Spent two lovely afternoons cutting her black locust. Now I gotz 3 chains to sharpen and 3 air filters brush off. Got a nice jag stacked on pallets. I have not even put a dent in her two acre project. At least the DNR guy will see I have started,,, I just can't get used to my son's Husky but I am trying to like it.
I love the trailer for the atv. Did it have narrow tires, or wider snowmobile trailer tires? Looks a little smooshy out there. I need to get back out in the woods. I however don't have a good wheeled trailer option to tow behind the ATV. The only option I have is the 4x8 trailer which is a bit too large for tight quarters.
it has skinny tires but I am only sinking in about two inches the ground was froze yesterday today it got lil greasy I approach the locust grove from a CRP field so it's not like I am ripping up her crop field
I haven't tried killing black locust, but 41% glyphosate painted onto the stump immediately after cutting has worked for me on sweet gum. They re-sprout from the stumps aggressively otherwise. I put it in a squeeze bottle, squirt it on heavily and make sure I cover every cut surface. I have no idea if that is more than I need to do, but it works and glyphosate is inexpensive.
Well.....it is spring weight limits, no? Guess it depends on if you lose any rounds or not! I'm assuming that is the nasty locust stuff?
We’ve used Brushtox, a triclopyr based herbicide similar to Fertilome (triclopyr), which JPDavis mentioned. It did kill the 2 treated locust trees and accidentally two others, that weren’t targeted, through root absorption probably. But it sure killed them dead.
yep all locust no thorns have been spotted yet these are older trees in my exp young black locust is very thorny
Man, I wish I had your problem. Those trees are much bigger than I interpreted from your earlier posts. I i figured it was just a bunch of little brushy locusts mixed in with a forest of oak. That looks like solid mature BL. Good thing about that stuff is that, properly stacked and kept dry, it will last for decades until you are ready to burn it.
Woodlot is 20 acres. The BL has only attacked the northwest bowl which is about 2 acres in size. It blew in from the west the neighbor has a terrible patch growing across the fenceline. The rest of mother in law woods is a nice mix of oak, cherry and shagbark hickory. The locust has done a complete takeover in this corner only. Family has already ordered some oak seedlings from our county to plant where I am taking out the BL. That's why I have only used roundup so far. Tordon has been known to kill trees you don't want killed, like the impending oak seedlings. The deer will prolly eat the little oak seedlings we will see.
Hi Ole, be careful with some of the herbicides. I use Tordon RTU where i don't care what happens to the surrounding trees or whatever else grows there. However it goes deep into the roots and will effect other trees if they are close enough. Also Locust spreads by roots a lot so they are often connected through major roots. Sorry got in there a bit late
The DNR guy showed up today and we spent an hour in mother in law woods. He wants the black locust, elm, cherry, and mulberry gone. He is going to send it to her in writing. He has approved what I have done so far 100 %. He told me there are many ways to kill black locust. Method one do what I am doing painting the cut stump with a 50/50 mix of water and 41% Roundup. Method two was a single girdle sprayed with a straight 41% Roundup in to the girdle. Method three was no chemical at all just a double girdle 10 " apart and remove bark with a chisel and claw hammer! He handed me a printout from Michigan State University which recommends method one. Garlon4 Ultra is approved for locust at a mix of 3 parts diesel fuel to 1 part Garlon on the cut stump but the DNR guy says Roundup works just as good or better and is much cheaper. He forbid me again to use Tordon. Tordon kills things you don't want killed in a woods but in a CRP field Tordon works GREAT (his emphasis not mine) I am sticking with method one til I run out of chemical then maybe try the double girdle method. Then drop em for firewood after they croak. DNR guy is coming back in two years to check up on me. Her woods is under the Managed Forest Law and is being managed for oak saw logs first and wildlife second so she has to do what the DNR says. Or she can get kicked out of the program and pay back property taxes back to her 2012 sign up date. We don't want that to happen and she likes not having to pay much in prop tax,,,,
Big frickn BL stump. That was a solid burn last night. That fire looks like it either ate through to the ground. Mifht have also been rotting there so no wonder it’s so deep. We decided (my lady and I) to burn out her stumps one at a time. She has two large 4 ish feet across and a couple small ones at 10 inches so once the stumps burn out, we’re gonna just dig up roots and then call it good. Hopefully that stops it from sprouting so many suckers up. We went this route as some of you posted that Tryclopyr will kill it dead. Despite the invasive nature of Black Locust, the flowers are quite nice and the canopy is sweet in the summer time. She still has a few up so we will try this one as a safer solution rather than to kill them all.
Sometimes the environmental people are just wrong. I would gladly exchange most of my property for a grove of large black locust trees. Perfect firewood, does not rot, very strong and dense, the ideal fence posts and outdoor lumber, even looks good. And I will pay a premium for honey made from locust trees. Who would trade that for any other species? OK, maybe a few acres of knot-free 30" diameter rail-straight white pine.
Oh it rots. But nothing like the rot that some of the most stalwart firewood on here. Some of the stuff I was splitting for my lady was like the sponges used for grout. Big chunks of it. Luckily it wasnt much but definitely showed it was time to cut down a tree.
Come and get some Jon! We got all kinds of these beauties growing along the roads. About 3 years ago the County Highway Dept cut all the black locusts that were getting to close to the roadway on about a mile and a half of the county road I live on. I asked the crew doing the cutting why don't you guys spray the stumps? Their answer was "job security - we get to come back every 5 years and do it again" Just my opinion but I don't see any beauty here at all? They suck back like crazy when the stump is untreated.
Agreed. There's a few like that along my road. The beauty to me is simply the self-regeneration - an endless source of wood - although it might take a couple decades to be useful again. Coppice forestry is a very common thing in the UK and in permaculture and we do not practice it to any significant extent here in North America, mostly because we want large trees and do not effectively process the little stuff. In my limited experience with live black locust trees, I have found that they tend not to regenerate if the stump is cut as close to flush with the ground surface as possible. I dropped a half dozen of them about five years ago, all live trees, and not one of them came back from the stump. I do, however, have seedlings and sprouts all over the area that they used to be - possibly from roots but more likely from the locust 'beans' that have seeded themselves.
