Hallson Gardens

In the breezeway area between the house and garage at the house I'm moving to, is a whole colony of these wonderful plants. I want them to go away. Tried to dig and saw the horrible root structure I was going to deal with and wondered if I could just spray the snot out of them to kill them? Will that work?

mooie

Hi, Mooie
I don't have a good answer to your question, but good luck! I think they might be hard to kill with weedkiller, too. I got rid of a particularly nasty patch of nettles, which have a somewhat similar fibrous and rhizomatous root system, by mixing an extra strong solution of Roundup and hitting them every couple of weeks. That might work for your ferns.
Maybe you could put out a "Free ferns....YOU DIG!!!" sign and get some takers?
I have a colony of them that I planted between the garage and chicken house in a litlte narrow strip. They didn't do really well there, but sent out runners and colonized in the more open area between the chicken house and tool shed. I dug up the ones in the little narrow spot, and even though they weren't happy there, they had massive roots. I still have a few popping up in the original area years later.
Linda P

Hi Mooie,

I also think they could be tough to kill with weed killer. Might have to spray every time you see a new sprout. But they aren't that tough to dig out. New crowns form at the tips of the runners but those take a little while to send out new runners themselves. If you dig all of the existing crowns out now maybe you could just spray the new sprouts next spring, then dig out any stragglers later.

Good luck!

Chris

What part of the country so you live in ?? Here in COLD S>C> we are still in he throughs of winter. Lows in the 20's this week, but thank goodness it does get back up into the 50's. OC guesses that we are paying for those 7o''s we had two weeks ago. We get that every year. After Christmas, we get several weeks of moderate weather. Then the last two weeks of January and the First two weeks of February are our colcdest. If we are to get any snow it will be then. THEN IN March we burst forth into spring RAYYYYYYY