Anyone successfully battled ground elder, onion/wild garlic and ivy?

[DarkBlueEyes]

My new, supposedly fabulous garden is riddled with these weeds.

I'm spending hours and hours digging the stuff out and getting nowhere fast, and I've bought in some help too. We're hardly denting it!

Has anyone got any success stories? Does ground elder respond to Round Up for example (desperate). Ivy? Any luck there?

[Jemappelle]

And I am looking desperately for wild garlic to plant in mine or at least some to make butter with

[goshhhhhh]

I've got ground elder and ivy. The ivy isn't too bad and easy to get rid of. The elder is a different matter although we are getting there. I'm not sure you will ever get rid of it completely. I've tried round up and it sort of worked. I've had more success with digging and digging. And trying to get out as much as possible. I've even seived the soil. It has taken a long time.
The other options are covering the area and smothering (also will take a long time) or picking and eating it. Apparently the Romans used it as a salad crop. The theory is if there are no leaves it will die eventuall!

[DarkBlueEyes]

Jemapelle you can come to mine, I reckon you'd have enough to last for 100 years. It is SO invasive.

Goshhhh thanks for that. I will be trying a combination of digging and roundupping any shoots that come through. Long haul eh?

[Tarrarra]

11 years on and I am still fighting a battle with brambles and ivy in my garden. It is a constant job as next door don't mind it on their side, so it just keeps creeping in. I cut right back to the boundary, but dig up any shoots on my side. If it's a nice day then I will go on round up duty and spritz any new shoots then dig them up about a week later. It's getting better but we're not there yet....

[Lighteningirll]

Two years in for us we've cleared bramble ivy and this year nearly all the wild garlic. Dh hacked and burnt all the bramble and chopped ivy off at roots. Left it a year before pulling it off trees (damages bark if you rip it off better to let it die then pull off). He used a mattock to break up ivy and bramble roots I follow getting out as much as i can. When it rains the following day ground is soft enough to pull up the wild garlic that has come up this year. It's back breaking but it's done I am now continually pulling up any I see. I used roundup around woody shrubs as I couldn't get in to some of the garlic and the treadmills didn't affect the shrub. You have to do it before garlic flowers and get all the bulb out. We then plant up what we want and heavy mulch. This spring I got the last of the wild garlic and feel like I am possibly maybe on the verge of having a garden not a war zone.

[NorbertDentressangle]

We had ground elder in the overgrown garden of the first house we bought.

We ended up spending a long, long time digging it out as best we could but it's a PITA. Apparently even if you leave part of a (rhizome?) root in the ground it can grow back from that .

Anyway after digging it over carefully we lay turf and I don't recall it coming through that apart from some bits in the borders so we had to be vigilant.

[Jemappelle]

(Feels so sad about all the wild garlic she wants and the five leaves she bought for £3 in ocado)

[DarkBlueEyes]

Ah Jemapelle, this kind of wild garlic is NOT the same kind you buy from Ocao. Well think so anyway... you can eat the flowers of this one but afaik not the bulb. So please don't feel jealous or sad!

www.google.co.uk/search?q=image+wild+garlic+weed&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=631&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQhbGuxoTMAhXEWhQKHXG5DAEQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=7CxO8XiBofF6rM%3A

[soggyweetabix]

I have lots of wild garlic in my garden and I simply eat it!

[Jemappelle]

One eats the leaves :( the leaves the leaves the leaves that you have you lucky people!!

guards the leaves she has carefully wages chopped and frozen

[Jemappelle]

Ah I see what is that!? Wild garlic as I know it has flat leaves. I've seen these ones on your link but gosh I now feel better you can't eat these i think

[Greaterthanthesumoftheparts]

I love wild garlic, or bärlauch as its known here, could you propagate it and sell at a farmers market???

[toomuchtooold]

Greaterthan are you in Germany too? We are at the Swiss/German border, the stuff is a weed here... I did consider planting some for about 10 seconds to oust the horsetail we have growing, but I've seen how invasive it is
Tastes awesome though

[Jemappelle]

So is it edible or not? The pics on the link below aren't like the leaves you see for wild garlic that is edible...

[reynoldsnumber]

We managed to get rid of ground elder by doing a fingertip search of the soil to get every last bit of root out, and then building a shed on top of it! It was quite satisfying searching for the roots - you have to enjoy that kind of thing I guess!

[shovetheholly]

Hahaha Jemapelle I feel your pain - I tried to sow wild garlic under my rasps but none of it has germinated. I LOVE it. A few leaves, chopped up really small, in an omelette = heaven.

I am confused by your picture, though, OP. I associate wild garlic/ramsons/allium ursinum with wider, softer leaves and a round burst of white flowers. You eat the leaves/flowers, not the bubs. That is NOT what is in your picture, however. I think you have crow garlic, allium vineale. It's not as nice to eat as the other stuff, but I think the bulbs and leaves can be eaten. However, I wouldn't advise this unless you are very certain indeed as there are plants that look quite like it that are poisonous.

[DarkBlueEyes]

The garden designer I had in says the flowers are edible. Personally I wouldn't try it! Filthy stuff.

[ILeaveTheRoomForTwoMinutes]

After a quick Google, I found you have three corner leek(sometimes called three corner garlic)

greedygardener.co.uk/post/19776022605/ramsons

[NorbertDentressangle]

We have loads of this sort growing locally - it's definitely edible (leaves and flowers) as we make a lovely wild garlic soup with it, use the flowers in salads and also add it to quinoia cakes which are delicious.

I've never eaten the bulbs though or seen the sort in your link DarkBlueEyes

[ivykaty44]

I had ground elder in one long bed. I eventually realised it was winning so I buried the bugger.

I got a roll of plastic sheeting and put bark chippings over the top. That was about twelve years ago.

I still have the sheeting down and do buy bark chipps to go over periodically.

I have cut the blk roll and planted bushes in and it's been fine.

Nothing else worked

[JapanNextYear]

Wild garlic sells for a bomb in Borough Market. Could you bundle it up and sell to local restaurants? - the more leaves you pick - the more feeble it will get.

[JapanNextYear]

This stuff. It's really good.

[BerylStreep]

Our garden was filled with ground elder. I dealt with it very successfully by using extra strength round up and carefully digging up any new shoots which appeared, making sure not to leave any root behind. We've been pretty much free of it for some years now.

With ivy you just need to keep on top of it. I pull it out. Better to do it when the plant is alive. If you kill it first then the stem become brittle and break off.

[DarkBlueEyes]

Sadly it's not the round leaf one posted, it's three corner leek as someone identified above. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium_triquetrum

Bastard stuff. I will just have to keep digging! And actually must make sure I don't let it set seed as it will spread even further so will spend hours chop the heads off.

Thanks for the ground elder tips. Some of the bed where it is will be going as we're extending and it will be concreted over, which should sort it out! I'll round up in the meantime and think I'll go and get the heavy duty commercial stuff as we have bamboo as well ffs and I think I'll need it to get rid of the shoots ghost will inevitably pop up.

Guess I'm in it for the long haul!

[shovetheholly]

The first bit is always the hardest. Getting on top and staying on top in the first year is heavy work. But you will weaken these things with time!