| Thanks so much for all of the replies, especially Newt, I wish I had seen that Honeysuckle popper earlier.
Anyhoo, good news. I guess I over-reacted a bit. The area is kind of an L shape, about 200 feet long total. It is a steep hill going from about 25 feet down to 10 feet. Only about 80 linear feet had the bad roots, w/ about 50 of that being really bad. The rest was fine and all of the roots I saw were just cut up stuff from removing the bush. Guess I should have actually checked the entire area before flipping out.
I hired 2 day laborers today and gave them some picks, shovels and axes and they managed to get about 90% of the roots and junk out. They made 4 giant piles, it was amazing how much root material there was underground and how much they were able to get out.
So I think the area is going to be managable now. If I put some of that garden fabric or weed barrier down over the areas that we couldn't get the roots out of, and then put soil over the top of it, that will prevent that stuff from trying to grow back, right? Since it is now just some small spots, this sounds like a good solution, if it will work. I would rather not use chemicals because I don't want to ruin the soil for other plants. I'm not against chemicals as a whole, I just don't want to kill everything. Since the branches are only say, 2-3 inches in diameter at the most, drilling them out and injecting chems isn't really an option.
Thanks again!!  |