LESLIE: Alright. Jessica in New York, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
JESSICA: Hello. Well, I have two problems. And my first one is that I have a back deck like probably a lot of people do. And it’s just maybe 5 or 6 feet wide and then it goes the length of the house. And it’s got a roof over it and it’s just real standard and it’s probably a couple steps down to the ground.
Well, underneath, every year, for some reason trees start growing underneath the deck: small saplings.
TOM: OK. OK.
JESSICA: So my husband has to crawl under there with a Sawzall and cut them down. And there’s plants and ferns and these insane climbing vines that come out of it. And I don’t know where they’re coming from, first of all, like how are they growing in the dark? But second, how can I stop them?
TOM: Well, here’s what you want to do. Very simple. There’s a product called Roundup. Are you familiar with this?
JESSICA: Yes but it’s super-bad for the environment and I have dogs and …
TOM: Oh, come on. It’s not that terrible.
LESLIE: Tom.
TOM: It’s not that terrible. If you’ve just got one thing that’s coming up, like one little section of fern or something like that, you can take a funnel and you can cover the plant with the funnel and then squirt the Roundup down through the top of that – the narrow end of the funnel – and you kind of create a little way that sort of keeps that chemical just on that plant.
But if you spray them down with the Roundup, then it’s going to go down to the roots. It’s going to kill them at the roots and they won’t come back. So that’s going to be a lot easier than having your poor husband go down there every year to chop down your mini-forest.
JESSICA: Agree. OK. Well, thank you.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
You were helpful, we had a 25 ft pussywillow tree next to our deck (2 1/2 ft off the ground) the deck is & a tropical storm knocked it down , it has been cut, but the root system is under the deck & part of the trunk , is out & has given 15 branches 4 to 5 ‘ already, we need to kill the root system, since it has raised the deck off the support beams, I will spray it with roundup, as u suggested, is this still the best way to solve my problem?