Girdling Trees

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eastTN270

eastTN270

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I am going to double girdle some trees around my field and roads in order to improve the edge feathering. My question is, when girdling this time of year do you still need to spray the girdle with herbicide or will the girdle itself kill the tree?
 
Depends on the species of tree. Many species will sprout from the roots when the trunk dies. Others will not.
 
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Honestly, I've had a VERY tough time killing trees QUICKLY by any known method, short of cutting the trees down. I've used double girdling (very deep), and every herbicide known to mankind and still can't get a quick and sure kill.

Honestly, I can't believe how hard it is to kill a mature tree. MUCH tougher than I thought it would be.
 
Can you still get SPIKE tree killer?? I've seen it as a pellet and liquid. We used it years ago two different times on fencerows. After applying it, there seemed to have been no effect. Then after about a year every single tree died.

I'm not sure how well you could control it's effect if you wanted to be selective about killing some trees intermingled with others.
 
I have had good success with girdling and herbicide treatments. I usually go with a triclopyr herbicide such as Garlon or Element. The good thing about triclopyr is it is not soil-active, so it only kills what you apply it to, and not the adjacent trees.
 
MickThompson said:
I have had good success with girdling and herbicide treatments. I usually go with a triclopyr herbicide such as Garlon or Element. The good thing about triclopyr is it is not soil-active, so it only kills what you apply it to, and not the adjacent trees.
Click to expand...

Oh, I can kill trees, but often it takes several years. If I want a tree dead, I want it dead NOW! :) I hate waiting years for a full effect.
 
What Football Hunter said . We cut doubles and deep ones on 4-5 food plots , some died out , some re sprouted and required more work, then half of them are dead and not fallen yet so you keep an eye on the sky and what ever you do don't bump one with the tractor. ( lost the hood on the ol JD that way ). When they fall into the food plots you have to cut and/ or push out of your way before prepping / planting . We have found its better to cut them completely the first time. Now we are looking at dragging out the popular and oaks as we cut and haul them to the mill. ,we have one about 7-8 miles away so we can haul 4-6 at a time . They will help pay for some seed , etc .
 
I know there is no really guaranteed fast method to kill mature trees (that I know of) other than to cut them down and spray the stump. I used lots and lots of Tordon 101 when working for the US Forest Service TSI crew many years ago. We used Hypo-Hatchets which work the same as hack-n-squirt. I seem to remember most trees dying within the year but to be honest we were moving through the projects pretty quickly and not doing much looking back.
 
The product SPIKE is definitely not on you want to use when there are trees around that you might want to save. It was explained to me that SPIKE continues killing as it percolates through the soil until it is below the root zone of any nearby vegetation. That may take years according to soil types and rainfall. If you want to get everything in a fencerow there may be nothing any better. Grasses will recover pretty quick.
 
I've had excellent results killing BIG and small trees with Arsenal (Imazapyr). I used a hand held squirt bottle with a 50/50 mix of Arsenal concentrate and water. I made a cut into the tree cambium every 3 inches and then put only 4 drops of the liquid in each cut. I've killed poplar, oak, hickory, sweet gum, maple. I've done it all year round as well. When you do it in the winter, the tree grows leaves when spring comes around, but then it gets sick and dies within a few weeks.
 
I had a huge weed tree (I believe box elder), 3 foot diameter trunk, close to 70', sprawling canopy that was shading where I wanted to put a plont.

I girdled it by cutting a notch 2-3 inch deep by 1-2" thick all the way around the tree and squirting tordon all around the fresh cut. It was dead in no more than 1-2 weeks and blew over a year and half later. That tree was completely healthy before hand.
 

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