Rescueing woodland plants

[wholyhosta]

Advice, please.
The floor of our woods has poison ivy growing as a groundcover- we want to round-up, weed-eat or detonate a nuclear warhead over it (heard it's hard to get rid of!) But ....
scattered throughout this groundcover are:

wild geraniums
wild dwarf iris
several kinds of trilliums
bloodroot
several varieties of wild ginger
Salomon Seal
False Salomon Seal

I know some of these plants will go to sleep soon here in the South, but some won't. Any recommendations on how to move any or all of these plants to a safe place in my shady hosta beds?
Thanx for any help!
Brenda

[Chris_W]

Like you said, a lot of those will go dormant so it will be safe to target the poison ivy without hurting them. Also, from my experience here, Solomon's Seal and False Solomon's Seal seem to be immune to round up and brush b gon (I recommend brush killer and NOT roundup for poison ivy - last summer sprayed poison ivy 4 times with roundup and it just burned the leaves. Sprayed once with brush b gon and it died all the way to the ground and was just a dead vine in about a month).

The ones that don't go dormant could be moved pretty easily. I know wild ginger moves really well.

Also, you could target the poison ivy leaves and be careful of the overspray. Don't spray on a windy day! Targeting things a little at a time can be more effective and safer and will use less product. Will take more time though...

We cleared almost an acre last year - mostly raspberry, grapevine, poison ivy and virginia creeper. We sprayed roundup first to kill the grass and weeds then brush b gon to finish off the raspberry, grape, and the vines. I think the roundup weakened some plants but the brush b gon finished them off once and for all. We have very little perennial weeds coming up and have seen no sign of any of the poison ivy in the growing beds. Solomon's Seal and False Solomon's Seal are everywhere and none of it was killed by either product. And after it got chopped up by the rototiller it is coming up all over the place. We did rescue some wild iris and meadow rue - also rescued some wild type of Arum in 2003 that we later discovered was nothing more than skunk cabbage

Good luck!

Chris

[wholyhosta]

Hey, Chris
As usual, the guru has great advice! Thanks for recommending b-gon, the p.ivy is a ground cover so will probably cover the plants I want to save with plastic pots. I just dug up several trilliums and one geranium and planted in most recent hosta bed- will see how they do. It just rained, which helps alot and I have successfully transplanted Royal Fern and tiarellas from our woods. I know that some plants are touchy, so thought I would check first.
Brenda B
ps-different forum but thanks for the advice on epson salts re: yellow hosta leaves!

[patsue53]

On a television gardening show they were using a sponge paint brush to apply Round-Up on selected weeds so as not to worry about the spray blowing onto a wanted plant.
Seems like alot of work but worth it to keep from losing that much woodland treasure!

Now...if someone could just tell me how to get the creeping charlie and virginia creeper out without disturbing the vinca, I'd sure be a happy camper.

[Arlene]

Way late reply . . . but one of the garden center owners told me to spray poison ivy and other ivy types in the fall because they're gathering the sap back into the roots -- pulling the herbicide back with it -- you'll get better kill rate that way. Don't know if it's true or not -- I spray whenever I see it, but usually patrol in the fall to see if any is popping up.

[wishiwere]

Pat another thing you could try would be to wear those chemical gloves that are heavy black rubber type. Put a sock over your glove and dip the fingers in the roundup /BBG, then just play with the plants petting them nicely as you kill them all gone! Works great! Just squeeze and pet!