::marks trumpet creeper off my list of vines to put on the fence eventually, when I have a fence::

Game bird,

The sad thing is I truly love it. The bright orange trumpet-shaped flowers are so gorgeous.

We have an arbor down by the driveway gate near the mailbox, and that arbor has both the orange-flowered and yellow-flowered trumpet creepers and American crossvine on it as well.

We have trumpet creeper planted to 'hide' the tornado shelter and, sure enough, except for the doorway, you can't see the shelter....just this big massive vine with orange flowers.

The mistake was putting it close enough to the porch to climb the porch pillars and shrubs. I feel like we'll never get rid of it there.

If you ever do need a vine that will make an impenerable barrier that humans and wild animals never will be able to breach, trumpet creeper is it. However, I wouldn't put it anyplace unless I was positive it could grow there rampantly forever.

It grows wild along fence lines here, climbs power poles, and grows along electric lines and phone lines. You cannot stop this stuff, and yet, I love it anyway. : )

I will not, however, ever plant it near a building again.

Dawn

Bringing this up again. I have TV everywhere and I have to do something drastic at this point to get rid of it. At first I tried to simply remove the seed pods to avoid reseeding, which it does with reckless abandon. I really wanted to let one vine grow for the hummers and bees-they love it, too. It is just not possible. Like trying to grow one piece of Bermuda.......HA! Not gonna happen.

It is getting into the flower beds, and even as a very small seedling, it cannot be pulled up. You should see me out there playing tug of war with a 2" sprout! I concede!!

I don't like using chemicals, but am going to have to give in, I think. I think if I use the kind you paint on the cut, applied immediately after cutting, I can do the least damage to other plants. I read about Roundup, but many question it's efficacy on TV. My neighbor tried it over and over, to no avail. We share our TV, like coworkers share a stomach virus. Anyway, he says Tordon is much more effective than Roundup or any other stump and vine killer, and in one application to each vine that is sprouted.

Anyone tried Tordon that can report on their results?

Thanks!

Susan

"pack up, sell your house and move to a new house that doesn't have trumpet creeper. "

LOL

I'm thinking that's the only solution to bind weed that took over during the drought

Susan, Tordon is what I would use, and I have some invasive grape vines popping up in my veggie garden that I need to use it on, but.......

I have refrained from buying it because it contains picloram which is one of the persistent herbicides whose residues have poisoned/killed garden plants via contaminated grass clippings, hay, straw, manure and compost since the early 2000s. If you do use it, remember that the herbicide residue can persist for years so you wouldn't want to use anything treated with it as mulch or in your compost pile for several years. Because of the way it persists, survives going thru the digestive tracts of animals, and survives composting, if I ever was going to use it, I'd definitely paint it on instead of spraying it.

I hope someone who had used it can tell you of it actually works. I have been disappointed in some herbicides in the past.

Dawn

Thanks for the heads up, Dawn. I planned to paint it on to reduce tainting anything else in the garden, Bermuda grass included.

Susan

Susan,

You're welcome. Believe me, I think there are times when Tordon is the only viable solution....we just have to be really careful when we use it.

I hope it works for you.

TV running rampant is not something you want to ignore for too long.

It would be fun to plant bermuda grass and TV together in a back corner and watch them slug it out for world domination. I am pretty sure the TV would shade out the bermuda grass but there's always a very slim chance the bermuda might choke out the TV.

Dawn

We had trumpet creepers at our old house, all along one fence & 50 feet up into the pecan tree. In the pic I attached, you can see just how high it climbed. Every spring, it would send out "runners" into my flower beds & I would go to war with it, trying to dig it out. Hah, what a wasteful endeavor that was! I think I broke 3 different digging tools in my attempts. It is beautiful & the hummingbirds always loved it, but I am kinda glad that our new place only has a very old grapevine along the back fence & climbing up a couple of trees. I don't miss those runners from the TV at all, they always drove me nuts!

I don't know what kind of herbicide to use, don't really have any experience with that. But Dawn is extremely knowledgeable & helpful, so I'd listen to her! :) Best of luck with it.

I successfully removed trumpet vine. Here is what I did.

Cut down to the ground.
Dig up all that you see.
Till near the roots.
Dig some more.
When new sprouts appear you get to dig some more roots up.

I m no longer physically able to do that much digging, but believe me if I was, I would be doing just that. Wonder if a jackhammer would work........hmmm.

Susan

I've know people who cut down the plants and dug the roots up every year for 10 years or more...about the time they finally thought they had found every last one, new plants would pop up 30' feet away. Wisteria can do the same sort of thing. Much depends on what sort of soil you have.It is a lot easier to dig it out of sandy loam than some other soils. It also depends on the trumpet creeper. It is easier to dig out 'Madam Galens', for example, than to dig out the native trumpet creeper. When we planted it, I made sure I bought and planted 'Madam Galens' and 'Flava'.

Digging and tilling can work if you like to dig and till repeatedly, but often doesn't work in compacted clay or caliche clay soils because you cannot get dig deeply enough to reach all the roots. Or, if you are not physically able to dig and rototill that much, then digging isn't a practical solution...like it isn't for people with bad backs. I dug out lots of stuff when I was younger that I just don't think I'd spend time digging out today. This likely explains why I have wild blackberries and wild grapes growing in the veggie garden where I did not plant them and don't especially want them.

Susan, A jackhammer? lol lol lol That might scare away the kitties, hummingbirds and butterflies, and the neighbors likely wouldn't love it either. I haven't tried 20% horticultural vinegar on Trumpet Creeper and wonder if it might work.

I think the most effective herbicide would be Tordon or something else labeled as a brush killer. The chemicals in brush killers are stronger than the standard homeowner type herbicides. We used some of the standard herbicides in a futile attempt to kill greenbrier and poison ivy when we bought this land in the 1990s. It was a total waste of time and effort. The poison ivy and greenbrier are still with us to this date, though I am pretty successful at keeping about 90% of the poison ivy out of the fenced veggie garden. It always lurks nearby in the adjacent woodland and attempts to creep into the garden in summer when it is so hot that I just venture into the garden to harvest and then run back to the air-conditioned house. I got the poison ivy out of the garden by digging it out every year, often multiple times per year. Luckily, the poison ivy is at the sandy end of the garden. If it was at the clay end, it would be there still.

Dawn

I guess I could be considered a young gun. But I was able to get it out year 1 with no return this year. I also have pretty compacted clay soil. You could always hire a young gun to try and remove as many roots as possible. Just a thought.