Why can't kudzu stop growing?

is there anyway to stop kudzu from growing?

Why can't kudzu stop growing?
Kudzu is sometimes referred to as "the plant that ate the South", a reference to how kudzu's explosive growth has been most prolific in the southeastern United States due to nearly ideal growing conditions.





Significant sums of money and effort are spent each growing season to prevent kudzu from taking over roads, bridges, power lines, and local vegetation.








For successful long-term control of kudzu, the entire root system must be destroyed.





If any root crowns remain, the plant will grow back. Mechanical methods involve cutting vines just below the ground then destroying all cut material.





Close mowing every month, regular heavy grazing for many successive years, or repeated cultivation may be effective.





If done in the spring, cutting must be repeated as regrowth appears to exhaust the plant's stored carbohydrate reserves.





Cut kudzu can be fed to livestock, burned, composted, or enclosed in plastic bags and sent to a landfill.





Late-season cutting should be followed up with immediate application of a systemic herbicide to the cut stems, to encourage transport of the herbicide into the root system. Repeated applications of several soil-active herbicides have been used effectively on large infestations in forestry situations.








Efforts are being organized by the U.S. Forest Service to search for biological control agents for kudzu, and a particular fungus is currently in testing.





The city of Chattanooga, Tennessee has undertaken a trial program using goats and llamas that graze on the plant.





Currently the goats are grazing along the Missionary Ridge area in the east of the city.
Reply:Kudzu is an invader to your ecosystem. There is no natural method to keep it in check. You'll have to use chemicals or uproot it yourself if you want it to stop (and make sure you're very thorough)
Reply:'Why can't kudzu stop growing', makes no sense. That is like saying why can't you stop walking.





HOW to get it from growing is another question, and how to stop it as well is another question.





The problem with kudzu is that it is an exotic.... never meant to live where it lives here in the US. As a result, it has no natural enemies. It was introduced into this country by someone who must have thought it was pretty.... people make those kinds of errors all the time --- introducing plants and animals into places where there are not natural enemies.... the list is endless, but here's a few:


Cane toads into Australia to eat something.---- now those toads are all over everywhere in Australia and a threat.---they are poisonous to dogs and any other critter that tries to eat them.... Rabbits as well into Australia, and they now eat everything. Tansy weed into Oregon, now all over the place. When mixed into chopped hays, kill cattle, snakes into islands in Indonesia, now eating birds who have never had to face such predation and are therefore threatened with extinction........, the list is endless.





About the only way to get rid of kudzu is to physically remove it, but it only controls it in that area only. As far as I am aware, herbicides used to kill it, also kill everything else.