I want to get rid of a trumpet vine that is growing on my home.

Carolynthompson
by Carolynthompson
How do you get rid of Trumpet Vine. It is growing into the foundation of my house. I have tried pulling it out, round up, vinegar and salt. Please share your knowledge with me. Thank you.
  5 answers
  • Rozmund Rozmund on Dec 14, 2016

    Well usually a healthy trumpet vine is a gardener's dream..they are first very vigorous..grow quickly..produce beautiful flower clusters that hummingbird's love...but as you have experienced ... if planted in the wrong place by an inexperienced gardener..there is trouble...Trumpet's do well in drought..extremely well..and love a sunny exposure..so am wondering rather than poisoning the soil and harming all the critters that make the soil their home..it will look unsightly..but only for a few months...cover the vine with a few black plastic heavy duty garbage bags.....that will block out the sun it needs, cause the leaves to turn yellow, drop off and eventually the woody branches will perish without nourishment...when you see this beginning to happen...next attack are the roots..

    give them a steady dose of too much water..perhaps by digging a few holes around the trunk of the vine...the water should be salted with rock salt ..... the roots will want to take up the water...but since the vines leaves and branches are now weak and withering, the roots will give up and simply soften and rot away...

    this is the slow painful way of doing it...another option is sawing the trunk off at the ground or below the surface of the ground...cover the whole area with cedar mulch at least 10 inches deep...around the trunk area as a and if any suckers come up, do the same thing to them...good luck...without a picture it is tough ... but you will succeed over time...I am having a similar problem myself with a wild bush seeded from acorns, a gift from some resident squirrels...the thing grew 9 feet in 4 months, before I could I could identify it...like you, right up to the house foundation....I hate to kill anything....so used the wait and see stance. We are frozen solid now up here, so I will be trekking out into the snow and cutting it down .... why did I wait..because the roots sent up buds galore all the way up the branches right to the tips....this endeavour used up any strength the roots had...so my plan is - cut down those branches, which are 1/2" in diameter I might add..and then when the melt arrives in March....and the wild thing gears up for a growth surge, I will cut again, and again, regularly...until it is thoroughly weakened...hate to, but that's life...Roz



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    • Erica who Erica who on May 01, 2018

      I’m almost three feet deep in my flower bed and the roots keep going. Have I dug deep enough or do I need to keep going? My whole house is surrounded and this is going to be a process. Thanks!

  • Janet Pizaro Janet Pizaro on Dec 14, 2016

    Trumpet vine is very difficult to remove (story short).You will unfortunately just like me have to keep pulling out the new growth.Using the salt and vinegar will not get down to the deep roots. Roundup is a alternative but is harmful to the environment. You can try rock salt providing there are no other plants involved but no guarantees.

  • Carolynthompson Carolynthompson on Dec 14, 2016

    Thank you both for the insight. We are pretty frozen here as well. I will save this info for warmer weather. Good luck .

  • Rozmund Rozmund on Dec 15, 2016

    No harm in trying..but the subject vine appears determined, and I think would simply send out long feeder roots - these look like ROPE...to beyond the piece of cardboard, or even a 2 x 4 peace of old painted plywood...I once had a Hops Vine

    that covered the entire side of our garage...my hubby was a Brew Master and we harvested our own hops to make his beers "from scratch" ... after a few years he tired of all the work and we ripped down the vine...and frankly forgot about it...

    it sent up a few suckers but nothing concerning....my neighbour of many years decided to till her back yard, drop some topsoil and resod...to her surprise she found a network of rope like hairy "lived" roots and wondered what they were...this grassy peace of property was 30 feet away from me..she called me totally perplexed as to what monster was growing under her dying sod..together we put our backs into it, and tugged at these root ropes, and low and behold found they were growing clear into my property as well, toward the vicinity of the old hops vine..well did I feel foolish...you see, she was a water cheater..watered at night...and I guess the vine just figured let's grow toward this regular source of water...we never did figure out how far it went..but she stopped watering a night, and I helped chip in to cover the damage to her lawn...we had to rip up a lot more than what she had planned on resodding - so often times we really do not give proper credit to an aggressive plant..always keep in mind...they were here on this planet long before we were...and that when purchasing a plant...sometimes it bears looking into the growth pattern of roots as well as tops...in my case cardboard wouldn't have done a thing..it works to kill grass though..but trees, vines, and bushes not so much....Roz





  • Carolynthompson Carolynthompson on Dec 15, 2016

    Roz, Thank you very much. My house is over 150 years old. I guess the trumet vine has been there that long. Will try pulling in Spring.