Killing Ivy

tombrown

Looking for guidance on this, please.

I have a holiday home on Donegal with a stone shed in the garden, the exterior of which is covered in thick ivy. We decide to get rid of the ivy this year, so when I was up mid August, I found the main trunk can cut through it in a few places, taking out a vertical section of it about 10" long. I searched all around the base of the ivy and this was the only place I could find any stem/trunk coming up from the ground.

Just came up again yesterday (so ~6 weeks on) and there doesn't appear to be any sign of the ivy dying yet. I have heard it can live on for a bit, via its suckers into the mortar etc. but I have no idea how long this might continue.

Can I be reasonably confident it will now die & I will be able to take it down early in the new year, or is there something else I need to do?

looksee

I did the exact same thing in the same circumstances. I then pulled the ivy off so far as I could. Part of the shed eaves (it was being re-roofed) had to be dismantled to get the ivy out from between the stones, but it is now gone. I treated the stump with weedkiller and it hasn't re-grown. Its generally easier to pull it down live than dead I think. The stump is better treated when it is just cut. I hacked and slashed at it, it was pretty big, and put weedkiller on the slashes.

tombrown

When i've taken ivy down in the past I find it easier to take dead off than live, but if its still alive after Christmas I'll hack it down anyway.

looksee

I took it off the stone shed live and it pretty much came off in one large sheet. Likewise with ivy on a gate post, the dead stuff had to be picked and scraped off twig by twig.