Exterminating Ground Elder! Have you done it??? Advice pleease...

[eskimum]

My Mum's beautiful flower border is being taken over by the dreaded Ground Elder weed. She is distraught and having sleepless nights over how to prevent it ruining her many years of hard work and devotion to her garden.

Naturally I have told her that she should be lucky that this is all she has to keep her awake at night, as many people have real problems keeping them awake!! (or are just kept awake by small children all night ).

However I'm now feeling that I was a bit unsympathetic, as it is her life's work and an amazing garden, and so as she's not very good on the internet herself, I wondered if anyone has any good advice I can pass on????
TIA

Anyone?

It's a nightmare. You just have to dig out every weed and every root. I've been putting it off for 6 summers while the DCs were little but am trying to tackle it this year bit by bit...

We have just done battle with ground elder in the vegetable patch and it was a nightmare.
I had covered the area with an old carpet over winter but the stuff is very persistent.
We dug over the entire area and picked out as much as possible, recovered it with old carpet then put about 6 inches of wood clippings on top. Overkill but it should weaken it. The vegetables will go in tubs this year

The flower beds are getting zapped with glyphosate though.

I have read that its pretty resistant to weed killer and that the best ways to deal with it are to dig it out and cover the border with weed suppressant fabric, though that would be hard for your Mother with a border full of flowers...
I do sympathise as we have it and its really hard to get rid of, but I just keep pulling it out as I see it and hope to keep on top of it that way.

Thanks all, does sound like its going to be a long hard slog to tackle it..
Anyone tried chemicals/weedkillers on it?? does that speed things up at all?

that is a nightmare, eski. It will be a huge worry to your mum.

We visited a castle at the weekend with lovely gardens and they have been attacked by ground elder. They have dug up huge, compeltet areas of the beds, all the plants dug out, all the weed dug up. It looked bad. They just have to start all over again.

We had to dig out every single plant including a box hedge and clean all through each of their roots for ground elder.
It's roots are very brittle and if a tiny bit snaps off, it will grow.

gentle, how many otters are there and are you the farming otter?

Yes, I'm the farming otter. The only other one I know of is NotAnOtter who is a different poster to me.

Thanks all.

Anyone else out there with any success stories??

A long shot but do you have chickens? They are brilliant at eating the tops then scraping the ground clean. The roots become exposed and die very quickly.
It only takes a bit of forking over then to see if any roots are left - the roots are a creamy white and fairly easy to find.

Sorry eskimum but I heard on Gardeners Question Time ages ago the best way to deal with ground elder was to move house!
It is really hard work getting every last root out but it is the only way. Unless you do it will just keep coming back. Good luck with it.