Wild Grape Roots
A year or so ago, my roommates and I noticed, as we were fighting a mouse problem, that one possible access mode to the house was a dogwood that was pretty close to an attic vent. We’ve got wall voids that go pretty much all the way up to the attic, so it seemed like a valid thing to think about.
Other than that, we also noticed squirrels running around the roof, going down our chimney. In short, the whole house was porous. So we got the chimney re-sealed, we did other rodent exclusion work and pretty much got the mouse problem in check. And we went to trim away the tree branches from the side of the house.
And that’s when I noticed it. Much of the thick, vibrant foliage on that dogwood wasn’t dogwood leaves. It was some sort of insane climbing invasive vine that had gotten to the top of the tree and completely established a canopy. It was a mess. And it was wild grape.
Well, tracing the vines back to a root location, I chopped them down and did my best to remove them, and I think the tree’s been doing better since losing its aggressive competitor. Hard to tell though, the damage was probably already done. Anyway, I cut back the vine and left it at that.
Well, fast forward a couple months, through the winter and into today, and I was out in that area raking up some dead leaves, pulling some ivy vines, etc, and one apparent vine was buried a bit better than the normal ivy runners. Pulling on it revealed a bigger thing that looked exactly like the above-ground grape vines. And more pulling and digging and following had me pulling out probably in the neighborhood of 30 foot long vines from just under the surface of the ground, snaked out into the lawn, running along the house … just everywhere. It was really phenomenal. I filled one of those kraft paper yard waste bags with ivy vines, late-fallen leaves and rogue wild grape roots, and I know for sure I didn’t get all of them either from that vine head, or from that part of the yard.
So let that be a lesson to anyone who’s paying attention. Wild grape is insane. Kill it. Kill it fast. Kill it with fire, if you can. Because if you don’t kill it, it’ll kill your trees, it’ll kill your grass, it’ll take over your whole damned yard from both above and below with a virulence and implacability that trumps even ivy.
That’s all.