Hi everyone,

I'm having a bit of a problem with poison Ivy in one of my iris beds. I was wondering if there was any chemical (besides Round-Up) I could use to get rid of the Ivy.

I thought about using dish soap or bleach. Would any of these work???
At second thought, the bleach might harm the iris.

Thank you,
~ Ian

Please do not use bleach on your garden! It will harm everything.

I don't know about poison ivy, but one way to kill weeds is to pour boiling water on them. Just be careful not to get it on the Irises.

Australis said:Please do not use bleach on your garden! It will harm everything.

I don't know about poison ivy, but one way to kill weeds is to pour boiling water on them. Just be careful not to get it on the Irises.

Joshua, there is no way boiling water will work, the ivy is near the middle of the bed.

Maybe get a long handled artists' type paintbrush to apply the bleach to the leaves of the poison ivy without getting it on the iris?

SonoveShakespeare said:Joshua, there is no way boiling water will work, the ivy is near the middle of the bed.

Hmm. That is a problem.

The paintbrush idea may work.

I use a long-handled Fiskars Uprooter to pop out small poison ivy plants and just "shoot" them into a weed bag.

If you have problems with poison ivy seedlings popping up all over then somewhere nearby is the parent vine, probably climbing up a neighbor's tree. Find it. It takes years for a poison ivy vine to develop into a big, hairy vine and start fruiting.

In our case, I found the vine snaking up the next door neighbor's tree. When people came from the electric company to trim the tree away from electric lines, I went out and talked to the crew. Said I didn't want them to get poison ivy rashes, so they should know what they were dealing with, and what to do to destroy the vine. They did. That was a couple years ago, and I have seen only one sprig of poison ivy in my yard since then.

DaisyDo said:I have seen only one sprig of poison ivy in my yard since then.

Daisy, I only have one sprig of poison ivy. My neighbor, Leila, had a poison ivy vine climbing on a walnut tree. The vine grew so long that its berries would sometimes fall off of my side of the tree. The birds must've ate some of the berries too because I would find the ivy growing in other places around my property. My neighbor, Leila, was having some trees trimmed a few years back. and one of the tree guys noticed the poison ivy on the walnut. Luckily, he knew what to do.

I have used Round-Up on the other poison ivy sprigs until I heard from my other neighbor, Karen, that Round-Up can cause cancer.

LynNY said:Maybe get a long handled artists' type paintbrush to apply the bleach to the leaves of the poison ivy without getting it on the iris?

Lyn, I'll go with your idea.

Just be careful to wear gloves when removing the ivy, and also when you work in that area of the garden. The poison ivy roots will give you a very nasty dose of blisters even if you don't see any left on the surface. If it is far enough away from the iris, putting some salt (not epsom salt) on the plant will also help it go away, but salt will damage anything that grows into that area.

SonoveShakespeare said: Hi everyone,

I'm having a bit of a problem with poison Ivy in one of my iris beds. I was wondering if there was any chemical (besides Round-Up) I could use to get rid of the Ivy.

I thought about using dish soap or bleach. Would any of these work???
At second thought, the bleach might harm the iris.

Thank you,
~ Ian

I have a persistent little poison ivy in among the rhizomes. I don't think I can do anything but pull it. And I have. Again and again. I've thrown some gloves away, because I've brushed it on accident, and I use TECNU on myself as well as washing upper arm to fingertip at least 3 times, right away after touching.

Lestv said:Just be careful to wear gloves when removing the ivy, and also when you work in that area of the garden. The poison ivy roots will give you a very nasty dose of blisters even if you don't see any left on the surface. If it is far enough away from the iris, putting some salt (not epsom salt) on the plant will also help it go away, but salt will damage anything that grows into that area.

i bet you're right about the root.
In my case, it's embedded in between rhizomes. I'm concerned about digging it up. But I guess I clean my tools afterward with soap and tecnu... and throw out another pair of gloves...

Irises, daylilies. true lilies and grass are all monocots. There are several broadleaf (dicots) weed killing chemicals that you could use to kill poison ivy with out damaging your iris.

Any of the weed killers that you would use on your grass would do the trick.

One of the more common chemicals is 2-4D. I buy it from Tractor Supply.

Oh yes, roundup kills monocots and dicots (all plants). Not a good choice to use around any plants that you do not want to kill.