Topic: Evil snowberries.. how to kill?

[lewic]

When I got my allotment the shed was buried in a thicket of bindweed and snowberries (that lovely little bush with the big white berries that looks so appealing on postcards..)

Bindweed was easy to pull up, but the snowberries are a different matter. Does anyone have any tips? I hacked the bushes down and painted the stumps with neat Roundup stump killer several times, but the blighters are already growing back! In the summer they were growing a couple of inches a week, and there are loads of them.

Have tried digging them out but the roots go right under my shed and are several metres long, so this is not practical. Will they eventually give up if I lop them as soon as they sprout? Or can anyone recommend another way of getting rid of them?

[mat]

roundup (and any other glyphosate) works by contact on the LEAVES.  The plant takes it down to the roots and makes the plant cells multiply so rapidly that they literally "explode"...  Therefore, you needed to spray/paint the leaves.  It takes time - 2 weeks to show any signs of working, and with shrubby items, 2 or more treatments are required.  It also needs to be done when the planst are growing fairly fast themselves (e.g. spring)  Contact with branches, soil etc, deactivates it, hence why it is "relatively safe"...

Now is a bit cold for roundup, but I'd wait till its growing well, then coat the leaves with a strong dose (shrub rate) and do two treatments 2 weeks apart.  This worked for horsetail with me

However, I am not sure if you'll get seedlings appear from all those berries... so it may be a long job!!!

Hope this helps
mat

[mat]

p.s. bindweed roots go down 20ft or more... thats far harder to get rid of... you may find this far harder  -  You may have pulled up the tops, but underground, there will be miles of roots, all ready to sprout...  repeated spraying here will be required

[saddad]

I dug mine out... eventually, had to take out all the hawthorn hedge as well...  :(

[Robert_Brenchley]

Wait till late April, and if you're going to spray, start then. It's a safe bet the bindweed roots run under the shed, so you may have no alternative if you want to wipe the stuff out.

You could try black plastic, but you'd have to be completely ruthless and very persistent about pulling out every scrap that escaped.

[lewic]

roundup (and any other glyphosate) works by contact on the LEAVES

Thats what I thought, but this stuff http://www.wyevale.co.uk/Scotts-roundup-tree-stump-killer-+250ml/0800002311,default,pd.html claimed to kill stumps if you paint it on neat. Not convinced now!

I'm wondering how long the snowberry bush shoots would have to get before an application of roundup would have an effect on the whole plant?

[mat]

[Thats what I thought, but this stuff http://www.wyevale.co.uk/Scotts-roundup-tree-stump-killer-+250ml/0800002311,default,pd.html claimed to kill stumps if you paint it on neat. Not convinced now!

I'm wondering how long the snowberry bush shoots would have to get before an application of roundup would have an effect on the whole plant?

Weird - I am not sure how it can work on a cut stump, as it needs to transport the product through all the vascular tissue, and it then works by increasing the cell division so much the plant cells explode... If it is a freshly cut trunk, then maybe the vascular tissue can still transport the glyphosate (but as there would be no photosynthesis going on, I'd have thought this would slow it down...)  However looking at the instructions on that link, it still says it must be done before leaf senescence... which is before they lose their abilities to divide... when did you do it?

I'd say paint or spray the solution onto the leaves as soon as you can see them noticably growing in a fairly fast manner.  It is likely to require more than one treatment

[betula]

Had lots of these on my old allotment,I found digging them out the only way :)

[lewic]

I'm starting to think digging is the only way!

The shed would probably disappear into a large hole if I did this though, so I guess I'm just going to have to carry on chopping them back.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Cover it with black plastic, mercilessly turn any escaping shoots back where they came from, and be patient. It does die, eventually.