On Sat, 20 Mar 2021 01:28:35 -0000 (UTC), Boris wrote:


I think the problem is the same as yours. The stems are so long, that the
chemicals never travel that far. My stems were somethinge 20' long.

I think you have a good handle on the dilemma of the problem set.

The big poison oak vines (the ones that are the diameter of from a pencil to
your fingers and wrist) are much easier to kill as they don't break when you
pull on them so you can very easily find the mother location even if it's
twenty or thirty feet away.

Those large plants die every time after you brush on or spray concentrated
roundup directly immediately after cutting the vine.

The large plants are most often found on hillsides where I start at the
bottom and claw my way up on my hands and knees pulling out those thick
vines until I find the mother plant and kill her. I don't bother pulling out
all the vines which went uphill as they'll die with the mother plant when I
cut her and spray her. (It's too difficult to work downhill anyways).

What I'm asking about is a field that's relatively flat which has been
untouched for as long as I know such that the forest litter is at least a
foot thick. Almost every log for example falls apart when I kick it as it's
a moist area what has a very thick layer of "compost" which these little
baby poison oaks seem to love.

It's about an acre that I'm looking at which is easy as it's not too big but
it's still time consuming no matter what method I use and I don't really
want to kill any of the oaks and moss and blackberries and other natural
plants in the process either.

Given there are thousands of these little baby poison oak plants what I may
do unless someone has a better idea is both methods. I haven't tried both
but maybe I should spray the babies that I can see and in a week or two come
back and pull them out by the vines.

The only problem I can see ahead of time that I may run into is if the
leaves fall off I won't be able to discern what's a mm-wide poison oak vine
from any other vine for the babies that are only a few inches above the leaf
litter.

For the vines that stand up a few feet or which start to grow up the moss
covered oaks it will be easier as poison oak is just about the only vine in
this field that grows straight up out of the ground as a standing vine.

It seems your experience is similar to mine in that the trick is to figure
out a way to get the poison to travel long distances along the vine.

I couldn't find anything in the literature that says how long roundup
travels inside the stem when you spray the leaves.

What's the tallest plant you've been able to kill with roundup concentrate?