[jonewer]

Good people, my Grandad is 96 tomorrow and his large house (the family inheritance!) is gradually being destroyed by ivy.

Its a real menace. Of course, me and my dad would simply saw through the ivy at its base, but my Gramps is a cantakerous old person who is likely to raise hell if he ever notices that something unauthorised has taken place in his garden. Not that he is fit to even pick up a spade these days, being 96 and all, but god alone can help you if you tromp on his nascent crocus shoots!

But lo! the ivy is growing thorugh roof-tiles and sash windows like a giant squid probing a captive nautilus.... slowly prizing apart the very tissue of the house!

Hence the need for the conspiracy and the secrecy... you must not speak of this to anyone!

Direct physical assault being to obvious a method against the insidious foe, our dark thoughts, nurtured by several pints of bitter at the local, turned to poison!... which could be mistaken for death by natural causes to the untrained 96 year old eye!

One option is to drill a hole into the base of the master-stem of the dammned weed, and filling said hole with acid or sodium hyroxide... but have no drill, nor any surety if this method will work....

The other option is glyphosate! oh hideous roundup! But how much would be need? Given that it extends over about a quarter of a 5 bed detached house, and has a base stem too fat to put your hands around....!

So, how much glyphosate to use? How to apply it? Where to get it really cheap, considering miserly behaviour runs in the family?

Thank you good co-conspirators..... together we shall be free of the curse of the menace! the curse! and move on from the darkness to the sunlit uplands of a new golden age.

[Aunt Sally]

   

Can't help you but I love your post  

[Swing Swang]

Dig up the lawn, ruin a few beds, grub up the odd shrub, grub out the ivy and blame it on a badger!

SS

[Swing Swang]

Many, many, years ago my father used to work in a hospital where the wall beneath one of the ward windows was free of ivy. Popular myth had it that it was because the sisters on that ward couldn't be bothered to empty the chamber pots in the prescribed manner.

SS

[DIGGER]

Are you sure that this is not a script from Allo Allo

[richyrich7]

:shock:  sounds like a job for dynamite if the stems that big    can't see roundup doing a great deal in the 1st instance all it will do will be kill all the leaves, but the thing will have huge reserves of energy, if you could drill a hole or two near the base an pour neat round up in them that may help, sodium chlorate poured direct around the base may kill it but will kill all the soil around it too, either way you go it's going to be several attempts at killing it.

[Faz]

it does sound like a job for sodium chlorate really, and attempt to dig out the dead ground once the ivy has gone. either that or wee out of the window a lot, though you might get spotted by the old fella!  :shock:

chlorate would probably be the cheapest option though, in all seriousness.

[Aunt Sally]

NOT an easy task  :shock:

http://www.whatprice.co.uk/gardening/ivy.html#kill

[jonewer]

Sounds like a covert dawn raid is the only answer... sneak in there before the old man wakes up.... surgical strikes at the roots... be home by breakfast for tea and medals.... pretend I dont know nuffink guv!

[Aunt Sally]

:roll: Those damn vandals  :roll:  

[poultrygeist]

A truly wonderful post.

How about digging down a foot around teh base, cut through every root you can find, then backfill ?  
Maybe even bury something slightly toxic there. :twisted:

I know when we dug out some old ivy here it took some doing. best of luck if you manage any covert operations. Remember.
Who dares Wins.

Rob

[DIGGER]

I really think i like Gramps.

[richyrich7]

It's probably holding the house up  :shock:

[jannie]

I really think i like Gramps.

me too     he will know you know  

[arthur cooke]

Try a circle of copper nails.
cheers arthur