You will need the following tools:

• Pruners/Snippers/Secatures – whatever you want to call them
• A small hand axe (if the base of the ivy is trunk-like)
• A small claw hammer
• Kerosene (2 litres)
• Glysophate (250ml)
• 5 litre spray bottle
• Gloves
• Mask
• Goggles

1. Pull down as much ivy as possible with your bare hands (put the gloves on first though!). Be careful because bits of the house will come off with the ivy, and there is a lot of dust that collects in that ivy, particularly if your ivy is dense (like ours, 12 inches deep in some areas!). Goggles or sunglasses is an absolute must for this job.
2. Take the secatures and starting at the base snip the smaller ‘tentacles’ off from the main trunk of the ivy. Continue doing this until you have snipped off all the shoots. Be careful of wires. We had an earth wire coming from the house down into the ground that we made sure to avoid cutting!
3. Make the poison concoction by mixing the Kerosene with the glysophate. Be sure to follow the instructions on the glysophate pack carefully.

4. 

   Mixing the poison

5. Take the axe and hack into the trunks. You want to make brand new cuts into the big trunks that are supplying the smaller tentacles.
6. As soon as you have hacked into the trunk spray some of the poison mixture onto the new cut. Soak it well. The reason for spraying it straight away after you have hacked into the trunk is because when the trunk knows that it has been cut, it will go into ‘survival’ mode by sucking its juices back into itself. By spraying the poison onto the cut immediately, the plant will suck the poison down with it. Good thinking huh?
7. Do a general spray of the ground around the base of the ivy just to make sure that any little shoots coming off are pretty much dead.
8. Before you start taking down the ivy, check the weather forecast to make sure that it won’t rain within 4 to 6 hours of spraying the poison onto the ivy. If it rains, its likely that the poison will be washed off. You need the poison to dry on the plant for it to be effective.
9. If the trunk starts shooting up new sprouts, spray more poison in it immediately. Each time new sprouts come up, spray it. If you keep doing this each time, to should die completely eventually!
10. Don’t clean out the spray bottle in the kitchen sink. It’ll stink the house out for days (yes one of us did this and it wasn’t me – all that space in the backyard and he chose to wash the poison bottle out in the kitchen sink … J )