Getting rid of Elephant Ears (pt 2)

I posted a few days ago on this sub , seeking for suggestions on how to get rid of Elephant ears. Big thanks to those that provided some helpful tips!

For a bit of context, in April 2024, I got rid of the Elephant ears that were planted along one of the sides of the house by the previous owner. The landscaper poisoned them with slasher, and then yanked them out. However, he didn’t follow my suggestion to excavate the soil completely (side and back yard) and just added fresh soil on top and compacted it before planting English box on the side, and laid new turf in the main backyard.

This is what it looked like back then.

Fast forward to now, and these little shoots of what I’m assuming are the same type of plants are appearing in some sections of the lawn (have no idea how they got there!) and on the sides.

One of the two sections where they are appearing in the back yard

https://preview.redd.it/d7dezgth40wd1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e689aa55cefcfeb55ac7a2e327dd1484df864138

Spouts appearing where I’ve now planted English box.

Following some suggestions from the previous thread, I decided to dig out one of the two sections in the lawn where they were appearing. What I was unprepared for was the extent at which I needed to go, to get to the ‘root’ of it all (lol).

I had to dig about 1 – 1.5 feet deep, and what I found was a MASSIVE root system. One section of it was 4 inches in diameter. It kept going horizontally and I’m pretty certain i didn’t get it all because at this stage I was doing more damage to the lawn than I had expected. I extracted whatever I could (when my trovel hit one section, water just gushed out from it and made even more of a mess while digging.

Here’s some pictures

Glove for scale. Roughly 2 feet across? Filled the hole with Garden soil mix

The biggest section I extracted

Roughly 4 inches in diameter, the gash is where my trovel stabbed it and water gushed out. Took me by surprise

The entire root section I extracted (there were more shoots, that didnt break the surface, haven’t included those)

There’s a corner section where there seems to be another batch (hopefully it is not one big interconnected system) as shown in the pictures above and before tackling it, I thought I’d come back and get a sense check if what I’m doing is right, i.e. keep doing what I’m doing, or am I just butchering things and potentially making it worse?

The digging route is definitely not an option for where I have English box growing, unless I wanna say good bye to those. Will try the neat glyphosate route on them once my order arrives. For now, I’m just going to keep trimming down any shoot I see in the hopes that I exhaust the plant and it gives up (wishful thinking?)

But any other suggestions on how to tackle this, whilst minimising damage would be really appreciated. Alternatively, if any of you folks know of someone in Melbourne, whose services I can avail for getting rid of these in a clinical fashion, feel free to recommend (via DM if its against sub rules!) – I feel I’m in over my head here.

Also happy to hear stories / anecdotes on how you’ve tackled these .

Thanks again!