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Comment by calebio | Hacker News Reader

I have a constant battle with Kudzu every year. I wish we could find an easier way to kill the stuff, or transform it into something else.

That being said, goats will dig down and eat the hell out of the stuff.

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It's edible if you want to go through the trouble. It's a variety of arrowroot which has a lot of uses in east asian food traditions. I like the tea.

Unless you get them very young, eating the leaves is reminiscent of chewing sandpaper. Now you have me wondering if it would be palatable juiced, maybe as part of a smoothie.

Yeah I've only ever eaten the young shoots. It was fine I never went out of my way to eat it again though.

And often used as a digestive aid/folk-medicine

Doesn't this just mean it will give you the shits?

No, it calms the digestive system, and used to stop diarrhea.

My recent most favourite quote is "Anything is edible at least once".

Goats sounds like a good idea. And once they eat all the kudzu, you can eat the goats.

But would they taste good of all they've eaten is kudzu? Maybe they should feast on sage and rosemary.

Yes, kudzu is incredibly good forage and produces some of the tenderest, sweetest meat you'd ever taste.

humans can eat kudzu, too. It doesn't taste bad

Salt, mulch, barriers, and/or poisons like glyphosate.

Doesn't Roundup control it effectively?

no, not at all

I have English ivy around my house, which isn't quite as invasive as kudzu, but still a major nuisance.

Roundup does basically nothing. The leaves are thick and waxy and so don't absorb herbicide effectively. Supposedly, applying a more concentrated formula on a weekly basis for a month can work, but I don't like the idea of spraying that much glyphosate.

If you have to use poison you can use way less by pruning and putting a dab of glyphosate on the stump. Even dishsoap straight to the vascular system will kill many plants.

My husband swears by painting the leaves with the herbicide. Time consuming, though.

This is the only way I was ever able to kill English ivy in the back yard of my old house. I bought glyphosate concentrate, some disposable plastic cups, and a disposable foam paintbrush. I painted it on every damned leaf in the yard.

It works. It may take several applications to do so, but it works.

Top tip. Rubber gloves with some woollen gloves over the top. Soak the woollen gloves in glyphosate and then you can lovingly stroke the plants you want to kill. It’s a bit quicker

That is a brilliant idea.

You can add penetrants to get it to work better with adding more glyphosate

You can use ammonium sulfate as a surfactant to cut through English ivy with glyphosate. It works great, and in theory you don't have to use as much Roundup that way either.

has anyone tried a 55 gal drum of kerosine. might be safer, just take care the flames arent always visible

Thanks ChatGPT, I’ll keep that in mind.

Burning the visible part would just make food for the roots.

I found that chlorine triflouride is more effective

I just mow it so I can see the vines and then pull them up and cut them. Over the course of the summer, I cleared a significant part of my land. Now that autumn weather has finally arrived, I should be able to get it all.

It wraps all around trees and other desirable plants, and has shoots under ground that can extend many feet away. Digging it up is the only solution but even that is exceedingly difficult. I’ve learned to live with it.

Doesn't that stuff kill bees and fireflies as well?

Yes. After generous application, all that will be left alive is your manicured Roundup Ready™ lawn. Bliss...

I understand your sentiment and share to some extent, but the reason this came into being wasn’t vanity. Having large shrubs or weed areas leads to pests and the spread of disease, while large trees become deadly during storms. In the AmericanSouth and MidWest, seasonal tornadoes make this latter threat far worse. Homeowners then become incentivized to clear their yards of both hazards. Kudzu and English Ivy kill the trees and make them more likely to come down. Once people clear a lawn, the only way to make it look good is by getting that rich green and uniform golf course like appearance brought to you by Bayer.

Communicate with your local beekeepers on when you do this and they’ll really appreciate it. Might even get some free honey.

As others have said, RoundUp / glyphosate doesn’t always handle these tougher plants. I’ve had good results with Crossbow: https://www.winfieldunited.com/products/herbicides/crossbow/...

Not sure if that is readily available in all regions, though.

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