Keeping my ground cover planting free of unwanted vines and weeds

Question

Every year I have to wade into a steeply sloped tree lawn beside my driveway that is planted in Myrtle and Pacasandra to remove wild blackberry vines, a very long vined weed (maybe Creeping Charlie - not sure what it is) and other weeds and vines including poison ivy. This is very time consuming and difficult to do. Is there a way of controlling the unwanted vegetation and not killing my ground cover?

Answer 1

Unfortunately my solution is a lot of work. Here is what you could do:

• remove the weeds in the spring
• cut back what you want to keep, depending on the density of planting you may have to remove some of the desired groundcover
• lay a high quality geotextile/landscape fabric. Cut X's in the fabric when it is over a plant you want and push the fabric down to the ground to expose the plant
• cover with a mulch that does not encourage weeds like pine needles and does not slump on a slope. Pea stone or mulch do not work: stones move downhill and mulch allows tough weeds to root