[arcane]

I've got about a mile of fieldstone walls on property I bought last year. The walls are overgrown with bittersweet, wild rose, virginia creeper, and poison ivy, in some case the vegetation is 10 feet deep and 20 feet high. I hired a landscaper to clear some of the walls closest to my house last winter, and his guys did a great job, but this year I couldn't keep up with the regrowth on the cleared parts, much less tackle the uncleared sections. The landscaper can only spare his crew for this in the winter months: they're mowing flat out for 6 months.

I tried a hand lopper but ran out of gas quickly, and a gas powered trimmer but heavy duty string and plastic blades didn't last more than a few seconds against the irregular stone. Is there a stronger material or a different attachment? I cannot use a metal blade as there are just too many vines right up next to the stones. I tried digging out and turning over the ground next to the walls with my backhoe, but I knocked over too many sections of wall.

Is the answer Roundup or BrushBGone?
I would be spraying gallons of it, not a pleasant thought.

What else should I try?

Thanks in advance.

RK

[Pelican]

There are chemicals available specifically for woody vines, I think this is what you'll ultimately need to use. I saw one by Ortho last week, I'm sure others are available.

[agla]

You may want to look at the A.M. Leonard catalog. It may be online. My friend swears by "Brush Master" for killing Bittersweet here on the Cape. I believe he buys it without a pesticide license, so you should be able to as well.

My guess is that you are not far out of my area.

[HardDaysKnight]

I've seen these walls in upstate NY and in PA. They do run
great distances. Were these property line markers?
I always wondered what they were.

[PSUscaper]

Chemical treatment would be the best route. If they cleared it in the winter, that would explain a lot of the regrowth, as many of these plants, if not removed entirely (they did not dig the roots out of a stone wall I'm assuming) will grow even more vigously after being cut down.

Unless you want to hire a full time person to keep up with pruning them back, or want to go the route of having someone tediously removing the stumps, chemical treatment is the best route.

If you do it, now is the time when they are leafy so as much of the herbicide can be absorbed by the plant. Spraying sticks in the winter does nothing, nor does spraying things that were just cut down to the stump, though there are some herbicdes that will kill cut down brush.

As for the row, most of the time they are old farmers rows.......farmers would clear the area to plant or for pasture, so they would pull all the rocks off too the side.....being that equipment was at a minimum, it was easiest to pull all the stone off along the fields into rows. This would have many good results.....the farmers could use the stone then to build walls to keep animals in and designate their property from others. It's hard to imagine, but in many instances, that dense wooded area with the rock wall going through it use to be a low growing field. We often forget that others have been here before us.

Also, it is starting to be realized the importance on drainage that these rows have, especially in my area. The walls would act as barriers/french drains and divert water. In my area, its amazing what is happening. With all the new development, builders are clearing the old stone rows to make way for houses. Within a short period of time, water that never existing, begins to show up. Whether or not the farmers intended the rows to divert water, they did, and now that they are being cleared out, water is finding new paths that it did not have. Its pretty interesting stuff around here as we have a lot of natural springs. I know people who never had water, then a development goes in up the street, and there it is!

[HardDaysKnight]

Thanks Penn. Great information. Good luck Arcane but keep
in mind the wildlife. Be sure to check that aspect out and if
you have the means seek a local, licensed professional.

[Uncle Albert]

All the plants you have named are considered Parasitic, this means that if you rip it out dormant buds in the root-system will grow again.Round up or other 2-4-d herbicides are just defoliants. either go total physical removal, try injection by a certified Arborist or calcium chloride by a lic. applicator can devastate the area of growth for months.

[GLAN]

I have sprayed fence lines that had Wysteria Vines. English Ivy. Poison Ivy, etc.... In late August and through September with Roundup.....got a total kill. Plucked the vine and root stumps out of the ground following spring just as easy as picking strawberries....

The translocation of the Roundup is optimum in fall. Just like any deciduous plant.

That's my $0.02

[HardDaysKnight]

Originally posted by agla
You may want to look at the A.M. Leonard catalog. It may be online. My friend swears by "Brush Master" for killing Bittersweet here on the Cape. I believe he buys it without a pesticide license, so you should be able to as well.

My guess is that you are not far out of my area.

Your friend seems to be right, Agla. Looks like a dominant
herbicide. Check out the specimen label on this page for handling and safety before using this arcane...http://www.pbigordon.com/professional/brushmaster.htm

[Stuck in NH]

A mile of stonewalls implies a country area?

My solution would be a couple of stranded electric fences & 10 goats.

Buy them at local livestock auction in the spring after greek easter, then send them back to the auction come fall.

They love all that crap that grows around stonewalls..

[arcane]

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Good guess: my place is on the south coast of MA. The stone walls began as repositories of rocks in the way of the fields and weren't always property boundaries, but they often become so as larger holdings are subdivided. It amazes me to see the size of some of the rocks that had been lifted into place by hand/lever/block & tackle? And we often speak of fields that grow rocks, as frost pushes them to the surface. I have some rocks that are bigger than my truck popping up in my field.

I would love to try the goats, but I travel too much for my work to be able to look after them. I'll look up the chemicals suggested. I'm not sure what to make of Uncle Albert's post: the manufacturers certainly claim to kill the plants systemically at the roots, albeit with multiple applications. And this winter I will try to dig out the bigger stuff until the backhoe and I can no longer.

Once the stuff is knocked down, I plan to use a string trimmer to keep it down. Anyone had expereince with the DR or Billy Goat trimmers and stone walls?

[Uncle Albert]

Hi Arcane Uncle Albert here : Thought you were a pro in the feild,all my comments were meant for those who are.. sorry. Just remember the labels on ..Say Round-up is labled for the Homeowner.. Different rules apply. For pros and homeowners{when $ involved} the homeowner can apply anything they can get on the market. The pro needs a Lic. and an EPA #. Monostat the maker of Roundup bypasses all this legal mumbojumbo by cutting the active ingredient in the product ... {for instance if you mix a concentrate of round up 3 times what the label says you have now met the professional applicator's required amount} get it . if not please ask me again for any uncertainties..

[HardDaysKnight]

Originally posted by Stuck in NH
A mile of stonewalls implies a country area?

My solution would be a couple of stranded electric fences & 10 goats.

Buy them at local livestock auction in the spring after greek easter, then send them back to the auction come fall.

They love all that crap that grows around stonewalls..

This is why I love GTX. I initially thought you were being humorous.
Then I see Arcane wrote:

I would love to try the goats, but I travel too much for my work to be able to look after them.

It's incredible , the different suggestions, due to location we all have.

[Stuck in NH]

HDK-

Up here we have had a sheep herd doing clearing under the Power companies high voltage transmission lines for a few years now.

They average about 1/2 mile per day.. 1000 sheep, one sheepherder & 2 dogs. Talk about low cost, overhead, & enviromentally friendly.

[Lanelle]

I also recall seeing a report about a traveling goat herd being used to keep parkland 'mowed' somewhere in Colorado. Not sure how they kept them from wandering off. Certainly is an 'outside the box' solution.