unwanted trees

[margaritaman]

Just finished clearing 8 acres over the last six months. Was covered with hackberry trees about 3-4 inch diameter, LOTS of them. Now they are sprouting back up all over the place. If I keep mowing the new growth down will it eventually quit or do I need to treat the stumps somehow to kill them? Bulldozing the property was not an option since we wanted to leave a couple hundred of the larger trees for shade until we fugure out what to do. At my age I'll probably not live long enough to grow any new big trees for shade. Thanks for the help.

[Pat]

We have had success with a cocktail containing Grazon P+D, surfactant, dye, plus whatever brush killer is selling real cheap. Sometimes a bit of diesel fuel found its way into thte mix. The dye is so you don't lose track of where you are. The Surfactant breaks down the surface tension and lets the other ingredients penetrate. When the stump is fresh cut, take your squeeze bottle and put a generous coating all around the cambium layer exposed by cutting. Don't waste time and material on any pard of the stump but the inner bark layer (cambium) as this is the only "live" part. This has a better than 90% kill effectivity on most fence row brush we have encountered. Sometimes shoots will be sent up by some plants. Nip them off with pruning shears and treat with the cocktail.

I think the Grazon P+D requires an applicators lisc which is (in our state $15 for 5 years and only requires a take home open book test wheere they expect you to look up thte answers.

Other commercial brush killers wiith added surfactant and dye will do pretty good. I like Remedy. If I recall it is the same basic active ingredient as Crossbow but gives you more of it for your buck. It can get tedious treating all the freshly cut plants but the vast majority willl not ever bother you again. If you don't mind "wasting" and overusing the chemicals (spending more $ than really needed) you can use a pump-up sprayer instead of a squeeze bottle but yoiu waste 90% or more of the chemicals and they aren't cheap. Of course I don't know how you value your time.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Hayseed]

When I bought my three acre lot ten years ago it was covered with tallow tree saplings, all 1" or less in diameter. After a three or four years of mowing the lot on a semi-regular basis all of the trees were gone. Since you are dealing with larger trees I don't know if the result would be the same or how long it would take. Applying poison to eight acres of stumps would be very time consuming and a lot more labor intensive than mowing. However, if you want faster results and you have the time and the energy treating the stumps might be the way to go.