The tree that won't die.

[TellicoTurning]

Anybody have a sure fire way to kill a Honey Locust tree??

I had two or three up on the hill behind my house when we moved in. They had 4" thorns growing on the trunks of them so they had to go. I cut all of them down and have even turned some of the wood. I've drilled holes in the stumps, poured in stump killer, brush killer, salt and anything else I could think of. The stumps have roots that run all over the yard for about a 50 foot square area and every root sprouts a shoot.

 

[JayDevin]

Dynamite???
C-4?

Try roundup...drill holes and add, but not too strong or it will casue the tree to shut down around the holes and not work....

 

[DCBluesman]

Roundup Super Concentrate, concentrated just inside the bark, undiluted. Apply the same to new shoots. Do not use the diluted product.​

 

[Hosspen]

A backhoe.....or maybe a hocus pocus disappear locust dance just kidding, but good luck with your "shoot roundup" It could be worse... like poison ivy or kudzu.

 

[TellicoTurning]

A backhoe.....or maybe a hocus pocus disappear locust dance just kidding, but good luck with your "shoot roundup" It could be worse... like poison ivy or kudzu.

Thank God, don't have Kudzu close by... there's some near town... The poison Ivy, I think I have under control... knock on green wood (Rapping the side of the head), I haven't gotten a case this year.

 

[stevers]

Here we have whats called "salt ceders". You can cut it down flush with the ground and it will come right back. Some folks here burn the stumps and some just cover them with biscayne plastic and line the edges with stones or something. As long as the stump cant get air (to speak of) or light, it will die off. No light, no photosynthesis.
As for the root suckers, those can be more of a challenge. The best bet here is to hit them with poison (round-up) every time you see a sprout. Eventually, it will get the idea and give up. But with salt ceders, you must be persistent.
Good luck to you.

 

[Jarheaded]

I have always found that a chainsw is the best way to kill anything.

 

[Fred]

Haven't you ever driven alongside a locust fence line and seen where the fence posts actually took root and grew into a "new" tree.

The danged stuff is hard to kill. Now IF you wanted it to grow and prosper ... then in my case it would die sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. Maybe if you went out and told it what a wonderful plant it was and you want it to grow big and strong ... but isn't that a bit like what Hosspen was suggesting when he wrote, "maybe a hocus pocus disappear locust dance?"

If you know anyone with the railroad line maintenance division see if you could maybe get a pint or two of what they spray alone the RR right-of-way. That stuff will kill anything and everything it gets on. Otherwise repeated applications of Pro Round-Up - NOT THE PREMIXED WATERED DOWN CRUD EITHER - may do the trick. Injure/whip the tender shoots with a stick a little bit and spray till it drips off the stalk.

BTW, see if you have a local Home Depot landscape store near you. NOT the one inside a regular store. They sell a 2.5 gallon jug of chemical that is the exact equivalent of Round-UP, but for way less than what the Round-Up concentrate costs. It is something like $95 for 2.5 gallons vs $190-225 for the 2.5 gallons of Round-Up. This way you can afford to continue the 'attack' on the Honey Locust and the onslaught of Poison Ivy.

WORD of W A R N I N G - NEVER BURN POISON IVY. The smoke is worse than the plant ever thought about being. My next door neighbor is in the hospital right now because he burned a small patch of Poison Ivy and the smoke covered him with blisters. He looks like he fought with a boiling pot of grease and LOST big time. :frown:

 

[redfishsc]

I have always found that a chainsw is the best way to kill anything.

Killing a honey locust tree with a chainsaw would be like trying to play whack-a-mole with a chainsaw----- they just keep popping back up right behind you. DAMHIKT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Hey by the way, honey locust makes for a BEAUTIFUL bowl turning wood. Be sure to call you local woodturning clubs and tell them "Free bowl blanks, bring your chainsaw!)

 

[smitty]

The best luck I have had is to drill 1 inch holes as deep as one can in the stump then fill the holes with used motor oil. I fill the holes up once a month. It has finished off any tree I have tried it on. This also makes the stump burn much easier.

 

[wdcav1952]

That's easy. Fertilize it and plan to make it part of your landscaping. That works regularly for me.

:biggrin::biggrin:

 

[bitshird]

Those aren't normal trees they were germinated in the bowels of the 7th level of hell, straight roundup with a surfactant like Diesel and liquid detergent will work, but how large is the root system, even the tiniest root will start the nasty things over, and the roots spread before the tree sprouts, A small Thermonuclear device of say 2 kiloton might clear them from a 3 or 4 acre plot, How well do you get along with your neighbors???

 

[TellicoTurning]

You know we have some strange plants growing in Tennessee, Kudzu, Locust trees with 4 inch spikes in the bark, and this thing. The parent of this was growing just under the edge of the back deck, and had poked through the lattis that surrounds the deck. On one of our excursions before we moved up, I cut it back and drug it off into the woods... the next summer when we arrived, we found this growing up through the boards of the back deck.

 

[bitshird]

Well I've got Passion flowers growing into every crack in my floor in the shop, but I really would like to strangle the Idiot that imported Kudzu, thats another plant you can't kill. at least the passion flowers are pretty, and the fruit is sort of sweet

 

[scoutharps]

Ditto on burning poison ivy! On a girl scout campout back in the dark ages, some girls found a stack of fire wood with a dried up vine on it. (It was winter) They pulled the vine off, and brought the wood back. They were immune to the stuff, we found out later. I'm not. It was the sort of weekend where no matter where you stood you were in the smoke. Thanks to the weather I only broke out on the hands and face that you could see. It was the stuff in my mouth, nose, lungs, stomach....Try scratching in itchy stomach--internally! Now, I just look at the stuff and break out!

 

[Darley]

De-bark the tree from the base up to 1 foot add some copper nail at the base will die in a year and no messing up with cherm

 

[Rojo22]

Motor Oil, Round up, Copper Nails, and nuclear waste only will make the Locust tree mad, and nobody likes a mad Locust tree.....

The only sure fire method to getting rid of a Locust tree is a Real Estate Agent....

Goats are the only thing that will kill Kudzu, but they have to be hungry enough to eat it....

 

[Jarheaded]

Killing a honey locust tree with a chainsaw would be like trying to play whack-a-mole with a chainsaw----- they just keep popping back up right behind you. DAMHIKT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chainsaw whack-a-mole may be a new sport, sounds like it could be fun.

 

[underdog]

I have a little ornamental plum tree that keeps popping up here and there. I dug it up, roots and all. The only way to keep it down is to find the root fragment and dig it up. That usually does it for me.

But that's a lot of hard work. I'm not up to digging up stumps anymore.