ferns

ptb

hello all,
need some advice on killling ferns. previous owner planted them. They travel everywhere even into neighbors yard. tried everything including roundup,ortho ect. kills a few but new shooots pop up daily. Next step is diesel when it drops below 5 bucks a gallon!

jamiedolan

What kind of ferns are we talking about and where do you live? I've never known them to be that aggressive by any means and I have a number of types of them.

They are usually susceptible to at least once type of weed killer. The first step is to properly ID them.

The other thing you can do is just mow them down and them cover them with thick news paper, then cover that with mulch or top soil.

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Jamie Dolan - Neenah, WI

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ptb

i live in northern ca. I was told that the old owners grabbed them along roadside and brought them home to transplant. they are very invasive and travel all over on black roots fairly shallow. Dont know about the newspaper trick as they are popping through weeed mat and salt and pepper rock! I will try and grab a picture, would love to knoiw what weed killer would do the trick and so would the neighbor who hates my guts cuz ferns popping up all over his lawn!

debcasben

I kill things like that with straight white vinegar and for extra help I cut it to the ground and cover with tarp or heavy black plastic pinned flat to the ground.

ptb

my hope was to kill all of it by getting into the entire fern root system. As it is now the ferns are traveling into the neighbors yard and lawn area along with my lawn. Tarping the entire area not an option.

jamiedolan

What concentration % was the roundup that you used?

I'd be interested in seeing photos to see if we can ID it.

Jamie

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Jamie Dolan - Neenah, WI

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Broughton

This sounds like the Japanese climbing fern. Invasive, persistent, shallow black roots. We are having trouble with them in our forests in Texas. Take a look at this link and see if it looks like what you have.

http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/node/639

ptb

i will gets some pics posted. It does sound and look a bit like the one Broughton posted... The roundup was concentrated and I did not dilute it that much. more to come....

ptb

now that i look closer i dont think it is the japanese variety. it looks and acts like the stuff yiu see along the road near lush forests. I will get some pics posted soon.

sdsester

Well at least it is not Kudzu. Don't you wish people would stop planting things that do not belong in environments? Illegals and drugs are not the only things that get smuggled in too often. The amount of non native plant materials intercepted at the California border would shock you and with it all come bugs.

I have been out of California and the landscape business for some time but remember two chemicals that worked great.

Roundup is great stuff to a point but it is with limits. I hope you can still get it them in California but two substances we used to use in the industry for killing anything and preparing sites for plantings were calcium cyanamide (spelling from memory) and Vapam. You needed a license and sometimes a permit to work with them and in the case of Vapam you had to tarp the treated area.

Both were only active for a short period of time. Calcium cyanamide broke into two main things when moist and in soil contact. Cyanide and calcium. The cyanide left quickly and left calcium behind. Vapam just killed everything including plants (roots and rhyzomoes), bugs, fungi and so forth. As I remember, it only stayed active a matter of days though. Had to keep pets and kids away, hence the requirement for a license and permit.

Good luck with any invasive plant that grows on runners or rhyzomes and plunks down roots along its path. Others reading this? Do not plant things that are not suited to the environment.