Getting rid of evil brambles!

Hello fellow gardeners!
Haven't posted for a while. We moved house last September, from a two-bedroom terrace, (where I kept all my plants in pots) to a much bigger house with a LOT more garden (front and back)!
I haven't really done any gardening yet, as we moved just before autumn set in, and I want to give it a year to see what treasures might be hiding in the garden before I decide what to do with it.
However, today I tackled some of the obvious problems... Namely, one very overgrown tree/shrub (not sure what it was, I only know it had started life as a feature in what was once a Japanese garden, and it had taken over everything else). I've hacked that right back to the roots.
And the second obvious problem... BRAMBLES! They are EVIL! They appear to be the variety that sends out stems that root at both ends, and they've taken over a good portion of the garden.
Any tips for getting rid of these vile demons?
I will video a walk-through of the garden next time we have a nice day, and post a link to it. Any suggestions for the ultimate transformation of the garden will be appreciated!
Hope everyone is well. x

 

Like all wild brambles then. That's how they propagate themselves. The stems head out and root when they come into contact with soil.

They're not evil. They're just in the wrong place. I'd just spray them with glyphosate based herbicide, like roundup. You can get the concentrate and mix it up in a watering can, then just water it on (assuming there's nothing growing among it that you want to keep). Then give it a couple of weeks to turn yellow, then brown. Then about 4 weeks later do it again. Once it looks like it's all dead, cut it down to just a couple of inches or so of growth, wait a couple of weeks to see if it puts on any new growth, spray again, and repeat as necessary every 2 or 3 weeks until it stops coming back.

 

I had some brambles on my plot, they had sent out shoots that rooted about 6 feet away. I sprayed with round up to not much effect, sprayed them again 2 weeks later and they still didn't die off. In the end, I cut both ends of the stem by the roots and dug them out, I've left some by the fence in a corner and have started to train them up it, cut back to a foot by (what looks like) a healthy shoot

 

I've had some success using SBK (scrub and brushwood killer), kills most things but not grass.

 

From experience of dealing with many bramble infestations, have a personal method for wiping them out, but there are lots of ways to get rid of them and everybody has a different approach.

At this time of year, many brambles still have last year's leaves/foliage and will be budding up nicely and burst out with magnificent new leaves soon . The old leaves will be far less likely to absorb weedkiller and will mostly wither away or fall off soon.

For me, Weedkiller is the final approach in big infestations if the brambles are growing in lawns or amongst shrubs, trees etc as you could end up killing plants you don't want to. It takes a lot of 'elbow grease' but I cut them down to about 2ft high, so they are still visible and won't cut you to ribbons.... but high enough to pull stems (wearing leather gardening gloves) - when it comes to removing them.

Using a strong garden fork (NEVER a spade!), I dig up as much of the roots out as possible. Fragments will break off, go under shrubs etc and often run under customers' neighbours' fences, so will come inevitably come back but the main objective is to remove as much of the roots as possible as they are seriously tough and and incredibly resilient.

If new shoots appear, they are left to produce new leaves, then are sprayed with a seriously strong Glyphosate mix (or a selective weedkiller in lawns) or given a tickle with the paintbrush and nitrile glove treatment involving a nice dose of Clinic Ace.

 

I've never found brambles to reappear from broken off roots, they can only be regrown from left pieces of stem with roots attached.
So, after cutting back as @Mowerman says, if you are not afraid of a bit of digging, I'd just dig them out, but you need to watch afterwards as seedlings will return if left to get on with it.

 

@pete -many thanks for the mention and your backup on digging the damn things out

Trust me mate, bramble root fragments can regenerate new growth. Although they're not rhizomous in the sense that Ground elder, Couch grass, Nettles etc are, small fragments of root left behind can regenerate to form new foliage, somewhat akin to Dandelions.

There are around 300 species and sub-species of Bramble in the UK and each has its own unique qualities. They're somewhat of a freak of nature in the sense that that some species have evolved to enable themeselves to double or even treble the chromosomes in their DNA, leading to vast variations, so what occurrs underground may differ from region to region.

Have had regrowth from stubborn roots many times and spraying or the rubber glove & paint brush treatment seems the only way to finish 'em off for good.

 

On the ones I can't easily dig out I've found that the SBK scrub and brushwood killer works pretty well.

 

Unfortunately, they are intermingled with all sorts of potentially charming plants that I don't really want to kill in the process. For now, all I've done is cut back as many as I can, as close to the ground as possible, in order to make the areas they've grown accessible. They have ripped me to shreds, they seem pretty evil to me.
I haven't tried weed-killer etc as yet. Now that the garden is slightly more accessible I'll tackle them using a variety of the above methods, but it will be difficult because they're not concentrated in one area, they're all over the place.
Before I do anything else though, I need to buy myself some bramble-proof clothing and gloves.

 

It may be that the other plants aren't worth saving, but I want to wait until summer to see what they are. I suppose it would make life easier if it turns out there's nothing worth preserving, but I don't want to commit wholesale herbicide against all the vegetation until I know what the garden has to offer. I'll do the video soon and post that, perhaps someone will have an idea whether it's worth saving the surrounding plants, or not...