First poison ivy of the year?

[ultrarunner]

SO HOW DID YOU GET RID OF IT? CHEMICAL SPRAY OR MOWING OR WHAT?

The large coke can size vines were carefully cut while wearing chemical gloves...

The Poison Oak bushes were repeated sprayed with a Brush B Gone formula and Roundup Quick Pro with a wetting agent sold by my nursery.

The stuff has been growing wild for decades so no one application was going to get it... even where the main vine was clipped... it lived for a couple of years on the oak trees and the roots from the bushes would sprout...

Poison Oak seems to spread the easiest by birds eating the berries...

Hitting them on a warm Spring day after a day or so of good rain seemed to be the most effective...

Some of my neighbors are very organic when it comes to their yards... everyone around here makes an exception when it comes to poison oak.

I mostly use a backpack sprayer with a point tip... this way I can blast it from 15' away.

 

[robbyr]

I mostly use a backpack sprayer with a point tip... this way I can blast it from 15' away.[/QUOTE]

THATS KINDA WHAT I WAS THINKING. MIGHT SPRAY SOME WITH BACKPACK AND USING REMEDY THAT I BEEN USING ON MESQUITE

 

[ultrarunner]

I mostly use a backpack sprayer with a point tip... this way I can blast it from 15' away.

THATS KINDA WHAT I WAS THINKING. MIGHT SPRAY SOME WITH BACKPACK AND USING REMEDY THAT I BEEN USING ON MESQUITE[/QUOTE]

Remedy should work fine... being in California... I am very limited on what's available...

Don't expect to wipe it out overnight... I sprayed a couple of times the first year... every time I saw it pop back... now, one tank in the Spring and I really have to look for it to find it...

 

[RobertN]

Me too...I'm two hours east of you. PO loves the "Gold Country"! Took a while, but most of mine is knocked down. It is a yearly right of spring though; spray anything that pops up every year or it will come back with a vengeance...

THATS KINDA WHAT I WAS THINKING. MIGHT SPRAY SOME WITH BACKPACK AND USING REMEDY THAT I BEEN USING ON MESQUITE

Remedy should work fine... being in California... I am very limited on what's available...

Don't expect to wipe it out overnight... I sprayed a couple of times the first year... every time I saw it pop back... now, one tank in the Spring and I really have to look for it to find it...[/QUOTE]

 

[Western]

I carry a machete on my tractor, so if I see PI trying to grow up a tree I cut it off at the ground. About once a month my wife and I will walk in the woods with machetes and do the same thing. I haven't used any chemicals so far. PI here seems to be easy to kill in the early summer either by shredding the tops and when I can I run my small disk or chisel through the roots. I'm down to less than a 1/4 of what I had just by being persistent.

 

[RobertN]

Here in the foothills east of Sacramento(the "Gold Country" that spawned the 49er gold rush), poison oak just goes ape crazy!

At least when we go hiking ect further up in the Sierra it is gone. At least in the case of poison oak, it's range is from 0' above sea level, to about 3000-3500'...

I carry a machete on my tractor, so if I see PI trying to grow up a tree I cut it off at the ground. About once a month my wife and I will walk in the woods with machetes and do the same thing. I haven't used any chemicals so far. PI here seems to be easy to kill in the early summer either by shredding the tops and when I can I run my small disk or chisel through the roots. I'm down to less than a 1/4 of what I had just by being persistent.

 

[Western]

Robert, if you can find one PI leaf that test positive for Gold, it will disappear fast enough:laughing: Your in the right "location"

 

[schweizer]

I'm a physician. I own (well, paying for) a 320 acres piece of logged land here in Southern Oregon (got it for the same price as 10 acres closer to town). Around here, poison oak is ubiquitous. You can't get rid of it, the roots are tenacious.

My wife and I have a nickname for it: quercus diabolicus. (For you field biologists, yes, I know it's not a real quercus (Oak).)

My wife used to be relatively immune to it and still doesn't get it as bad as I do. I've resigned myself to getting poison oak on my arms and legs several times in the spring. The numbers some have posted are good round numbers: 70% of the population is sensitive from what I've read.

If you don't wash well, you can pass the urushiol oil to others. You don't usually have problems w/ it on you palms because the skin is so thick. Pay close attention to the thinner areas of your skin when you wash, especially genitals! How many of you go pee in the forest when cutting wood and don't think about it. I use **Tecnu** liberally this time of year. As soon as coming in from outside -- slather it all over -- then wash in a cool shower. Washing in a hot shower will open your pores and could allow the oil that you didn't neutralize w/ Tecnu to get into your skin.

Also, what some said about hot showers can help w/ the itch. I do it, too, but not the initial shower after working outside. But it only works until the cells recover their histamine (hours). Once you have the dermatitis, you just have to let it run its course w/ symptomatic relief mainly from topical steroids if necessary, or the hot shower thing. Only more severe cases should require stronger steroids.

We have grubbed lots of poison oak by hand along trails by our creek. That works well, but it will come back slowly. We also use "Crossbow". It's much stronger than Roundup. I would never spray it from 15 ft away and not around a water source. Crossbow aerosolizes easily and will kill almost every plant that you want to keep, too, so spray it only on the bad plants.

Anyway, that's my take on quercus diabolicus.

Marcus

P.S. AFAIK, the stems also contain urushiol, not just the leaves. If you are grubbing it by hand in winter, or spring before leaves come out, make sure to be careful w/ your gloves!

 

[RobertBrown]

Around here, poison oak is ubiquitous. You can't get rid of it, the roots are tenacious.

I have been to SW Oregon many times. The hillsides are covered with poison oak. The leaves glisten with uroshiol in the summer. You can't think of walking in the woods without taking extreme precautions, or you will be contaminated.
I have never seen anyplace that had anywhere near the amount of poison oak that is there.

There was also a brown lizard that crawls through the woods called a 'rough skinned newt". I saw dozens of these things and even handeled a few of them. Well, it turns out that these little guys are definetly something to avoid.

Toxic, it turns out, doesn稚 do the newts justice. They are little death machines. The newts produce a chemical in their skin called tetrodotoxin, or TTX for short, that痴 made by other poisonous animals like pufferfish. Locking onto sodium channels on the surface of neurons, TTX blocks signals in the nervous system, leading to a quick death. In fact, TTX is 10,000 times deadlier than cyanide. While we may never know for sure what killed those three Oregon hunters, we do know that a single rough-skinned newt could have easily produced enough TTX to kill them, and have plenty of poison left over to kill dozens more.

here is the article:
A Beautiful Web of Poison Extends A New Strand | The Loom | Discover Magazine

Any way, between the poisonous plants and the these happy little salamanders. You really need to watch where you sit in southern oregon.

 

[ultrarunner]

We have grubbed lots of poison oak by hand along trails by our creek. That works well, but it will come back slowly. We also use "Crossbow". It's much stronger than Roundup. I would never spray it from 15 ft away and not around a water source. Crossbow aerosolizes easily and will kill almost every plant that you want to keep, too, so spray it only on the bad plants.

I would crossbow if it was legal for me to buy... roundup quick-pro is much more effective then regular roundup... at least this has been my experience.

My hillside terrain is very rugged... the dogs were always getting into it and transferring it to the family.

It is actually very therapeutic to be 15 feet above it on the hillside and giving the leaves a thorough soaking...

Our family Doctor told my folks we would have to move if they couldn't keep me and my brothers away from the stuff.