spirea?????? (Gardening - General)

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We have a shrub in our area by the Latin name of Spirea. Some call it hardhack, and I can see why. Anyway, I have a lot of it in part of my new property. It forms nearly impenetrable colonies, and it's roots are like interlocking fingers with it's partners. Has anyone had experience with ridding damp ground of this plant, by any means besides ripping the intesive root systems up?

-- roberto pokachinni (pokachinni@yahoo.com), January 03, 2002

Answers

Response to spirea??????

Why would you want to get rid of it? It is a beautiful shrub. The honey bees and butterflies love mine. Around here it is handed down from generation to generation. Don't know how to get rid of it. You could use "round-up'>

-- Debbie T in N.C. (rdtyner@mindspring.com), January 03, 2002.

Response to spirea??????

You could try goats or if you have to use a poison, Ortho makes something called Brush-B-Gon. It will kill the spirea and probably any other woody tree or shrub if you spray it on the leaves.

I use it on poison ivy. Works great. Kills multiflora too!

-- Darren (df1@infi.net), January 03, 2002.


Response to spirea??????

Debbie T. I like spirea too. It is beautiful; here the flowers are pink, and the birds, and insects like it a lot. The plant is natural to my area, and grows in copious abundance in wetland locations. No doubt, if I wait long enough, something will replace it. The problem with it is that it is growing in the damp ground where I would like to do a lot of ponding, gardening, and landscaping, on my new property. I'm not planning on eliminating it from the ecosystem, just from that section of my property. I have no intensions of using round-up on my property. No matter what re-assurances Monsanto has given of the environmentally sound aspect of this chemical solution, I don't trust it. If I have to dig the roots by hand, then I am willing, It will just be time consuming as the garden area is somewhat large. Thanks for your response.

-- roberto pokachinni (pokachinni@yahoo.com), January 03, 2002.

Response to spirea??????

I have successfullyused pigmy goats contained with portable electro netting to rid pastures of multi-flora rose in less than two complete seasons in Ohio. In fact, given the choice, the goats ignored the lush orchard grass/red clover/chickory/lespedeza matrix that the roses grew out of. That was ok because the cattle then gobbled all of that after the goats moved on.

The spirea \roots will perish if something like goats keep at it. You could also back your brush hog mower over the bushes after you chop them with a machete and keep doing it weekly for a couple of years. Goats will give you some production though, and you won't have to burn fuel etc.

-- Oscar H. Will III (owill@mail.whittier.edu), January 03, 2002.


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