Tell me how to keep from getting ate up with poison ivy everytime I walk through it please.

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Since it is your property kill the stuff in the winter. Do you have the vines going up tree trunks? Cut them. I have to segregate out certain clothes items or others will get symptoms via washing machine. May be no answer for post 1. I have learned when need for warm water rinse approaches.
 
pyrethren on the bottom of your pants if its chiggers for sure! Just dont soak it on your skin...soak or spray your bottoms and boots with it and no bugs will getcha!
 
Since it is your property kill the stuff in the winter. Do you have the vines going up tree trunks? Cut them. I have to segregate out certain clothes items or others will get symptoms via washing machine. May be no answer for post 1. I have learned when need for warm water rinse approaches.
I just got my six foot pole saw I'm fixing to cut a bunch of vines and be very very careful about it.
 
I'm very allergic to poison oak. The active ingredient "poison" in both poison ivy and poison oak is the same. We have tons of PO on our land. The best thing I've found when working on it is to not work for more than two hours. Finish up, go in the house and immediately remove all clothing and put it in the washing machine. Get in the shower with a washcloth and a bottle of Dawn dish soap. Scrub everywhere that wasn't well hidden under clothes throughly three times. Use lots of dish soap. The washcloth goes into the washing pile when you're done. Clean your tools later, carefully, and throughly wash any body parts that touched them.

If you don't already know how to recognize PO/PI when the leaves are off, learn how. This time of year when the PO's lost its leaves is the best time to cut it. The stems contain the "poison" too but without the leaves there's less plant to get it on you.

I've found that the best way to kill PO is to spray about 18" of the trunk with a solution of 25% Garlon 4 in diesel or horticultural oil. It only works when the plant is actively growing. For PO at our latitude and elevation that's late spring to mid summer. It does not take much and kills the plant dead in 4-6 weeks. The diesel or oil helps the Garlon stick on the bark so it can get absorbed by the plant. You can spray the foliage with 1-2% Garlon 4 but that only kills the leaves you spray. If you miss one leaf the plant will survive and sprout new leaves. However sometimes it's impossible to get to the trunk so foliar application is all you can do.

Kill the plant before you cut it. If you cut a live plant it won't die. It'll come back like a zombie.
 
^if this works, this is the best post on the internet that I've ever seen on the subject.

I'm going to try this for killing it.

As for the 2 hours time limit, I've learned this the hard way.
 
There's a vaccine for poison ivy being developed called PDC-APB. Its in phase I so its like 4-6 years out from being released (assuming it doesn't end up causing some weird side effects in its trials).... something to look forward to, I guess.

I read about it one time when I was nearly laid up for a week with poison ivy all over, after I saw some poison ivy while weedwhacking and said **** it I'll just hit it and just wash up good when I'm done trimming. so anyways, weedwhacking is pretty much the dumbest way to get rid of it.

Turns out there aren't really any animals at all that get poison ivy so the first step to developing drugs for it was to figure out how to give mice poison ivy. Since animals don't get it, its not a defense mechanism for the plant. Urusiol is just some molecule that humans happen to be insanely allergic to.
 
Long pants, long socks, and tall boots laced all the way up doesn't seem to offer enough protection for even a short walk through a little of the stuff. I have some areas of my property that me and the wife feel the need to traverse through occasionally, and although my outbreaks are very minor and minimal, I'm still really scared of the stuff because some poison oak did me in for about 3 weeks earlier this year.

Does barrier cream work? I'll walk through the stuff and then wash with Dawn soap a couple hours later, but I still get the little bumps on my lower legs. Like I said, nothing near as bad as poison oak, but I want to be able to walk through the stuff with impunity.

Any tips?
 
Try Tec-nu that sell it everywhere shower in cool water wash with dawn and a wash rag then put the Tec-nu on let it set for a minute or two rinse you will not brake out works wonders for me I get it super easy, hope this helps
 

Latest posts

Back
Top