Clearing the Jungle – Day Two

2006.08.04

This morning I started hacking away at the jungle again.  Nate came by to help.  We determined that the most effective approach was to hack into the tangled mess with the rake and hoe, and keep pulling until we had a big glob of it that we kept rolling back towards us and out to the driveway.  After about an hour’s work, we actually had most of it cleared out.

Note that the vinyl siding only goes about halfway down, and then the old wood siding is exposed below that.  I guess they ran out of siding?  Nice job, guys.

Hacking away at the tangled vines and weeds with a hoe
Most of the brush has been cleared out

I hopped over the chain link fence and we worked from both sides to pull down the vines that had grown along the fence, mostly at the top.  Working along the fence and around the corner took another hour.

View from apartment complex looking back at west wall of garage
The aftermath of clearing brush behind the garage and on the fence

What a huge pile of brush and debris!  Somehow we managed to fit it all in Nate’s truck.

Brush and debris pile from behind the garage
Brush and debris in Nate's truck

By the way, all those rambling vines, some of them an inch in diameter, and we only saw about five pitiful-looking berries.

We drove up to Pacific Land Clearing and Recycling, off of Marine Drive.  They accept brush and weeds for $38 per ton, with a $10 minimum.  I was happy to pay ten bucks to get rid of the stuff.  There were huge piles of various materials as we drove through to the area where we could dump the weeds.  The one that amazed us the most was the asphalt shingles from roofing jobs.

Backing up to unload weeds and brush
Mountain of asphalt shingles

We ate lunch and then Nate took off.  I swept up what was left on the driveway, and then got ready for the next step.  Earlier we’d taken a break and gone to Lowes, where among other things I bought some brush killer.  I always feel bad about using toxic chemicals… but I gotta get rid of this stuff.  The active ingredient in this product is triclopyr (compare to glyphosate in the ever-popular Roundup products).  Even with the herbicide, it sounds like it will take multiple applications and continually chopping the blackberry vines down to the ground.  But eventually, it will kill them off.  So they claim.  I hope.

Evil brush killer to combat evil blackberry vines

The effectiveness of the herbicide appears to hinge on the time of year that it is applied.  The herbicide needs to be introduced into the plant at a time when plant sugars are being transported from the leaves and stems down into the rhizomes, rather than a time when energy is being transported from the rhizomes up to new growth.  But the timing can vary depending on whether you are dealing with first-year plants or more mature plants.  At any rate, mid summer to early fall seems to be the appropriate range.  I will probably spray another round or two over the next couple months.

2006.08.07

A related issue to the blackberry jungle is the appearance of some water in the garage during rainstorms, and evidence of carpenter ants along the sill plates.  I have not been able to determine if there is current activity, but there’s certainly a lot of frass (like sawdust) in a couple places, and elsewhere the sills look like they might have some dry rot.  This all seems to stem from the fact that the ground outside the garage (along the two back sides that I have just now been able to access) is up at the level of the sill plates.  That and the sill plate is directly exposed to the outside…?!

Garage sill with frass from carpenter ants
Garage sill plate exposed to outside, near ground level, with wood siding above

So what I really need to do after/along with getting rid of the blackberries and other weeds, is to excavate all along there, probably put in a low (say 6–12 inches) retaining wall next to the fence, and lay in some gravel for drainage, keeping it below the top of the concrete stemwall.

Then, I may need to jack up the garage walls in a few places and replace sections of the sill plates with pressure-treated 2x6’s.

While clearing out the brush, I also noted two or three holes in the ground along the garage foundation, about three or four inches in diameter.  Rats perhaps?  Great.  I read that they like blackberry brambles for food and cover, so it’s a possibility.

Probable rat hole next to garage foundation
Looking east along south wall of garage

I’ve thought about extending the cedar fence along to the corner of the property, but that’s expensive for a fence I’ll hardly even see.  I’ve thought about building a trellis and planting some kind of spreading but easily-controllable vines.  The apartment complex had some landscapers come in about a year ago and plant the arborvitae on their side of the chain link fence (which belongs to the apartments).  According to sources on the internet, they can grow anywhere from six inches to three feet per year.  I suspect these will grow about a foot per year, so it’s going to take a while for them to fill in and really provide a screen.  Maybe I shouldn’t bother doing anything.