Tricks to girdle trees easier???
- Thread starter Melrose
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Natty Bumppo
5 year old buck +
Not sure if there are any tricks. Just a chainsaw and carefully moving around the tree as you go. I make two girdling cuts. Another suggestion would be hack and squirt...probably a lot faster and easier.
I girdle a lot of mature poplar I don't want to topple. They usually die by year 2, then they kind of break apart and come down in bits and pieces over the next decade. Great snags for wildlife.
I girdle a lot of mature poplar I don't want to topple. They usually die by year 2, then they kind of break apart and come down in bits and pieces over the next decade. Great snags for wildlife.
Triple C
5 year old buck +
Big fan of hack n squirt. I did several acres last winter just terminating undesirable trees and releasing crop trees. Used straight gly in a 1/2 gal handheld sprayer with a hatchet. After a year, I am pleased and very surprised at how effective this method proved to be. Some trees were quite large. I found it quicker and and more efficient than girdling with a chainsaw and having to walk around the tree with saw running.
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
Best to use a 1:3 ratio of Garlon4 to diesel. I used a cleaned out soap detergent bottle and squirt a good ring around the base of the tree just above the root collar. The diesel fuel will act as a penetrant to move the Garlon4 through the bark to the cambium layer which is the trees water/nutrient highway. You can apply either when the tree is dormant or awake as the Garleon$ will move up the tree and into the root system. I have never girdled a tree and this method has worked on trees from 05" to 20".
Gridling does not assure that you kill the tree only that above the girdle. If you girdle, you still can have lots of suckers off the lower root half pop-up.
blueKYstream
5 year old buck +
I concur. I used a 50:50 gly mix last year. It did fine for the most part in the growing season, but it wasn't as effective as I liked in the winter on a few species. Notably, Black Locust which suckered, osage orange, among others. I switched to diesel and triclophyr. Results unknown at this time, but I expect better dormant season killing.
What time of year? I’ve hacked and squirted a couple of 12” experimental sweetgums in my yard with all manner of concoctions and they’re healthy as ever.
b116757
5 year old buck +
For most trees I use Tordon RTU for honey locust I use 10% mix of Milestone and water for my hack and squirt. I treated hundreds if not a thousands of honey locust last fall early winter. Also have used 20-25% Remidy Ultra mixed with diesel fuel as a basel treatment on particularly small stuff that’s a little tough to hack and squirt. Hack and squirt is way more efficient and more effective that girdling with no herbicide treatment. I use a smaller boys axe and generally one of my boys fallowing close behind with a pump up sprayer filled with our poison of choice for the given trees to be killed. Then we switch off after a while. We can cover a great deal of ground very fast using this method. Now it is a bit slower in the timber but only because I’m trying to pay closer attention to what trees I want treated to release the canopy on my keeper trees.
b116757
5 year old buck +
Hack and squirt should work anytime of year except spring, probably most effective on tough to kill species is fall when sap is going down to the roots and trees are shutting down for the winter. Making sure to use a herbicide labeled for the tree species you want to kill is key particularly on some of the tough to kill trees.
Triple C
5 year old buck +
Januarry. I was told to do it while trees were dormant. some were as large as 14” dbh. I got an excellent kill on sweet gum, oak, hickory n elm. I’ll take some pics this weekend of dead trees from last years hack n squirt and post em up. Here’s sprayer and hatchet I used.
GoldenTriangleIL
5 year old buck +
I use the "Craig Harper" mix with a single girdle. He claims it will yield essentially a 100% kill and will not translocate: Garlon 3A (50 percent), water (40 percent) and Arsenal AC (10 percent), mixed in that order by volume. I performed many of these cuts and sprayed them in the past three months. I have stopped since the sap has really started flowing. He has few instructional videos on youtube and great literature on habitat management if you google his name or here: https://extension.tennessee.edu/publications/Documents/PB1885.pdf.
Triple C
5 year old buck +
Here’s a few pics of trees I used hack n spray with straight gly in late Jan 2020.
This is a double trunk water oak with each trunk about 12” in diameter.
Im guessing I treated over 100 trees in this draw ranging from a couple inches in diameter to 20”. Oaks, sweet gums, elm n hickory. I can’t find a tree I treated that survived. Larger the tree the more hacks I used.
This is a double trunk water oak with each trunk about 12” in diameter.
Im guessing I treated over 100 trees in this draw ranging from a couple inches in diameter to 20”. Oaks, sweet gums, elm n hickory. I can’t find a tree I treated that survived. Larger the tree the more hacks I used.
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