permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

Keith offers

>For control, goats would probably be effective. For eradication however, 
you might consider pigs for a couple years.

This may have worked for you, but I don't think pigs go down far enough for 
the case I've got. New plants can be plucked out easily by hand, but old 
established roots go down to China. I've dug up roots five feet long and six 
inches 
across.  You could saturate your soil with Agent Orange and they'd still put 
out fresh shoots.

For mere control, I like to ride around in a riding mower, which works just 
fine. It leaves the lateral runners, that hug the ground so close you can 
pluck 
them like a guitar string. But those you can chop with a mattock. 

What you end up with is a moonscape with new shoots emerging even as you 
stand there admiring your handiwork. Anything you plant there gets strangled 
in a 
week. I've found no alternative but either many steps of repeated poisoning, 
until the tubers are exhausted, or hand digging. Not surprisingly, I'm not 
crazy about either option.

Still, the pigs are not a bad idea. If I penned them there and they didn't 
get tired of the steady diet they might graze the new growth enough times 
that 
the kudzu would start to lose vitality. Thanks for the idea.

Another one you don't want to encourage is Japanese stilt grass.

http://www.naturalsciences.org/conservation/invasives/stiltgrass.htm

Fortunately it's easy to pull up with the roots intact. Unfortunately, it 
always comes back. Its survival strategy is to have invincible seeds.