Gardening and Horticulture - morning glory war zone!

We have some morning glory vines growing into a plastic drain pipe right near where we pulled out a set of 'em. The drain pipe goes diagonally into the ground on our hillside and runs 50' downhill from there. We aren't able to pull the vines out by hand from the top end. Don't believe they're coming out @ bottom, guessing they go in 10' or so. These are coming from a pretty significant former set of vines we had trained over a gazebo (but took out 3 months ago).

Suggestions for getting rid of 'em? Thought about

1. duct taping the pipe to block out the sun

2. cutting into the pipe 15' down the hill, to sever the vines at that point, and then reconnect the pipe w/a fitter.

3. (your idea here!)

Appreciate any tips,
Michael in CA

You can kill them out with Round Up.

You can kill them out with Round Up.

right, but in this case it's just the root / vine, w/no leaves and very little sun reaching it. i thought roundup works by sun hitting leaves and carrying it in that way, no?

Round Up prohibits plants from developing an enzyme necessary for producing proteins necessary for growth. Round Up will kill just about any plant so avoid overspray on nearby plants.

I, too, always thought Round-up worked by the leaves absorbing the chemical.

But, I don't think they're morning glories. Morning glories come back every year because they reseed themselves. How do you know they are still growing?

I'm also wondering if these are actually morning glory. Here's an idea that worked for me with Campsis radicans - trumpet vine.

When I moved into this house 16 years ago as a renter, I inherited a trumpet vine - campsis radicans. I have learned that it was the last plant to leaf out in the spring and the first to lose it's leaves in the fall. Here's my horror story and what I've learned about this vine. Over time the vine began to bloom and pop up everywhere in the yard. I would pull the sprouts only to find more year after year. When it pops up in the lawn it can just be mowed. After 13 years we purchased the house and had to cut down 5 trees and regrade the land due to overplanting and flooding. When we dug up the stumps from the trees and regraded we discovered roots of the vine 3' to 4' deep in the soil, up to 30' from the parent plant and as large around as my wrist! We dug and dug and, well you get the point. A year later we still had sprouts coming up from bits of roots that we'd missed.

Here is how I've learned you can get rid of it. Now, up until this point I had NEVER used herbicides or pesticides in the garden. Here's what I did and you can do to get rid of it. Put about an inch of Round Up Weed and Grass Killer Super Concentrate (you could also use Brush B Gone) in a clear plastic container with a tight fitting lid like you might get at the deli with potato salad. Cut a slit in the lid and insert the tips of the vine in the solution when in active growth (has leaves on it and the leaves need to be in the solution). Leave the vines in the solution for 48 hours and then cut the vines near the lid. To remove the vine from the lid, be sure and take the container to a safe place so that no solution splashes on anything precious. You can reuse the solution until it is all absorbed. Everytime I find a new sprout I do this same procedure. So far there have been no sprouts from areas that were treated this way.

Good luck!
Newt