Years ago we planted the vinous beast to climb up a gazebo on a deck. It was pretty. Then it began taking over. This evening I crawled under the deck to start jacking the deck up after it had subsided a few inches.

Wisteria vines all over the place under the deck. It looks like some sci-fi nest of monsters. And it's run up behind the siding on the house! I spent two hours cutting and pulling, and barely made a dent.

It just laughs at Roundup.

What can I do ? Fire? Nuclear weapons ? Move?

I had a running battle with Running Bamboo for years. After a year with a chainsaw and an axe, I kept it under control with a lawn mower! The old timers in my neighborhood recommended used oil or diesel fuel to poison the perimeter. Never went that far!

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San Antonio, TX (in the old city)

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

Dig it up

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I worked on a pseudo-stately home once that had one wing that had been entirely covered by one wisteria.
This thing was a Triffid! However, they are easy to prune or just dig it out as matt suggests. If left to their own devices expect potentially 100's of feet of growth.
It was like this but at least 5 times bigger..
[en.wikipedia.org]

We once bought an old New England house, one that had been built during the Cvil War years. I was much younger and had never seen a Wisteria bush. This particular one had overgrown and was dominating a fence that ran along the 100' property line and trellises that formed a car port.

I made a note to do something with it but there were far more pressing problems (the place still had live capped off gas lines protruding from walls adjacent to their eclectic replacements) plus it was coming on winter and NE winters pretty much inhibit growth of anything.

I was told during that time that these could take from 15-25 years just to first flower so i waited to see. Next spring it did indeed flower, adjacent neighbor said that was only it's second or third season of flowering. I couldn't kill it after learning this so we left it until it later collapsed our steel post fencing, car port and a portion of a neighboring fence.

I could have repaved the 95' sloped driveway and had money left fo it cost me.

PS: In NE it's called Whisteria like in you Whished you never met up with it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2012 06:31AM by RgrF.

i'd love to hear some tips to rid my parents' back yard of bamboo.

their neighbor planted it, it spread into their yard, and it has taken over. 2" diameter, some look 20' high.

can it be dug up? it sends shoots out to other areas.

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[www.giyf.com]

rent a excavator and dig it out

I've pulled baseball bat sized lateral roots out that were 40 to 50 feet long ( possibly longer as they snap off when the get smaller diameter) and had vertical roots every three feet or so that snap off and become a new plant.


I have some in the woods behind my house
I've been knocking it and the poison ivy back for 15 years

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Kooper's Flute Thing cover

[www.freethegrapes.org]

norwegian wood reality TV

[www.youtube.com]

I've got a similar problem with a 30-year-old Trumpet vine. Dug out the main stem (trunk, actually) but the zombie-shoots can only be controlled by mowing.

The only way to control Trumpet vine is with liquid weed killer, over and over again.

Wisteria here in my town is growing and blooming up trees as tall as a 4 story building! Beautiful but don't know if the tree likes it.

I LOATHE these invasive non-native species! Kudzu, wisteria, water hyacinthe, hydrilla, non-native bamboo, boa snakes, English ivy, etc., etc. You have a real fight on your hands to totally get rid of that mess - hang in there!

i know just about everyone hates it but I love Wisteria. it's so pretty.

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"Success isn't about how much money you make. It is about the difference you make in people's lives."--Michelle Obama

I've heard that for bamboo, a backhoe is about the only thing that works. I don't know if wisteria is that bad. Maybe you could make a to-do list for the backhoe to use up the minimum time or send it to the neighbor's house if they need it.

I had to pay for one once and found all kinds of uses for it since there was a minimum - digging up rocks, digging up stumps, leveling humps in the ground, knocking dead limbs out of trees, moving dirt from one place to another, shoring up a retaining wall. It really did a lot of things to spiff up the yard that I would have never gotten around to doing otherwise.

I have the bamboo problem as well. big pain in the butt so just try to get it the first time -

dig it up, the place a barrier between your property and where the runners were coming from. (preferably metal)

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