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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] English ivy on site of future forest garden

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  • From: Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] English ivy on site of future forest garden
  • Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:26:04 -0800

I'm guessing you are in the Pacific NW USA. Ivy devotes little energy to roots, light weight grubbing tools work well. I have often used a japanese sickle or hedge shears to cut an ivy carpet into long linear strips, grubbing while backing downhill, compacting a bolus of ivy underfoot which can be left to decompose on site -- once dry it lacks vitality. Not much seed bank. Come back through after a growing season and pick off the roots you missed in the first pass. Don't count on shading out ivy by any means, even in the deepest shade it just crawls around looking for something to climb. It is VERY shade tolerant. 1 grub with 2 follow-up passes should give control. I believe it has become such a problem locally simply because no one tends the land.
Some good summary of ecology if you can see past the 'war of the world' world view
http://tncweeds.ucdavis.edu/esadocs/hedeheli.html
Lots of volatile oils... and no local predators -- I wonder if there is a yield there... Any one know of traditional uses related to its stinkyness?
As a child of the thickets, all our improvised 'man traps' used a innocuous vine of ivy as the tripwire :)
Regarding successful sowing, in the PNW, it would depend a lot on soil moisture... toward the dry side of their distribution, bigleaf maple can be very hungry for water creating a drought shadow in its root zone. here's a native bigleaf maple forest template as a source of inspiration.
http://www.dnr.wa.gov/nhp/refdesk/communities/pdf/acma-alru-pomu-tegr.pdf
Paul Cereghino

Mathew Waehner wrote:

I would appreciate any other suggestions for dealing with ivy, and any
insights into the ecology of the ivy.







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