How to Kill Poison Ivy Without Killing Everything Else (Or Yourself)

this is poison ivy this is also poison ivy and so was this I should know I've got tons of it so I'm gonna see if any of this stuff can kill it all along the front of this property is poison ivy this is my access road for the entire property basically like this is how I get into the property and it's like 40 feet deep poison ivy I thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with some different poison ivy killers that aren't going to just totally like vaporize all of this vegetation the active ingredient in Roundup that is controversial and has been linked to cancer is called glyphosate which I'm probably mispronouncing none of these Solutions have glyphosate in them the first one we're going to try this is a bonide product bonide makes a lot of different herbicides fertilizers and most of them are pretty safe at least in my experience when you Google poison ivy killers that won't kill your lawn or kill everything else this is one of the first products that comes up so that's why we're going to try it one drawback to this is it is recommended for spot treatment and obviously I've got a lot more than Spot Treatment Happening Here it does come in a concentrate so technically you could put it into a spray bottle like this for broad applications we're gonna spot treat the crap out of some very specific spots yeah it's blue hold on I gotta get so that's the stream this is the rod spray this is a bear product made by a sub brand called bioadvanced and it's called brush killer it's targeted for poison ivy Kudzu the active ingredient in this is called triclopir which was invented around the same time as glyphosate back in the 70s it's been found to be just as effective as not if not faster acting than glyphosate and yet it's safer however it may require multiple treatments so this is probably going to be the thing I'm using the most today because I can use it in broader applications I've seen the sunglasses are for like safety purposes yeah and fashion clearly the next thing I'm going to try is a homemade solution this is a cup of salt with a tablespoon of dish soap mix it all together in a gallon jug and we can apply it across the board we don't have to worry about scorching the Earth with this stuff if you do want something a little stronger you can put some vinegar in there vinegar is a lot more acidic than what this solution is unfortunately vinegar is going to kind of change the pH level of our soil and it's going to really prevent anything from growing the salt mixture will do that to a degree but not nearly as severely as the vinegar solution is this your front runner that would be great because this is the cheapest and if you get it on you you don't really have to worry about anything this is the pasture of poison ivy as you can see when they wet down what it looks like oh boy it doesn't smell great and it smells like soap right okay last and also least this is a product that is now called weed clear when I bought it it had a different name I bought it over 15 years ago this is one of many products that you can use it's made to treat grass without killing your grass kill the weeds in the grass without killing grass itself I haven't had very much luck with this you're supposed to use one fluid ounce per gallon I doubled that to two fluid ounces so I'm either going to kill everything or probably nothing with this this is just kind of like a bonus at the end because I hadn't happened to have it in my shed okay now it's time to make my bet on which one I think is going to do the best job for that really heavy section at the front of my Access Road [Music] I'm just gonna say it's a good thing I'm with you because I think the neighbors would be calling the police [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you this is the first marker it does look like the poison ivy is starting to shrivel up a little bit starting to wilt a little bit I would say this stuff back in here still looks pretty healthy that stuff looks very healthy yeah the weed clear um and look this is wilting I would say faster I think it's I think it's more wilted than what we saw back there with the weed clear the stuff to the back where I couldn't really reach it um still going pretty strong what you're saying if you don't spray anything on it it's going to stay alive so what I'm saying is if you don't spray it it won't die [Music] thank you this is obvious I did spray back here it just I didn't get as much on there and that's remember this is one that was more meant for spot treatment one point for bonide for homemade solution this looks pretty good and we sprayed a good swath right in here and it's definitely thinned out quite a bit what's still here is looking pretty healthy but you're seeing a lot of like brown on the leaves a lot of lighter green meaning it's it's like starving so I think we'll give home remedy one point but maybe we give bone-eyed two points because that one looked a little bit stronger some pretty mature thick poison ivy leaves that are starting to wilt camera shy so I'd say one point for brush killer um after three days kind of mixed results not as much death as I had hoped for so let's spray it again and then we'll check check after another day or two what it's just such a morbid statement [Music] thank you [Music] normally I wouldn't pop in here and talk about subscribing because it's kind of annoying and I figure you know how YouTube works if you want to support what I'm doing the easiest way to do that is to subscribe to the channel I'm kind of making an exception in this case because if you want to see what happens with this property I'm a little ways away from you know building anything here I'm still just trying to kill the weeds and stuff but if you do want to see what's happening here over the next several years of my life you may want to subscribe because these are not going to be instructional type videos these are going to be just kind of like Adventures probably Misadventures and who knows what else so I hope that you'll consider it now back to killing stuff it's now been a full week since we sprayed the second time so we're gonna go see how everything's doing now after a second spraying it has rained a couple of times which is to be expected so let's check it out all of this we've got some discoloration we've got some wilting we've got some lying down on the job [Music] we've also got some really strong healthy looking [Music] poison ivy toward the back there colored yellow yeah some tie-dye not too great for the weed clear which I didn't have high hopes for it anyway we don't just want wilting we want shriveling and dying here's our bonide section we've got more wilting and just kind of lethargic poison ivy here I would say it's about half died off you know everything back in there that I was spraying kind of at a distance is starting to die back a little bit but this is two sprays it's just not enough you know it's I wouldn't want to cut this for fear of still spreading the the juice is what is it oil yeah spreading the oils thank you poison juices yeah yeah this is definitely the best die off we've seen here see all that brown and yellow that stuff is dead what was this this was brush killer this stuff is definitely dead this area here was full of poison ivy and now it's about half full the middle section which got a pretty good spray has really died back but there is still quite a bit of Poison Ivy in here I sprayed all the way back to those thorns and those are still doing pretty well this was all brush killer [Music] see all this here all this this bright yellow that's all poison ivy that's dying off right back in there which is good um I tried to avoid some of the other weeds but some of those are dying as well so I think the big takeaway after two applications for all four products is the bio Advanced is pretty much the clear winner from a potency and just pure Effectiveness standpoint it is a little bit more difficult to spray over larger areas uh it's it's just tiring to spray that thing you know for longer than five minutes or so but it does come with a battery powered applicator that will spray over larger distances the bonide product did a pretty good job but it's obviously not as as potent it's difficult to spray it over large areas I will say on behalf of the soap and salt solution it is a pretty good secondary option all you need is a gallon pump sprayer which you can pick up for like 12 or 15 bucks at most home improvement stores and the ingredients that go into it are both cheap and safe you know you don't have to worry about spraying yourself and finally In fairness to weed clear which is really not indicated for poison ivy it is indicated for several hundred other weeds so I ended up testing it in my yard on some dandelions and clover and some Creeping Charlie and even though it's over 10 years old it did a pretty good job of drying it up without harming any of my grass so if used as directed it's still a pretty good product to sum everything up here's a cheat sheet on how effective I found each solution to be so if you're still watching at this point thank you I hope you found this helpful and I hope I'll see you on the next video the next steps for me I'm going to come in here with a machine and clear this out I definitely wouldn't come in here with a weed whacker and just go nuts this vegetation is so thick it was impossible for me to spray all the poison ivy there's a lot of it hiding underneath the grass and brush so I don't want those oils flying around I also would never burn this I wouldn't burn poison ivy under any circumstances it's going to get in the air it's going to get in the Smoke it's going to get on your skin and potentially in your lungs that that [Music] yeah it's like everywhere yep it's impossible for me to ask you which one is not poison ivy because it's basically there's a butterfly in the sky tiny Ivy we've got medium-sized new items we've got large old mature Ivy we've got giant Ivy as big as my face we even have a cat named Ivy she's our neighbors until I do something about this poison ivy it's like a fortress it's like I bought an ivy Farm

Channel: Building With Blake

Views: 361,358

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Id: 1wUuE1gQry0

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2023