J

GGG

i'll put your posts together and use a stump killer and cover with cardboard and mulch or rock.

now i know why people have this stuff in their yards.....THEY CAN'T GET RID OF IT! it should come with a warning!

and, jen, after all this time of fighting it, i REFUSE to love it or live with it!! I AM A WOMAN ON A MISSION. Next time it rears its ugly head, i'm going the stump killer route. they're ALL going down!!!

i can't believe i haven't seen more complaint threads about this plant through the years!

Lisa

I once asked a landscaper to remove mine (the previous owners of my house planted A LOT of them on two sides of the yard), and he just laughed.

So, my father, who actually likes them, asked if he could have a few. I thought this would make us both happy, but the ones he transplanted died, and mine were so happy to be thinned out that they came back even more thickly.

I just ignore them now. They are not in the mental map of my gardens.

I had some leavcs blow in around one plant so I set the leaves on fire. Made the Yucca leaves brown and ugly but didn't kill it. Later my brother was here and he helped me dig and dig and dig. The plant came back and is now as big or bigger than before.

And yes, I set that yucca plant out myself!!

1) Take down the wall and dispose of it well away from your property.

2) Dig deeply and remove all visible bits of the plant.
Dispose of the soil, well away from your property.

3) Dig even more deeply (preferably down to molten magma). Once you have excavated a crater roughly 10 times the diamter of the original plant and at least 3 feet deeper than all visible roots, remove all dirt, rock etc. and dispose of well away from your property.

4) Fill the pit with double-strength Brush-B-Gone and erect a security fence around it. Inspect around the edges once daily for marauding roots. Be prepared to call in air support if needed.

5) Approximately 50% of gardeners have found that by strictly adhering to these methods, the yucca will be vanquished within 5 years.

6) If you are within the unlucky 50%, move to a new home. Do not take any plants or garden equipment with you. Do not leave a forwarding address.

Thanks for the info about pruning back the leaves in spring - and when you mentioned removing the plant after blooming, you are referring only to the "stalk" with blooms, aren't you?

I had two very nice yuccas at my old house (for 6 years) that never spread...hmmmm....

There must be different species that are notorious for what you guys are talking about.

I did grow some from seed...but they will be planted in an area that they can "take over" if they want to...

To each their own... but why ANYONE would ever want one of these plants is beyond me... especially in a woodland garden like I try to have at my lake house. I wish I could offer some advice, but I have had real bad results trying to eradicate this most ever invasive plant. I am considering using my used medical syringes to inject a (full strength) concentrated systemic poison into the middle base of the plants. I'm simply fed up with yuccas down in southern Illinois.

I also thought that maybe I should make a tea to drink from their boiled young leaves. I figured that by doing that I'd maybe have a life span of 500 years too. Then it occurred to me: I'd be ugly, and besides the fact it could be poisonous... and I've already had enough life problems from procreating myself!

jim

I was going to chuck it but I'm interested to see how long it will hang on. Did I mention it's inside the drip line of the house? Little - if any - rain falls there.

GODZILLA was more than fifteen feet tall with a base four-feet wide. My warriors, husband and son (son is part Japanese) battle the monster chopping off the twin heads and numerous arms. Two-foot sections of it’s gnarly belly were sliced off, but their futile attempts are dashed. Godzilla is still breathing fire.

Along comes our friend, the Mad Scientist, complete with hunched shoulders, lab coat and goggles. He regales the tales of vanquishing the monsters from his yard once and for all.

"When you're down to the stump, drill a bunch of holes down in there with the biggest drill bit ya got. (Ours happens to be a jackhammer). Pour a bunch of liquid Drano down in there, full strength to the roots and let it set awhile. Once it starts a-lookin’ like The Blob, you can call Hollywood so they can make the sequel."

We're at the point of drilling the holes, when husband suddenly takes a trip out of state, and son finds respite at a San Diego car show, leaving me with the lab coat, rubber gloves, goggles and jackhammer! I'm thinking of wrapping ropes or chains around the stump and fasten that to the tow hooks on the back of the Hummer and pulling it out!

Godzilla vs. Hummer?

Epilogue to follow............

First, straight Roundup doesn’t work, brush and vine killers don’t work, burning doesn’t work, digging the plant up doesn’t work. Nor does poisoning the soil with gasoline, letting it set for a year, then digging up the contaminated soil and replacing it with good soil work. Straight bleach does not work. Digging the plant out and replacing the soil doesn’t work. Even if you cover the area where the plant existed with a plastic cover and rock or mulch, it will only start growing up outside the boundary of the area covered in plastic. Poisoning the soil with salt will kill everything but the Yucca Plant. It seems to act much like the good old Southern and Midwestern plant, nutgrass.

To date, no one is known to have subjected it to microwaves or nuclear radiation. The radiation should probably be used only as a last gasp measure.

The yucca plant does have a natural killer, however it is a moth that has been declared extinct.

Things that are in the process of being tested are:

• Direct application of stump remover.
• Syringe injection of 4 cc’s of undiluted Remedy®. The Remedy® will actually eat out the syringe, so it is suggested you buy the disposable syringes, clean them in water and pour the contaminated water over the plant(s), then throw the syringes away.
• Syringe injection of 2 cc’s undiluted Round-up® mixed with 1 teaspoon of salt per pint of Round-up®.
• Since it is primarily a dry area plant, some people are trying to keep the plant area soaking in water in an attempt to drown the plant and rot the roots. Since the tap root is suspected of growing down to the magma core at the center of the planet, not much hope is held out for this remedy.

Most importantly if you are trying to kill the Yucca is to NOT let the plant flower and go to seed. As it JUST STARTS to flower, bag the stem in a plastic trash bag and cut the stem out of the center as low as you can. Whatever you do, DO NOT put the dead stem in with your compost – you will just have new Yucca plants growing everywhere you spread your compost. So as not to infect the landfill or possible Composting facility for your area, place the stem, bag and all, into a large, acid proof container. Pour in enough acid to cover everything and cover. After five weeks, check to see if everything, EVERYTHING has dissolved. If not, replace the cover and wait another 10-12 weeks. After everything has dissolved, pour the acid mixture into the soil where the plant has grown. Cover with plastic and, if after two years, you are still Yucca free, remove the plastic, dig out the contaminated soil and replace it with soil that has never even heard of the word Yucca.

Only after a treated area has been Yucca free for 7 years may you consider your means of removal to have been a success. Studies longer than seven years have not been conducted.

One suggestion that has worked 78% of the time is to move to a new house that does not have Yuccas. Of the 12% of the time where moving has known to have failed, close investigation has shown that digging tools used to try to eradicate the plant were taken to the new house, or the unsuspecting family has tried to take plants from the old house to the new. It is suggested you scrap and burn all garden tools and gloves and bring NO plants from the old house to the new.

©2007, Bob Clarkson

Meanwhile on Catalina Island, son and friends are wiling away the Labor Day Weekend in the surf. Smart kid!

Plenty of water, fertilizer and other attentions might do the trick. It's liable to decide that it's wanted, and die out of spite.

Meeting with nursery personnel for follow-up solutions and treatments, new soil, shrubs and plantings.

Persevere, fellow gardeners. You can do it!

I just went online to see how I can get rid of all the small volunteers. I had one planted in a rock wall the previous owner build. I dug the mother plant out, I thought I got everything but now there are little ones keep coming up between the rocks and the plants I planted. How am I ever going to get them out between the wall, without dismantling the rock wall first.
I guess I will move the plants to another area and see if I can poison the little yuccas. The rock wall definitely is the wrong place to plant something that big and that invasive. Because it was too big for the place was the reason in the first place I dug it out. Maybe it would have been better to leave it in?

Isabell

Ill move mine to another spot. Is there a way to box them in so they cant spread or do they also spread with seeds?

I really like it but I still don't have one. I will buy next year.

The reason poisoning doesn't work, is because of hydrostatic pressure. The flow of fluid in the root is upward. Poisons will difuse downward some, but not all the way nor throughout the root structure. It's like trying to put a cork on a cartesian water spring. Can't happen.

So, after having read all your woes, I like the idea of electicity, but don't know how to create enough current and voltage safely enough to zap the thing. It would probably take some experience with tesla coils, only the AC current will disipate across the ground too easily. Lightning spreads onces it hits ground.

I'm thinking maybe lots of dry ice to freeze the root structure through. I'd use liquid nitrogen, but that could get costly, and I think it will have to sit a long time for the cold to reach all the way down via the roots natural concentration of moisture.

Perhaps drill hole, fill with poison, and then the big freeze. Perhaps the plant will react to cold and draw its fluids down to preserve itself, pulling the poison with it?

And, this no joke. These plants are really like cockroaches, prehistoric survivors. But, do any live in Alaska? I hope not.

Then I got the bright idea of moving overseas for a few years (for work). I forgot to mention the Yucca Wars to the friends who rented my beloved house from me. So nobody was watching for shoots. And now, lo and behold, four years later I move back to my home and THE YUCCA PLANT IS BACK AS BIG AS IT EVER WAS! Aaaargh!

I am at my wit's end. I can't dig out roots as I could before cause now the deck is over some portion of where the roots must be. Can't use a jackhammer without disassembling both the deck and taking down the small retaining wall (between this wall and the deck is where the Yucca is located)in the process. So here we go again, but with less freedom of movement.

I will dig again. I will try the bleach on the shoots. I will even go against my eco-convictions and try shrub killer. Really, I don't hate Yucca. I have a couple other Yuccas in another part of my yard that I like just fine. They live on the other side of a small stairway in the retaining wall. They can live there peaceably, for all I care. I just want their cousins to move out from under the deck. PLEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSEEE!

So here we go again. Please pray for me, comrades! I need all the help I can get.

Worth a try...

Good Luck!!!!