Oriental bittersweet

[Summer93]

Has anyone here been successful in riding your property of this very fast growing vine?
It sends out 6 ft. long shoots and winds around itself to make it even stronger. Last year it nearly killed a full sized Maple tree and it grew into my dryer vent, up the side of house and into the soffet, up the down spout. Cutting it seems to make it grow with more gusto.

[NJCher]

1. Can you cut it back to its base

And then inject it with an organic weedkiller?

I read about how to do this in a garden magazine. If the technique comes back to me, I'll post again. There's a way of doing it with a wick where you put the wick in the base of the vine and it leads into a closed container of the weedkiller.



Cher

[Summer93]

2. Thanks I'll ask someone to try this method for me

[RedLetterRev]

3. Do you have a picture of this plant?

My grandmother had a rock garden with a lot of old, old plants in it some of which I've seen nowhere else. Some of the names she called them I've heard applied to other plants, "bittersweet" being one. Not that I want any in my yard, but she did have a vine she called bittersweet she kept carefully corralled in the middle of her collection. She did have some varieties of plants that I would like to have, but alas-alack, the old homeplace is out of family hands these days. I wouldn't care to have bittersweet (I have woods, y'see my reticence) but I would like to have a pic if you're able.

[NJCher]

4. RLR

To be sure of what she was talking about, I google image searched "oriental bittersweet" to see if it was the same plant I had and it was. You can find a pic that way.



Cher

[RedLetterRev]

5. AH! Found it

I had seen loads of other pics of things called oriental bittersweet that weren't Nana's plant a-tall. Hers had variagated leaves, a variety I've still yet to see a picture of. But the berries look right. I've seen variagated oregano that looked kindasorta close, but that won't grow outdoors in the mountains of NC; at least not to the size hers was. Thanks for the memory of her garden, though. Even though she was an altogether unpleasant person, escaping to her garden brought me many hours of relief and joy. I still enjoy the peace and joy gardening to this day.

If that bittersweet gets to be an horrific problem, as much as I fear and loathe chemicals, I have used a brush-killer I got from Tractor Supply called "All Season Brush No More". I live WAY out in the country on a well and am dead-set against anything that might get into my water supply. However, I also have the world's finest crop of poison ivy, which is next to impossible to get rid of once there are great mother-vines sending out rootlets everywhere. It is important to use this substance carefully and properly. I use a mister bottle with a couple of tablespoons of brush-no-more to a quart bottle, a squirt of dish soap to help break down the oil on the plant leaves, and fill the rest of the bottle with plain water to dilute (and don't allow any to get down the drain into the septic system). Get as close as possible to the plant on a windless day and just-mist the leaves and as much of the vine trunk as you can get to without getting any of the mist anywhere else. It will take about a week, but this will kill the plant all the way to the roots. Again, this is the only chemistry I use on my property (I use all-natural, organic insect control and plant nourishment), but in the case of very invasive (and in the case of poison ivy, dangerous) plants, sometimes there isn't much of an alternative if you want the plant gone-gone-gone.