Last year I chopped down the elder plantation that is the garden, first time was hard work, the rest was quite easy as they were green soft shoots

When I last looked they were nice green shoots about 3 foot tall....

Ive noticed the locals pull them out, I tried and not a chance I think these have been there too long

Ive decided to use a weedkiller on it, has anyone had success with this on the Bulgarian type elder( I think its southern european elder ) and got rid of it or is it just a waste of money trying weedkiller, Ive bought a concentrated glyphosphate one farmers use the same as roundups industrial grade , far stronger than the DIY store ones

Is it worth bothering with weedkiller , or will it all just come back, I dont mind a bit of it but a whole garden 6 foot tall elder plantation is a bit much!

Has anyone found the secret to killing the stuff...apart from goats

Goats are great, but tend to eat everything as well!! These things seem to have a very well developed root system..chop it off here and it springs up next door. I just keep cutting it off with the strimmer or mower.

they are difficult to get rid of, dont think weed killer is the answer unless you have a tanker of the stuff [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] expose the roots and hack them, they will eventually give up.

Our garden was inundated with them, unfortunately they have a wonderful root system. I'm afraid the answer is to keep strimmimg/hacking at them as they appear. My husband has dug out yards and yards of the stuff! Good luck!!

I went through a few brushcutters last year clearing it, and it was so much hard work in the heat , the local shop had no giant scythes...they look much easier!

Ive just bought 10L of super conncetrate of the stuff , it says enough for 20000sqm, going on a lot smaller area than that and much stronger solution i hope it might get rid of some of it

Its so tightly packed it was about 6 inch apart between roots, only about a third of the garden , it is in straight lines, perfectly spaced, I think its been planted its so neatly lined up

Theres also bits popping up all over the place, that I think i will just keep strimming, but the forest of it is so dense that it needs to go , after chopping a few times in the heat last year i think some died eventually its now mostly about 1m apart between stems, the clematis vitalba are a real pain, the clematis is easier to kill and harder to remove as its in all sorts of places and the seeds go everywhere, most of that seems dead now

Ive seen people saying they inject glyphosphate into each plant, so I may try that!....Its going to take ages but it would be worth it, I have sharp needles caps that fit on bottles so i will try using one to inject it into them, the correct injection thingamy looks a waste of money, but after injecting them i will spray the whole lot as well

It just worries me getting it on the other plants, I hate weedkiller

Scunnered wrote:

Our garden was inundated with them, unfortunately they have a wonderful root system. I'm afraid the answer is to keep strimmimg/hacking at them as they appear. My husband has dug out yards and yards of the stuff! Good luck!!

Scunnered what does this plant look like please

This is a picture of the corner of our garden across the main gates, its the stuff with white flowers that go to black berries in september

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ... 0_0651.JPG

but its only small in that corner, the stuff is about 6 foot tall, this is my mum in the middle of the garden as i was cutting it down

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ... elder2.jpg

Don't let it get that big..chop it off at 2-3 inches Looking at those pics, I realise I don't have a problem as I mow/strim mine off at 2-3 inches.

oddball wrote:

Scunnered wrote:

Our garden was inundated with them, unfortunately they have a wonderful root system. I'm afraid the answer is to keep strimmimg/hacking at them as they appear. My husband has dug out yards and yards of the stuff! Good luck!!

Scunnered what does this plant look like please

The photos that will666 has put on is of the dreaded stuff. Also known as dwarf elder, as opposed to the elder tree. We've been hacking away at it for two years now, and at last it's getting the message!
Just need to get rid of the teazel now.

Never give up!..chop it off at the first showing and all will be good..this year I have only one or two small shoots.

Scunnered wrote:

The photos that will666 has put on is of the dreaded stuff. Also known as dwarf elder, as opposed to the elder tree. We've been hacking away at it for two years now, and at last it's getting the message!
Just need to get rid of the teazel now.

Ive not got much of the teasel in the garden, only a few of them, for now....it was strimmed as well

The elder is awfull stuff , thats why im going to try the weedkiller , Ive strimmed it nearly every second month down to the ground, getting rid of it the first time took 3 brushcutters, the worse bit was every now and then the brushcutter would find a glass bottle that would shatter all over me

Ive left 2 proper elderberry trees, I dont mind them as much as they dont spread like this, this variety of elder grows 2m high new shoots every year from the ground and its everywere

It doesnt do much damage to anything but stops you growing anything as it cuts out the light , the main problem is it makes a 5 min walk to a fruit tree turn into a half hour snake watching expedition in the wilds of Borneo

It could be a handy plant to grow, but just not so much of it! , i use elderberrys with apple to make pies that taste like cherrys, but nobody needs that many

When the villagers saw me cutting it down they asked if they could harvest some flowers to make tea with, they filled wicker baskets of the flowers, not all the flowers, just a certain age of flower, they explained it all , but...I cant speak Bulgarian well enough for that

Another awful plant that we have everywhere , another one that seems to be in all the hedges near us is the clematis vitalba, i had it in every tree, we cut the base of the stems till they died with the heat and then pulled them from the trees, some of the peach trees and apple trees had snapped branches by the clematis pulling them down, the clematis doesnt seem to climb in the elder though

Thanks for the link will666 I think this is what they call the tea tree in our village, one of the neighbours picked some for us and told us to make tea from it (yea right, PG Tips it is not) We will watch out for this plant.

Urgh - perennial weeds!!

Aside from digging it out and burning the leaves, then black plastic/landscape fabric over the top to prevent it growing, then about 2 years of rrepeatedly attempting to dig up and remove every last piece of root, there isn't real much of an option other than glyphosate sadly :(

They are dreadful things, we had loads outside our house last year and we dug them up, but the roots run everywhere. I told Annette we only had 3 or 4 hundred of them, but by the time we had finished there must have been over a thousand. This year some have reappeared but we dig them out when we see them, so far so good, but I believe digging them out will be an annual exercise for us both.

Had a good luck at the garden today and there they are the wretched things, not a thousand like last year, but a few hundred to remove. Hopefully a second year of removing them will give us a peaceful time next year. Our spades have never worked so hard!!