get rid of this summer (not sure of the actual name, people around here call them snowberries) and they also send out runners. This sounds like a really good technique for killing them off without using gallons of Roundup.