Poison Oak Everywhere!

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Most of my land has little new plants here and there. In an overgrown area I've been working on clearing, it's all over the place, some areas very dense growing unsupported about 10' high, and other places where it encounters a tree to grow on getting a 1-1.5" climbing vine. I cut those and pull them out so that I don't have to worry about it later if I need to trim up the tree or cut it down. Big patches get scraped with the tooth bar on the bucket; I've gotten good at doing it without removing all the topsoil but still uprooting most of the poison oak.

I've found that working with the stuff in winter is a mixed bag - the sticks aren't nearly as capable of giving you a rash, but it can be really hard to see the stuff.

Wearing a hat or at least a bandanna covering the forehead and ears, eye protection, and having a beard & mustache are helpful such that if a vine hits you in the face it doesn't touch as much skin. If you're sensitive, put a good body lotion on any skin that may get exposed - something like aveeno that's got a bit of silicone to help protect the skin is ideal - after working, wash hands & forearms at the sink in cool water with soap, then drop your clothes right into the washer, then go shower also in cool water to begin with. If you use hot water, the skin pores open up; use cool water and lots of soap, then increase the water temperature and re-wash. Ideally you'll be left with a bare hint of exposure - enough "slight exposure" and you're likely to lose sensitivity; people get more sensitive when they get massive exposure (when we moved here in '96 the first two summers I was absolutely covered in welts - now I'll pull the stuff bare-armed just with gloves on and only bathe afterwards if I know I got a big exposure, and that's because I don't want my wife to get it).

The time of year to pull it is when the ground is soft; right now through mid-spring is pretty good, it starts to dry out later and the roots hold on too well. Still worth cutting out but pulling may not work if the ground is dry (vines will just break, which is a setback but not a kill). Most of my land I've cleared of poison oak just by pulling; yearly I do find the occasional seedling type plants.

IMO the stuff isn't a big enough bother to resort to poisons because it's pretty easy to handle it mechanically; its spread is pretty slow as it's not an invasive.

 

[JasperFrank]

Do not burn it. Our property was covered with the stuff. It depends on your individual genetics, but I'm entirely immune to it..... my brother was highly affected by it. The first few laundry ended up in rashes for my wife. So work clothes got separated, and in some cases just discarded, and we used "tecnu" to neutralize what was washed.
I may be wrong about this, but in our case, the vines, that were as thick as a thumb, going up to the canopy of the trees, are what supported the entire system of new growth. I cut all those, leaders, and used Roundup on the ground plants. This seems to have worked.

 

[bmaverick]

Some people are immune to poison oak, and can cut, pull, or dig it without risk.

It is not recommended to burn it.

yep about 5% of the population are immune to poison oak, poison ivy, and sumac. I happen to be one of them. I keep special clothing isolated and use throw away gloves to do the work. The rest of my family can't even get near any of it. So I have to take special care not to contaminate where others go.

After harvesting the nasty stuff, I have an out of the way old concrete pad to toss the poison lot onto. I let it dry out totally in the hot sun. a few weeks later, the lawn roller goes over it all till it's like powder. Then it can be buried in a deep hole.

Otherwise Keko goats or Nubian goats are the best way. Just don't let people pet them afterwards for a time. Depending on the acres you have, depends on how long you keep the goats. Plus the goats need more than the nasty stuff too in their diets. About 8 can tidy up an area of acres in a matter of a few weeks.

 

[CliffordK]

Poison Oak, is a vine. Find all the leaders to the upper canopy and cut them.

Poison ivy is a vine, typically with lots of hairy roots, I think.

All the poison oak I've seen have been bushes. At least around here.

 

[newbury]

Here’s how you can tell the plants apart:
Poison ivy (A) usually has three broad, tear-shaped leaves. It can grow as a climbing or low-spreading vine that sprawls through grass. It is found everywhere in the United States except Alaska and Hawaii. It often grows along rivers, lake fronts and ocean beaches.

Poison oak (B) has leaves that look like oak leaves and grows as a vine or a shrub. The plant can have three or more leaflets per group. It is most common in the western United States.

Poison sumac (C) has seven to 13 leaflets per stem that are characterized by smooth surfaces and pointed tips. It is most often found in wooded, moist areas of the southern United States.

from link

I've seen poison ivy vines as thick as my wrist reaching over 30 feet up in trees.
Poison oak was generally smaller.

 

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Poison ivy is a vine, typically with lots of hairy roots, I think.

All the poison oak I've seen have been bushes. At least around here.

Poison oak appears to be isolated small bushes typically but if it grows next to a tree it will vine its way up and the stalk/trunk can get very thick.

The roots often run horizontally just below the humus and connect plants together; often when I pull one if I'm gentle I can keep pulling and the next few nearby will come up as well.

 

[JasperFrank]

Poison ivy is a vine, typically with lots of hairy roots, I think.

All the poison oak I've seen have been bushes. At least around here.

I can assure you that Poison Oak is also a vine. It has a smaller leader than Ivy. Every tree over 50 feet had this sort of umbilical cord, to reach sunlight light in the canopy, that was feeding the rest. kill them from the trees, and then use ground herbicides.

 

[ultrarunner]

I’m blessed with all variations…

Pacific poison-oak is a native perennial broadleaf vine or shrub that is sometimes treelike in form. Poison-oak is found throughout California, except the Great Basin and southwestern edge of the Mojave Desert, up to 5400 feet (1650 m). It inhabits oak woodlands, chaparral, conifer and mixed conifer forests.

One of the reasons we liked high elevations like Tahoe is no poison oak!

It was also a draw to the Olympia property.

Weed Gallery: Pacific poison-oak--UC IPM

Photos and descriptions of Pacific poison-oak

ipm.ucanr.edu

 

[DarkBlack]

Mostly poison ivy here…and lots of it
Poison ivy and yellow jackets

 

[nikdfish]

I found frequent close mowing can eventually pretty much clear it from the mowed area, At least it worked for the road sides & field areas we were working on.

 

[Williy]

Have you tried a natural killer for the ivy?
vinegar, baking soda, salt, dish soap, water,

willy

 

[jyoutz]

This product is advertised in forestry magazines. Supposedly you drink a drop in a glass of water for awhile to build immunity. IDK if it works or not.

Amazon.com

My introduction to Northern California coast range in the 1980s was a miserable introduction to poison oak. And the smell of it burning is toxic and sickening.

 

[BigGG]

24d weed killer with triclopyr aka Crossbow type mix.

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/brushtox-brush-killer-wtriclopyr

I agree. Crossbow (or Crossroad) has about the same proportions but twice as strong, probably more cost effective. And definitely add surfactant.

 

[John0829]

This product is advertised in forestry magazines. Supposedly you drink a drop in a glass of water for awhile to build immunity. IDK if it works or not.

Waaay back when, when I was a kid I was highly sensitive to poison ivy. I could literally just walk in sight of it and be covered with horrible blisters and rash. Anyway the local pharmacist was a friend of dad and he gave him something that I took, for I forget how long, one summer just like that product a bit in a drink each day. Did it help, IDK but I like to think it did and give credit to it even though I have no idea what it was. To this day I still get a minor blister and itching but only if I come into direct contact with poison ivy and even then the area affected is usually very small, only lasting a day, two at most.

 

[ultrarunner]

Imuneoak was issued by the Bell System for rural linemen in areas with poison oak…

It was a drop added to water to buildup tolerance…

It was discontinued maybe 40 years ago and I spoke to the lab who said it was a business not to spend the vast amounts needed to update the old patent medicine to modern clinical testing standards.

There are also tablets under the tongue claiming the same.

I get it terrible but by being careful and using barrier lotion can manage…

Sitting on my CAT dozer working fire trails I would get it bad on every square inch of exposed skin from just the dust.

By not dozing in hot dry dusty conditions was one way to avoid because a few days after a good rain with soil having a lot of moisture no dust…

 

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Imuneoak was issued by the Bell System for rural linemen in areas with poison oak…

It was a drop added to water to buildup tolerance…

It was discontinued maybe 40 years ago and I spoke to the lab who said it was a business not to spend the vast amounts needed to update the old patent medicine to modern clinical testing standards.

There are also tablets under the tongue claiming the same.

I get it terrible but by being careful and using barrier lotion can manage…

Sitting on my CAT dozer working fire trails I would get it bad on every square inch of exposed skin from just the dust.

By not dozing in hot dry dusty conditions was one way to avoid because a few days after a good rain with soil having a lot of moisture no dust…

I've seen a homeopathic "remedy" (highland's) which purports to help if you have a rash. Thing is with homeopathy, the "6X" "active ingredient" means that there's 10^-6, a dilution of one part in one million, of the thing, like the poison oak (assuming they actually put the ingredient in there; at those dilutions you're not going to know).

So a 50mg tablet with 6X poison oak will have at most 50x10^-6 mg poison oak in it, or 50 nanograms.

It may be apples and oranges, but they're doing oral immunotherapy these days to desensitize kids who have peanut allergies - one of the more deadly allergies to have - and the treatment starts with 3mg of peanut protein and goes up from there. That's a hundred thousand times more than what's in the homeopathic poison oak remedy.

Even so, perhaps 50 nanograms of poison oak, ingested, is enough to train the body against reacting, but that's very close to zero. Studies have been done in the past based on rumors of people reducing sensitivity by eating leaves (quantities definitely higher than micrograms let alone nanograms), but the studies have all shown in the negative, and the common wisdom is that people get more reactive, not less, with time - though I've personally gone the other way, but not by eating leaves.

 

[California]

I don't remember if I read it here or elsewhere, but I'll pass this along FWIW:

Tecnu seems to be the standard for washing off poison oak before it penetrates the skin. But more experimenting showed that any solvent or detergent that cuts grease is as effective, since the poison is in the form of an oil. So wash off the oil, working cold so pores are closed, and you've done all you can.

What I read mentioned Dawn detergent, paint thinner and other solvents, even acetone. Anything that cuts grease. Just not mechanic's hand cleaner that contains abrasives. Then follow with a normal wash to get the skin clean.

 

[ericm979]

Wearing long pants and sleeves and scrubbing any exposed areas with Dawn has reduced my poison oak rash to nearly nothing. And I get a lot closer to it now than I used to.

I'm pretty good at spotting it even when it doesn't have leaves. If I get close to any or run over it with a string trimmer, the clothes I was wearing go in the wash when I'm done and I wash off with Dawn.

 

[California]

Wearing long pants and sleeves...

That plus a hat, gloves, and tall 'milking boots' is my body armor when I go down into the ravine, jungle, down in back.

Some years I've opened a trail through the poison oak to get to the blackberries covering the far side, but mostly it's not worth it, there are plenty of berries on this side too.

 

[newbury]

I used to be extremely allergic to poison ivy and poison oak, which was a bad thing for a field biologist. I had Wetland Scientist 2 week field course, my arms were literally dripping pus. Also if you have dogs that get it on their fur they can rub the oil on you.
But I learned early on that it only lasted about 2 weeks on me and put up with it. I got some of that "drink a drop a day" stuff from Forestry supply, it worked but like he wrote

It was discontinued maybe 40 years ago

So I said the heck with it and about 20 or 25 years ago I made a practice of first the PI or PO I saw IN SPRING take a leaf and CAREFULLY rub it on a patch I could scratch, like an area on my forearm. After that developed an itch I seemed relatively immune to other contact. Still try to keep clear of it but don't seem to get it.