How To Remove Vine Roots From Siding
Don t tug at the ivy suckers until they have turned brown and withered an indication the ivy plant is dead.
How to remove vine roots from siding. Dig out the root ball with your garden spade to remove the plant entirely from the ground. Doing this will eliminate their main food source and keep anything from coming back. If the roots have grown into cracks you don t want to damage your mortar or siding by yanking too hard. There s no easier way to remove vines from siding than to pull them off.
Before you do this make things easier for yourself by cutting the roots and waiting a few weeks for the vines to wilt. Others may hide pests like spiders. Ivy virginia creeper vines and other climbing plants not only grip onto surfaces porous or not but on brick and wood they can actually sends little gripping roots into the siding. If you leave the suckers too long they ll rot oxidize and harden.
Remove a chunk of the stem so there s a gap between the stem and stump of the vine. Pressure washing is appropriate only for wood siding when you don t care whether any paint or stain comes off. Don t leave the dead suckers on the siding for more than two or three weeks. The suckers are on there like glue and we cannot get them off.
Use the shovel to dig into the roots and lift them out of the ground. Then paint some brush killer on the stump following label directions. When the vine is completely dead it may be easier to remove causing less damage. When removing ivy pull it very gently off the wall not worrying about the stems that break and stay stuck.
At that point they ll be impossible to remove without damaging the siding. If you want to kill the roots you can do it with table salt using a technique that won t harm the soil. A power washer took off some from the steel siding and didn t hurt the siding but i used a knife to remove it. As i found with my porch over time the roots will harden and be nearly impossible to remove.
I ve had ivy growing on stucco and steel siding. The sooner you can clean your brick the better. Remember if you don t kill the roots the ivy suckers will sprout back up and around the siding. To remove vines from siding you must completely remove the vine.
It died over the winter and we have been removing the dead vines off the siding. Dig up the soil around the roots of the vines. Wear gloves when you re removing vines. We can get much of it off but depending on the age of the ivy you could have significant damage done.