I have a few questions for the greater community that I'm sure many have had and I think the answers to these questions would be very valuable to us all. If anything even brainstorming a solution to this problem (or a problem to this solution?) would be a challenging permacultural task.
If the problem is the solution, what problem is poison ivy the solution to?
What
permaculture methods can be used to "deal with" poison ivy?
For those who haven't ever dealt with poison ivy there are a few things you
should know.
1. It causes a strong itchy rash by contact with almost any part of the plant. This rash varies in intensity and can last for weeks.
2. It can grow as a vine across the ground on a tree or as a shrub.
3. It has tiny berries that birds eat which they then spread the seeds.
4. Trying to stifle its growth by plastic, heavy mulching, or any other method other than pulling it out by hand doesn't work.
5. People have reported it is even immune to glyphosate.
6. It grows mainly on forest verges and inside forests. Can grow in full sun all the way to mostly shaded environments.
7. It also spreads from root division, so anything left in the ground will grow back.
8. Burning it causes a highly toxic smoke that when inhaled gets poison ivy in your lungs
9. It is a highly aggressively growing pioneer plant. Easily out competing practically anything.
I am working on a garden in a backyard of a home that backs onto a swampy forest that is chock full of poison ivy. I mean 4-6 inch think vines that choke
trees. So much is growing up some trees that when the foliage comes out in the spring its hard to tell what is the tree foliage and what is the poison ivy. The only thing I can think of in terms of dealing with it now is pulling it out very carefully by hand and keeping a kind of poison-ivy wall between the garden and the forest. The wall is just a 4-5 foot wide cleared area so whenever poison ivy grows into it I just pull it out.
I have even hired this man
http://www.poison-ivy.org/ who came to my home and by hand removed a great amount of the poison ivy but since the house backs onto a swamp that is infested with it, this is just a temporary measure. I can see the poison ivy invading our garden in the next 3-5 years or so when it has grown back.
I find myself think existentially about difficult problems to help me solve them and I often come to the conclusion that poison ivy is one of mother nature's prime weapon against the encroachment of man. Think about it, as suburbia has spread, so has the range of poison ivy. People often resort to just spraying it with roundup which only takes care of it for a season or two and just results in poisoning their soil and
water table. People who claim to not be allergic (I wasn't all my childhood) very often develop a reaction if exposed to it enough (which I have). Animals that rub against it get the poisonous oils on their fur. The oils can last actively for weeks on clothes and fur. It grows incredibly fast in a huge variety of environments. Articles have been written about how the expansion rate and potency of poison is directly correlated to
CO2 in the atmosphere. So more global warming, faster growing and more poisonous poison ivy.
People claim goats eat it. What if you don't have a goat? Goats also eat everything else near it.
I've tried, heavily mulching over it and pulling it out but I just see it returning in a few years.
I'm trying to think of things that can out-compete it but I have yet to find anything. And if I do, is that really something that I want to plant? I can just imagine the rest of my garden being overtaken by the new plant instead.
My thinking now is along the lines of #3 above. If its main form of dispersal is the birds eating the berries, can I get the birds to eat something else instead? Is the Poison Ivy berry the equivalent of famine food for birds? Would they give it up if they had more delicious things to eat?
Any thought?
Thanks
-Elia