Killing buckthorn in winter?

ruskbucks

5 year old buck +
Has anyone tried cutting buckthorn and spraying stumps with torodon or triclopyr 4 during the winter. Will this work this time of year? I thinking about doing this in a week or two before the forestery mulcher runs through there. Is it a waste of time or should I just wait till it sprouts up after the mulching?
 
Winter is the best time for cut/treat or basal bark treating, IMO.
3 parts diesel 1 parts garlon 4 is what I've always used.
In regards to your question on doing it before forestry mulcher, it depends on size of BT, are you paying by hour or acre, etc. If it were me, I would let the mulcher do the work and foliar spray the resprouts with garlon 3 in July through mid October.
 
Winter is the best time for cut/treat or basal bark treating, IMO.
3 parts diesel 1 parts garlon 4 is what I've always used.
In regards to your question on doing it before forestry mulcher, it depends on size of BT, are you paying by hour or acre, etc. If it were me, I would let the mulcher do the work and foliar spray the resprouts with garlon 3 in July through mid October.
Great, thanks. I just have one small patch of maybe 30 4 ft tall buckthorn and a few 15 ft tall ones here and there. The mulcher is cutting to get the alder to regenerate I just thought maybe it would be hard to locate the buckthorn in with all the other new growth and didn't want till kill any non target shrubs. I'm paying $400 an acre. 11 acres are getting cut all the buckthorn is within 1 acre that I've seen.
 
Buckthorn is easy to identify in mid October, it is one of the only plants that is still green. If you brush your hands on the leaves and they don't fall off easily, it can be foliar sprayed then. You won't have to worry about non target species because everything else will be deposited. All the resrprouts will be around knee high after one year.
 
I’d just as soon stump treat or basal bark spray all that crap before it’s mulched. I’m not sure how much time the chem meds to nuke it before it gets ground up though. I had 5 acres of buckthorn mulched at home and keeping stump sprouts under control has been a challenge!
 
I’d just as soon stump treat or basal bark spray all that crap before it’s mulched. I’m not sure how much time the chem meds to nuke it before it gets ground up though. I had 5 acres of buckthorn mulched at home and keeping stump sprouts under control has been a challenge!
Since he's paying by the acre, I guess it's his call whether he does it before or after. An acre of baby buckthorn should be able to be controlled with about 2-3 hours in the first year and some slight touchup after that.

What have been your methods to control the stump sprouts WG? I heard of a new study from UofM stating that the seeds in the berries are only viable 1-2 years and not the 5-7 that was so commonly referenced.

Kill berry producing trees first
Manage stump sprouts and seedlings year 2
Keep new growth younger than ~3 years when it's capable of producing fruit. So every other year touch-up should be sufficient in most scenarios.

^^^this is the way, albeit in a simplistic form.
 
I prefer to do fall so when tree goes dormant, mix is drawn into roots.. I also use 3 parts diesel 1 parts garlon 4 in a dish soap bottle. Squirt a ring around base of tree.

I also do a lot of buckthorn and russian olive during the winter with good success.

I keep a couple of bottles in my SUV year round so I can treat them when I find them.
 
Basal spray easier. But some will live. Cut and stump spray with Harper mix will kill 100 percent. What I would do on such a small area.
 
Since he's paying by the acre, I guess it's his call whether he does it before or after. An acre of baby buckthorn should be able to be controlled with about 2-3 hours in the first year and some slight touchup after that.

What have been your methods to control the stump sprouts WG? I heard of a new study from UofM stating that the seeds in the berries are only viable 1-2 years and not the 5-7 that was so commonly referenced.

Kill berry producing trees first
Manage stump sprouts and seedlings year 2
Keep new growth younger than ~3 years when it's capable of producing fruit. So every other year touch-up should be sufficient in most scenarios.

^^^this is the way, albeit in a simplistic form.

Agree with your thoughts. On my home lot where I had roughly 5 acres mulched in late may or early June i foliar sprayed stump and seed sprouts with a backpack sprayer in some areas and used atv with boom sprayer in others. Lots of em came back the next year although success with backpack sprayer was much better because I soaked the crap out of them compared to the poor atv boom sprayer coverage.

Basal bark or stump treating with diesel/triclopyr has been much more successful.

Basic maint plan now is using diesel/triclopyr in hand pump sprayer basically spraying the base of all the sprouts and stump and hitting foliage as well if doing so doesn’t result in collateral damage and using triclopyr/NIS/water in backpack sprayer to foliar spray new sprouts from seed.
 
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Because it’s just not 100 percent. Depending on species can be 50 percent or less.

If you cut the tree down that tree is down. And, the roots can be easily killed with stump treatment.

I basal sprayed a thousand trees two winters ago and had mixed results. All the studies show the same thing.

 
This sheet says only use cut stump treatment.


From someone that has done both many times, it is easier to use electric chainsaw and cut down and coat stump than basal bark spray. Basal bark takes a lot of chemical per tree, and I had to constantly refill back sprayer. You have to make sure you cost every inch from ground to 18 inches. It chemically girdles the tree. This takes a minute or two per tree.

An electric chainsaw and spray stump takes 10 seconds.

There are so many ways to skin a cat! This is just what I would do from experience. Bigger trees I would girdle and spray. I would use the Harper cocktail, and add 1oz of aminopyralid to each 32oz botttle (Harper cocktail otherwise). I have never found a herbicide that goes down to roots and kills the rhizomes better than aminopyralid, that is what I have found in kudzu. If you spray lower tree climbing vines of kudzu with triclopyr, it will kill leaves down low but top of vine thrives. Aminopyralid and two weeks later whole vine has died.

Just my two cents.
 
This takes a minute or two per tree.

An electric chainsaw and spray stump takes 10 seconds.
I'll go ahead and disagree and state that you have the two times/effort reversed. Just my $.02/personal experience
 
Again. Results vary. But thousands of trees done by me. Not second hand. Not from a paper. Done by me. So hard for you to say it was reversed in my case. I’ll send pics tomorrow when we farm.

I think you could also spray some stuff on bottoms of a tree pretty quick. I’ll guarantee you can’t low volume spray bottom 18 inches of a tree without gaps in less than 10 seconds. And then you’ll be refilling backpack sprayer with diesel fuel and mix about every 20-30 trees. How long does that take?

Do you have a 12 inch battery chain saw? Have you tried it?
 
Agree with your thoughts. On my home lot where I had roughly 5 acres mulched in late may or early June i foliar sprayed stump and seed sprouts with a backpack sprayer in some areas and used atv with boom sprayer in others. Lots of em came back the next year although success with backpack sprayer was much better because I soaked the crap out of them compared to the poor atv boom sprayer coverage.

Basal bark or stump treating with diesel/triclopyr has been much more successful.

Basic maint plan now is using diesel/triclopyr in hand pump sprayer basically spraying the base of all the sprouts and stump and hitting foliage as well if doing so doesn’t result in collateral damage and using triclopyr/NIS/water in backpack sprayer to foliar spray new sprouts from seed.

I should add, MN DNR has been helpful in cost sharing on this stuff! It sure doesn’t cover all the costs but it’s not nothin.
 
You know what you’re probably right. I think I was just frustrated when I probably got a 50% kill rate. Basal spray easier if you don’t have to do it again.
 
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