Gardeners tend to remember days, months and years by certain significant events and conditions. Right now, too many people in the western United States are sweating through The Year of No Rain. Five years ago, many of us who grow hydrangeas in the northeastern part of the country went through a couple of late spring frosts that led to The Year of No Hydrangeas. Not so long ago, vegetable gardeners agonized over The Year of Rotten Tomatoes, when blossom-end rot did a number on backyard tomato production.
The memories aren’t all bad. About every five or six years, I experience The Year of Gorgeous Roses, when the rain comes at just the right times, the sun is abundant and the Japanese beetles and aphids seem to be nonexistent. The word “halcyon” is made for times like that.
This year is unquestionably The Year of the Vines in my part of the world. Every day when I take stock of the weeds competing for space in my beds and borders I see them—spiraling tendrils of porcelain berry, wild grape, oriental bittersweet, sweet autumn clematis and poison ivy. My yard is not unique in this respect. On my daily walks I see those same vines springing up in expensively tended spaces as well as neglected areas like railroad rights of way.
That fact helps to assuage any guilt I might have over my vine-infested property, but it does not make the situation any more bearable.
Why is this happening? Is it due to COVID, climate change, or some other large-scale event or combination of events? These vines have always been with us, but they are much, much worse this year. Frustration is as rampant as the vines themselves.
Back in 2006, much was made of a Duke University study that suggested that rising carbon dioxide levels resulted in bigger, more vigorous poison ivy plants with increased levels of urushiol, the chemical compound that causes itchy reactions in many of us. Vigor means that those plants produce more berries, which are then eaten by birds and spread around. Climate change is visiting all gardens, and it is certainly possible that increased carbon dioxide levels have also increased the amount of poison ivy.
This brings us to a discussion of birds. I am an organic gardener and my yard is very bird-friendly. I glory in the birds’ colors, songs, and nesting habits. But while all of that is going on, they also eat and excrete steadily. All of the troublesome vines produce berries in abundance, and many of those berries are undoubtedly “planted” by my backyard birds in the course of doing their business. I would never do anything to diminish the bird population, so the unintended consequences of that “business” are bound to keep happening.
I have gotten used to pulling up the oak and chestnut seedlings resulting from “squirrel landscaping”, and I like birds a lot more than I like squirrels. Some amount of tolerance may be necessary.
Rich garden soil also helps the vines, which love to insinuate themselves in large established clumps of plants like iris and aster. The clumps hide the young vines until they get so big that they scale the desirable plants’ tallest stems and emerge to wave above them. At that point it is much harder to disentangle the vines from the ornamentals and ferret out the vines’ roots.
So what is the solution? The easiest way is make sure that those vines do not live long enough to produce berries. That means vigilance, because all of them grow rapidly. Get to know the leaves. Wild grape leaves look like smaller versions of domestic grape leaves. Porcelain berry leaves look like deeply dissected grape leaves—and are rather attractive when all is said and done. Oriental bittersweet has medium-size rounded leaves and sweet autumn clematis features leaves that resemble elongated hearts on particularly sturdy vines. Everyone should be able to identify poison ivy, but remember that if you see a vine with three-leafed clusters, stay away. Think of the mnemonic that many of us learned as children—“leaves three, let them be.”
Wear gloves when you pull out any of the vines, but be especially careful of poison ivy.
Some plant vendors actually sell porcelain berry or Ampelopsis glandulosa var. brevipeduncularis, as well as sweet autumn clematis, known botanically as Clematis terniflora. Bittersweet is also available, especially for fall decorations. Celastus orbiculatus is its Latin name. Don’t grow it or use it. If you want to grow something similarly showy for fall, choose American bittersweet or Celastus scandens. It is less invasive.
Of course, even if you nip all the invasive vines on your property before they produce fruit, you are still going to contend with them next year. Birds do not observe property lines, after all. The seeds have a propensity for landing in hedges, especially those that are only fittingly tended and not well mulched. By the time hedge owners recognize the problem, the vines are already out of hand.
But don’t be discouraged by The Year of the Vines, because Nature always hands out compensations. Next year may be The Year of the Giant Pepper Plants.