The utility company has left stumps, a few of which have large poison ivy roots attached in the front corner of our yard. There are also some runners nearby. We are getting quotes from landscapers to have it removed. One wants to dig it all out and bring new topsoil in (my preference) the other wants to spray the runners and then grind the stumps down before covering with topsoil. Wouldn't the latter be dangerous with chips of the roots around as well as the potential for the buried roots to try to spring back? The difference in price is $800. Thoughts?

If the roots are sprayed first before the stumps are ground, the roots should be dead. With poison ivy there is no guarantee. Chances are either method will leave some alive, so the choice for removal would be the one you pick.

Ive had really great outcome the orto brand poison ivy brush killern that applied carefully to the leaf surface of actively growing poison ivy didnt kill anything but the poison ivyI sprayed. The vine hasnt come back this year so i really do believe the lable.. that it gets in through active growth and kills down to roots

Save your money and just spray anything that pops back up. I had PI in my yard and after spraying it promptly when I see it pop up, I finally got it eradicated.

I have successfully used Ortho Poison Ivy Killer s well. It's not a quick death but the slow, torturous death it deserves.

The ortho poison ivy stuff is magic. You want to drench the leaves, and it dies from there, not a root application. If you have PI in places with ornamental plants, buy a piece of poster board to use to block the spray from the leaves of plants you want. It's not 100%, but if you can keep overspray off the leaves, you have a good chance of saving nearby plants...

Will this Ortho product also possibly kill bamboo?

Gina, I don't know if anything will kill bamboo-except a hungry Panda. There is a thick copse of it growing on both sides of the road I take to my fav nursery. it was there for ages until the township actually burned it down. That was a short term solution. it came back because they didn't kill the roots. even Nandina { Heavenly Bamboo } which ISN'T supposed to spread, did so in my garden. Out it went. If you can get to it's roots that will be the only way to kill it.

I've had Heavenly Bamboo in my garden now for 25 years and it's never spread, zone 6. So I guess it depends on the plant.

The only thing to get rid of bamboo is to dig it up, with a back hoe honestly. If it were mine I'd just keep cutting it off and putting brush killer on it, over and over, maybe you can at least control it that way.

It (Nandina) is totally invasive here. You have to pull up the volunteers that get spread by birds almost on a weekly basis

Nandina is a funny plant. I have two huge ones in my front yard that must be at least 40 years old, and they're beautiful. Don't spread by runners, just get a little bigger around, and very tall, but I can control this easily by just whacking on them. Now the ones in the back yard…… aren't pretty, all stringy and spread by underground runners….. I'm constantly chopping them out. Very fugly. The birds love to roost in the front ones.

Lynda that's nuts! I wonder if it does that in warmer zones, we have pretty cold winters here. I actually thought my nandinas died this past winter, they took forever to leaf back out and all regrew from the roots, the tops all died off. I've never seen birds eat the berries on my nandinas, I cut them off each spring, they hang on most the winter and are bright red, in a grape cluster sort of shape.

I have dayliles that do great for me and an hour away those same varieties do poorly for my mom. Just odd.

I cut the berries and use them for Christmas decorations.😁 I have an old, battered tin water can that I fill with the berries, magnolia leaves, cedar, pine, and a few large branches of rosemary. A Buffalo black and red check ribbon tied in a bow on the handle completes the arrangement. I put it on the front porch.

as soon as I see it cropping up-poison ivy- I spray it with bleach and put a solo cup over it-weighted down with brick. couple of weeks later its gone and doesn't return.

It looks like I managed to remove the majority of poison Ivy from my backyard by spraying it early this spring with brush remover while it was still small.

Lynda, I think thats the best way to get rid of it-when it's small. and the vines are still poisonous even in the winter when they look dormant. my husbands nephew went after a large clump of seemingly 'dormant" vines in the late winter and ended up in the hospital.from breathing in the dust created by the chain saw. he actually got poison ivy in his lungs. he was in serious condition for some time.

That's why you're told to never burn the vines. That brush killer actually killed a huge vine growing up one of my pine trees; I didn't expect it to. No more roundup for poison ivy! The brush killer took out the blackberry vines, too.

breith95 said:Lynda, I think thats the best way to get rid of it-when it's small. and the vines are still poisonous even in the winter when they look dormant. my husbands nephew went after a large clump of seemingly 'dormant" vines in the late winter and ended up in the hospital.from breathing in the dust created by the chain saw. he actually got poison ivy in his lungs. he was in serious condition for some time.

It is best to get rid of it when it's small, but some people don't have that option. When we bought our place it was empty for several years and the previous owners let the back yard go for who knows how long. We had huge poison ivy vines choking our trees.

my property was the same way only it wasn't poison ivy but boston ivy or english ivy-whatever. the people had just let nature take its course and boy what a mess i walked into. the ivy grew into the cinder block garage, through the windows, through plywood, it covered everything from one side of the property to the other and it was heading towards the front when i moved in. I had it sprayed twice with round up. when it turned brown and crispy I started the process of pulling it out. it took me several months and a whole lot of trash bags. at one point there were over 65 bags of it at the curb for trash pick up. eventually I won.

I'm still fighting the ivy.