Ground Elder - How to get rid of it?

[Whelk]

Aaaargh - its everywhere!!! a combination of neglect, crap gardening ability and two babies in two years mean that about a quarter (I'm not joking) of the wasteland known as my garden is covered with the stuff.

Everytime I weed a patch it colonises it. We've tried to cover it with black plastic for months (that looked attractive) but fear chemicals may be necessary before it takes the house!

So, what do we use, how, when etc

Thank you in advance

glyphosate is the only way according to my dh. it will take 2 years to clear it in total- one year to weaken it the next to kill it altogether. so good luck with that!!! x

Weed it out, weed it out, and weed it out. Make sure you dig it all out especially the runners that run underground and through the roots of other plants. Do not assume the job will be finished any time soon, as soon as you clear a patch it will pop back up again.

If mine was not growing in from next door and growing though all my plants I would poison it, but I can't so I just keep nagging away at it. As long as I am diligent I can keep it at bay, but I am going to have to Have A Word with lovely recently widowed neighbour and offer to weed his out too.

However, it can be done, and it's not that hard to weed out as the roots are shallow.

Not like the bindweed growing in from the neighbours on the other side...

In case this cheers you up while digging, here's the origins of ground elder in this country (apparently!):

The soldiers in the Roman legions were used to having plenty of fresh, tangy salad and cooked greens. But when they invaded the nasty, foggy, murky island of Britain there were no nice salad leaves growing, especially as they got further north to Hadrians' Wall. So someone suggested that they give ground elder a try, and sent it over - the Roman legions planted it in their vegetable patches, and were delighted to have a source of fresh salad pretty much all through the year. So when you see ground elder taking over your garden, you can think of those Roman soldiers getting their first taste of fresh salad for months.

If you keep eating it non-stop, it does actually seem to keep it down. Unfortunately, the Romans liked very bitter and strong-tasting food, and so it's not really something that most modern people want to eat. You might be able to turn it into risotto or soup more successfully though.

We had a huge patch of ground elder in our back garden when we moved in and I have more or less got rid of it.
I have to admit I paid a poor young bloke to dig it up all out and it took him rather a long time! But it seemed to do the trick and we didn't use chemicals (I try to garden organically).
Good luck...

I painted the leaves of mine with glyphosate 2 weeks ago, and it has worked, kind of, in that all the painted leaves have turned brown and withered. BUT lots new young leaves have appeared, so it's obviously an ongoing job.

Another way is to just pick off every single leaf you see. My mother pointed out that it never grows on lawns, because if it can't get light to the leaves it will die.

When we moved into this house I had never come across ground elder before, so I spent the first year assuming it was a flower and nurtured it in a flowerbed
This year, I'm trying the picking the leaves of method combined with digging the larger bts out.

Keep painting the leaves

i painted the leaves and then put black matting stuff down and put bark chippings over the top

that has been down for around 5 years now and I am hoping that hjas doenthe trick but am not looking