Sharing a personal experience unrelated to most of the preceding discussion.
I moved into a place about 2 and a half years ago that had a couple slopes below the yard where the previous owner had cut down the trees and shrubs to improve the view and just left it alone after that… which apparently gave a competitive advantage to the weeds by letting in light, because they were choked with nightshade vine and Virginia creeper. I’ve been working away at clearing the nightshade off part of it and managed to get some plums in on a small bench in the slope. The other part, with the Virginia creeper, is much much worse. My vision for that part of the slope is a couple terraces with raspberry and blueberry bushes, near the top; managed native shrubs below. I’m happy if it looks bushy, just want to get rid of the stupid vines. Any advice on fighting Virginia creeper?
I was able to kill separate plants with roundup. Just make it more concentrated , than suggested. I usually work with vine following way. I find a start of the vine(root), then start following the vine gently puling it from the ground up until I get to the end. Then do the same with all vines from the same root. Then I coil the free vine around the base spraying each layer with herbicide. Do it with all the vines I freed from the ground. This way I spend less of the herbicide than if I would follow each vine separately and damage less of the plants I do not want to spray. Unfortunately it works well only with single plants. If it would be a carpet of them, I would probably just spray whole thing.
Few updates on my progress.
I have met The Contractor today. He offered me to spray everything 6 times and said he will not send his crew into the brush without bobcat, and there is no access. I wondering, why he came at all? I described the whole setup very accurate in my request including no access part. And how exactly he was going to spray quarter of acre without walking it? Drone?
So I decided to spend couple more hours at the site today. Dressing technique from my last time proved working - long pants, high rubber boots, long sleeve shirt, nitrile gloves under regular working gloves, tape between gloves and sleeves and hat. Face and neck covered with IvyX per-exposure solution. An addition was a thick towel placed certain way so I can wipe my face without touching it with my hands or arms. Hope this was working today as well. Will know tomorrow! Pulled bittersweet, barberry, poison ivy, other weeds. Cleaned about 400 square ft. Was rewarded with interesting findings -6 high bush blueberries. No signs of berries though. They may be wild or planted and forgotten. Most likely wild, they do not look old. I am planning to keep them , but most likely will have to replant them to be more organized. I do not want to put them into the enclosure that I am going to build for honey berries until I see they worth it , so they will get a separate one if they are good. That’s the update for today.
Most tree species CAN be killed with girdling, but only if done at the right time and in the right place on the tree. Girdling must be done in mid-spring after the tree has leafed out. If it has not fully leafed out, there will still be reserves in the roots to push sprouts. If done in mid-summer or fall, the roots will already have stored reserves for winter. Girdling will still likely kill the tree, but the reserves mean the tree will sprout next spring. Where on the trunk? Must girdle below the lowest branch. Best results are from girdling less than four feet high on the stem. The advice above to girdle when the bark is slipping is very close, but please make sure the tree is fully leafed out first.
There are a couple of species specifics that have to be dealt with. Sweet gum can be killed with girdling, but it has a built in girdling defense. When you girdle a sweet gum, the top of the tree will send live cambium cells in sap that flow down the wood stem and re-establish connection between tree top and roots. The way to avoid this with sweet gum and similar species is to use a hatchet to chop the girdle at least 8 inches high. Fully remove the bark, then use the hatchet to chop down at an angle leaving chips of wood protruding from the tree stem. The chips prevent sap from flowing downward and making a capillary bridge.
I’ve tried to kill a lot of different types of plants with glyphosate and found it to be ineffective on woody stem species. Sweet gum for example may be severely burned but will recover in a couple of months. There are two ways to deal with this, either spray multiple times with glyphosate until the tree/shrub/bush is completely black dead or use a tank mix of glyphosate and triclopyr.
How do you mix glyphosate and triclopyr? There is a formula you can dig up online that gives directions for calculating amount of active ingredient to reach the proper concentration. It is not necessary to get it exact. A mix of 3 parts glyphosate with 2 parts triclopyr will kill most plant species. If spraying heavy woody brush, reverse the ratio with 3 parts triclopyr and 2 parts glyphosate. I’ve been mixing 10 ounces of glyphosate and 7 ounces of triclopyr to spray an area with thousands of sweet gum sprouts (along with grass and annuals like aster and goldenrod). I am using a 3 gallon hand sprayer. I had to spot re-spray after 3 weeks to wipe out some of the more tolerant sweet gum trees. These trees were all less than 8 feet tall, most in the 2 to 3 foot range.
@galinas … the best time to tackle clearing land of brush and vines including PI would be winter… when dormant.
Yes you can still get PI in winter if you handle the vines… directly with contact to your skin… like a bare hand… but in the summer when PI is flourishing… you are much more likely to get it… it is just raging more… has all those leaves and at times berries… much more likely to have some accidental exposure to some part of it in summer than winter.
In winter… it is much more comfortable to be clothed in multiple layers, long sleves, gloves… perhaps a toboggan with eyeholes.
Here in the summer… like now it would be miserable trying to clear land… and if you spend a few hours in the woods here in the summer… you are going to get plenty of ticks and chiggars too.
I have some land to clear here for a new home build… but i will wait until perhaps early November… to get started on it… and will work thru the winter on it.
My spot has lots of young hardwood timber on it… oaks and hickory mostly… and it is best to process those for firewood late fall and winter.
Yes, I am aware of it! But then, first, I will loose a season, and second, the bittersweet that got crazy over warm winter and rainy summer will get even more out of hands… Unfortunately the easiest way not always the ideal way.
@BlueBerry , the area you sprayed with Crossbow, what are you going to do with it? If planting, when you feel it is safe to do so? And another question. When you spray thick brush and see in some time that whatever you sprayed is dead, how soon after that you can start clearing the land? In other words, when what seems to be dead is dead for sure and pulling the plants will not leave alive side roots in the ground? I am very sure I have a lot of bitter sweet seeds in the soil and I do not want them to hide under the remains of the brush when they germinate, so earlier I clear the land easier will be to maintain it.
Bittersweet seeds hiding in the brush? I’d be just as concerned about the ones the birds are going to distribute in September or October later this fall.
I plan to plant the area I sprayed with shade loving and partial shade perennials…probably in October, but I’ve not scheduled a definite date. I’m probably 70 or 80 % sure that it’s going to be ok to plant by then. If in no rush, next spring would be closer to 100% safe.
Per your concerns, things like poison ivy stems and roots may contain sap that can give you a bad rash for at least a month or more after the stuff is apparently dead.
I actually plan to spray 2. 4-D on the euonymous that the Crossbow didn’t completely kill.
Perhaps this week.
Those, if they grow on clear land I can easily spot and pull. If they sprout under the brash and grew significant root mass I will have to start over again. This exactly why I am first just pulling derbies, let it regrow near ground and then spray. But I have few spots where to follow this technique is somewhat difficult.
I was gonna say, glyphosate alone is bad at killing stuff as hardy as bitttersweet.
When it comes to complete removal I’m not sure what to say…normally brush hogging the stuff chops it up fine enough that it rots but the area’s equipment inacessible.
Today’s update . I thought the poison ivy is the worst until I started to work with bittersweet. The bittersweet seams just kiddie toys now compared to the wild grapes in-tangled with barberry bushes. Today’s discovery was not as encouraging as the last one. I found three huge boulders hiding under the brush right where I was envisioning first row of honey berries. Sure thing, the glacier decided to leave it on the most sunny spot of my project area… It would be a nice decorative spot, though I am not sure about deer and birds decorative preferences. I may actually need to build several enclosures or may be to have one, but irregular shape, to avoid the rocks.
When you say no equipment i’m assuming you know lawn mowers , 4 wheelers etc are about the width of a human. I would figure out how to get equipment in there. At a minimum think gas powered weed eater with metal blade and a chainsaw. I’m not above dropping trees across a creek or rope bridges.
All you can bring there is a hand held trimmer. Lawn mower, may be, but it wouldn’t help. Here are some pictures that explain…
The way down from “main land”. This is not soil, it is 40 years of composted leaves and grass. Blackberries along the way.
The ladder up is really dangerous. I understand, that the proper course of action is to make stable bridge and stairs first. But that would move my project in queue to 226th position, and I am not in agreement with that. If it would be possible to build the bridge on the top level shore to shore, so we can drive a bobcat through, I would make my husband to set a priority on the bridge project. But it is simply not possible. The shore of the main land side is compost, nothing to hold on to.
Way back, up to the main land. See, how steep it actually is. I think we have to build some stairs here too, otherwise we will end up at the creek some day sliding down.
He offered me to spray everything 6 times and said he will not send his crew into the brush without bobcat, and there is no access. I wondering, why he came at all? I described the whole setup very accurate in my request including no access part. And how exactly he was going to spray quarter of acre without walking it? Drone? 
. I thought the poison ivy is the worst until I started to work with bittersweet. The bittersweet seams just kiddie toys now compared to the wild grapes in-tangled with barberry bushes. Today’s discovery was not as encouraging as the last one. I found three huge boulders hiding under the brush right where I was envisioning first row of honey berries. Sure thing, the glacier decided to leave it on the most sunny spot of my project area… It would be a nice decorative spot, though I am not sure about deer and birds decorative preferences. 
