What is that mean, nasty thing?

I've moved into a 50 plus year old home and what landscaping that is there was planted when the home was new. It appears that the care it had ended with the planting. As a result there are several large patches of azaleas that need to come out and be replanted. At first I thought I could just cut them from their 8 foot height to knee level and give them some TLC to bring them to the beauty they should have.

NOT SO!

Worst than the muscadines, wild cherry trees, oaks and sassasfrass are a very mean vine that can get 1/2" in diameter and have the sharpest, meanest thorns you can imagine. It has a bulb type root and it's hard to even get a pickaxe through some of the clumps. Now I have knee high azaleas with new shoots but miles and miles of vines and lots of small tree stubs with lots of shoots.

What is this mean, nasty thing? Other than digging it up how is it best killed?

What's the best way to clean up the azalea patches?

That mean nasty thing sounds like the same vine I have been fighting. It is called Smilax or Greenbriar. Can you take a picture of it???

I'll have to wait for another thorny 'rocket' to jump out. It shouldn't be long. Sometimes I'm afraid to turn my back in those azalea patches.

They will reach out and touch ya for sure!!!! If it's the same thing- the only way to eradicate them is to get those nasty bulbs and still they may pop up further down in the bed- then you have to find those bulbs. I have been diggin since Feb.

Smilax has got to be the worst thug in my garden too. Our soil is heavy and a mass of tree roots so digging the huge root around here is almost impossible. If you leave even a tiny bit of root in the ground it will sprout. Azaleas have such shallow roots and can easily be damaged by digging in their root zone.

I do use Vine-X and it does work but there will always be young ones popping up from seeds dropped by the birds. The Vine-X bottle has a tiny brush and you paint the bottom 6" of the stem. It only works on the vines it touches; nothing around, like your azaleas, will be harmed.
www.vine-x.com

OMG, Alice...thanks for the link:-) Gotta get that stuff to get rid of the grape vines!! Much better to scrape and paint than try to pull them up and kill my hands.

LOL Another trick I learned is that the professionals prune (desirable) grapevines in the dead of winter because they "bleed" too much in the warm weather. Now I try and cut them back in the summer and hope they bleed to death. I also use the Vine-X on them IF I can get to the base of the plant but they are usually in a jungle of undergrowth and it is difficult getting close enough.

I'll give that one a try before the vine-x gets here. I'd love to be able to torture those things as bit of payback for all the pain they've caused my hands! *evil laugh*

I wish I had known about that stuff back in Feb. I thought I did my research... Thanks!!

Thank you for the Vine-X suggestion. I'm going to use it as soon as I find it.

Someone wanted a picture of it. Sorry, but I'm not going to take the time to do that. I just want to kill the sucker before it get me!!

I have the same problem with pestiliential vines---grape, Virginia creeper, the really evil Smilax, and my favorite, poison ivy. As an avowed organic gardener I spent the first ten years on the property dutifully digging out as much of the root system as I could get (but they're masters at hiding among the roots of Live Oaks, Pecans, Dogwoods, etc., so it was a losing battle, and one I lost). But these vines were a continual nuisance, so I resorted to nasty chemical control. Couldn't use the conventional Roundup/etc., because most of the afflicted area drained into my prize pond, or into the Stono River. Found that "Aquatic" herbicides (Rodeo, Reward, etc.) work just as well on land plants as well as aquatic plants, and have used them for the last 10 yrs. with no adverse effect on the critter populations anywhere that I can see. I'm slowly getting these pests under control now, but it takes constance vigilance and spraying...

In your opinion-- are the products that you use easier to use than the Vine-X??

What a great idea about using the Rodeo in place of Round Up; I plan to hit some feed and seed places today to see if I can find any.

Also, it may work better than RU on the vines. For me, the Vine-X did the trick while the RU was not very effective on the toughies like smilax or poison ivy (unless I get them when they just emerge from the soil as babies). Also, because it is always breezy here it was hard to avoid overspraying. Painting on the VX worked better here. I was able to kill an enormous PI vine that had grown to the top of a large Oak by painting the bottom 12" of the vine which was thicker than my thumb.

tcimb; I'm not familiar at all with Vinex, never even heard of it! I tend to go with the "lesser" varieties of weed killer whenever possible, but I'm obviously not above using killer dillers if I absolutely HAVE to... So far, I haven't had to. The aquatic forms of weed killer seems to work just as well on the vegetative growth of evil weeds, and the tadpole population in the pond doesn't appear to be adversley affected. Yet . But after 10 years of using the pricey aquatics, I'm a believer.

Grape vines are hard to kill and Ardesia is right you prune them in the winter. That's more for shape and fruit production. I grow grapes BTW. Trying to get the roots of a mature grape vine is near impossible and chemicals don't always work. I've goten rid of some unwanted ones by pruning them when they fruit and then again in the early fall. They don't like that. Main thing is don't let them seed (fruit to ripen).

Ardesia- Where did you find the Vine-X. I went to Ace today they don't carry it nor does Lowe's or HD??

Lowe's and HD don't seem to carry the good stuff. LOL.

I ordered it from their website. When you live in a tiny town you have to mail order a lot of things.

Thanks Ardesia- I checked their website and no one in this area sells it.