Brooke here:
If you visit the blog and there are no status updates (and this is retrospectively applied to the past week), it’s because we are pulling ivy and I have run out of adorable cutsy comments about this plant.
Removing ivy is a sucky process made all the more suckier as we have other projects to do, like install a fence and a retaining wall, but to do these very important things we have to find the ground first!
To remove ivy, you:
- Get out your industrial weed-whacker and remove the leaves, and do as much damage to the stems as possible;
- Take out your hoe and start tillin’;
- Resign yourself to hour after hour of yanking roots and stems from the top 4″ of freshly-turned dirt;
- Repeat;
- Repeat again;
- Repeat again;
- Realize anew what it means to have a full acre and a half of land covered in ivy;
- Stand up, go inside, and rinse off; and
- Price the annual cost of owning a goat.
Ivy sucks. Did I mention it sucks? I’m using the baby swears because I promised my mother I would not use the words I normally apply to ivy removal, as Brown and I are working on a top-secret profanity project, one so revolutionary that the ivy will be scorched into dust by words alone.
The ivy not going away on its own. We asked our hardscape guy about ivy removal, and he said he either needed to poison the earth or pay one of his guys $25 an hour to do it by hand. And then Brown said he could buy a boat, and the hardscape guy agreed that, yes, he doesn’t like boats but he would absolutely be able to buy a nice small boat.
Ivy sucks.
Flying by night 
When our nice friend came out to give us advice about the ivy here, she suggested a flamethrower.
I don’t think I want Ursula to have access to one. But it *IS* an option.
http://www.flameengineering.com/Red_Dragon_Propane_Torch_K.html
I don’t need one but I WANT one. That and an Row Crop Flamer: http://www.flameengineering.com/Row_Crop_Flamers.htm (check out the video too).
Oh. Oh dude. That, right there, that is AWESOME.
WANT.
In Southern California you would single-handedly be responsible for the next “wildfire” that destroyed tracts of homes. “News at 11”
We used a backhoe. Dug a foundation where it had been. So far, unlike the multiflora rose it shared the space with, it hasn’t been back.
NEVER, ever use chipped rosa multiflora as muclh.
If you feel a need to count your blessings, you can count that your ivy isn’t bamboo. We struggled for three years with the bamboo in our back yard, and finally had to move out*, leaving the bamboo in full command.
*Not because the bamboo was getting into the house, but because we were broke and had to move in with relatives. The bamboo may actually BE in the house by now.
Have you tried Agent Orange?
Now I wish I could take back my comment. I looked at the Wikipedia article for Agent Orange. Very disturbing. Not suitable for humor in the least. Very poor taste – I wish to use ignorance as my defense. I lived through those times (in the States), but only knew about it as a controversial strong herbicide – few details.