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Graney · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 81 Location: East Clare

Now I quite like bramble jelly ... particularly because, apart from the sugar and the gas, you can make it for free.

But why, oh why, do they have to grow on such a nasty, invasive plant?

For the last couple of years, we've been watching our meadow disappear before our eyes .... and our hedgerows have got wider and wider. And we've snipped and clipped and pulled and chopped, but it seems to make no difference to the onward march of the dreaded bramble.

So this winter we've decided we're going to really attack it and we've been cutting it back and clearing and cutting some more and clearing again until we've got right back to the original hedge line.

About 50 yards of boundary done so far ... only another 500 to go!

Has anyone found a less painful way of getting on top of brambles ? .....PLEASE

quarryman · Joined: 14 Dec 2006 Posts: 417 Location: Sligo

dara · Joined: 01 Aug 2007 Posts: 186 Location: Mayo

Sheep and particularly goats will keep brambles from spreading. They both like the leaves and buds but you'll have to hack back the old growth or the sheep will get stuck in them. A friend of mine has two castrated billys that he uses to control all sorts of weed pests very successfully. He tethers them and moves them up and down the ditches.

Graney · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 81 Location: East Clare

A JCB's fine if you've not got to work round obstructions like trees and fences. An area was 'cleared' by machine a couple of years ago, but it seems to be worse than ever now.

We had thought of trying to use sheep or goats. This is probably straying into the area of animal husbandry, which is not really the subject of this area of the site, but our concern was containing the animals. The brambles, along with blackthorn, elder, ash and hawthorn, form the barrier to our land. Aren't the sheep, and particularly goats, going to eat their way to freedom? Sorry, it sounds like a naive question, but it's a genuine one.

Would we need to put a fence inside the natural barrier so they only ate what came through it?

dara · Joined: 01 Aug 2007 Posts: 186 Location: Mayo

Like I said you could tether a goat or two.
If you ran a mainline between a couple of posts you could attach another shorter line to this so that it could run freely up and down the main line - the other end attach to your goat and he could work away, up and down the boundary, for a week or so before you'd have to move him on. You'd have to keep an eye on it but I've seen it done with horses on road verges and they didn't seem to get tangled. When your goats done the job have a curry.

Graney · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 81 Location: East Clare

Thanks Dara. Sounds like a good plan.

Not sure about the curry at the end though Shocked

Fortunately, we've got so much bramble infested boundary I think it would be like painting the Forth Bridge .... the job would never be done Wink

dara · Joined: 01 Aug 2007 Posts: 186 Location: Mayo

The best curry I ever had was goat in a pakistani 'cafe' in Jeddah - delicious.
A mess of briars is nothing to a goat but if it's any consolation you must have good land.