Garden Sweet Garden: Poison Ivy

"What beautiful green foliage you have…….. the better to itch you with!"

This, is my first encounter with the dreaded poison ivy (Begin Bach's Tocatta Fugue in D minor). I may have come across it in my years of being in the woods, but this year is the first year it really GOT me! While weeding around our willow tree, which we now know was covered in Poison Ivy, I yanked pulled, and touched every part of the plant. A few little blisters showed up but I associated them with bug bites. Little did I know. While at work a patient said to me "oh, how did you get the poison ivy?" I was in denial!!!!! The itch had been bothering me and a rash covering most of my inner arms, then my hips, belly and back of my legs. Luckily i went to the Dr. right away and got a prescription for prednisone which probably kept it down. It still took a full 4 weeks for the rash to go away even after starting the prednisone within 7 days. My advice if you happen to encounter this plant are these things:

1 .Wash right away with Tecnu (originally developed for nuclear fallout! what does that tell you about Poison Ivy!!!!)

2. If you start getting a rash and it seems to cover most of your body, just go to the doctor right away and get some prednisone so it doesn't progress too far

3. Calamine lotion is pretty but doesn't work. Get yourself a tube of Ivyrest it is fantastic! It makes the itch stop and cools and soothes.

4. If the itch persists. Make an oatmeal bath. Take some plain old oatmeal, grind it in a food processor and stuff it in a sock. Throw the sock in a tub of water (i did hot water) and mush it around so it starts making a nice oatmeal milk. I got in the water and also rubbed the sock filled with oatmeal all over. This is good even if you don't have poison ivy!!!!! It's also less expensive than buying those packets of oatmeal bath in the store!

5. Buy some poison to kill the Ivy. I used Roundup specifically for poison ivy. Only had to use a tiny amount on a very small portion of each plant and it all died. The container of roundup is still pretty full so i'll be able to attack it again in the spring if it persists. My yard is about 3/4 of an acre and it was fairly covered in poison ivy once i started looking. The Roundup went a long way.

Here are some of my photos of poison Ivy from my back yard.

The poison ivy is that with three leaves noted at the top of the picture. There was also a vine of Virginia Creeper mixed with this, you can see that at the bottom of the photo with 5 leaves.