How to safely remove honeylocust?

[ken45]

I have many honeylocust trees in our woods and pastures. (That's the locust with the 4" spike thorns.)

How can I cut them down for firewood without the thorns staying around to hurt the horses or equipment tires?

Ken

 

[Kate Butler]

Go-oood Luck

I don't know of any way to get all the thorns picked up after felling - nothing short of a whole lot of manual labor is likely to solve this problem. Although, if you could drop one tree on top of another in such a way that only the branches of the first tree hit the ground, the job would be much easier.

I have used blocking on the ground to protect water pipes when trees could only be dropped in a particular spot and noticed that if the trunk hit the blocking before it (the tree) canopied (rather than the canopy hitting the blocking), the tree was likely not to break up when it hit the ground because that section of the trunk took the hit.

We have black locust here - smaller thorns, but a similar problem. I spend a couple of days in the Spring picking up downed branches (big & small) from my 1/2 acre. Locust is great firewood.

 

[treemandan]

Just run a mower over the area real good.

 

[ropensaddle]

Clean the area good before starting and lay down tarps!

 

[extraspecialman]

the thorns are a bit softer this time of year,so if I were to cut thorn brush or honey locust Id do it now.Not sure if you got a loader,but if you can move the trees with forks or a bucket,it would save alot of thorns on the ground.I always tried to get a fire goin before I dropped the bigger trees and would drop them right in the burn pile.

 

[masterarbor]

the hooves should more or less be okay i would think, but the tires are a concern. can you just clean up the trail area?

 

[Log Splitter]

Paint the stumps with Round Up as soon as you cut the locust trees. Even so, you can expect to have some of the roots sprout. If you don't, one big tree will become 50 small trees before fall.

 

[Works4me]

I have many honeylocust trees in our woods and pastures. (That's the locust with the 4" spike thorns.)

How can I cut them down for firewood without the thorns staying around to hurt the horses or equipment tires?

Ken

I made 6-8 cuts with a chainsaw around the trunk and applied Tourdon last August. If they are alive this august I will repeat. I plan on lettting the thorns rot and the bark fall off. Kind of a long term process but I can wait.

 

[Kate Butler]

Paint the stumps with Round Up as soon as you cut the locust trees. Even so, you can expect to have some of the roots sprout. If you don't, one big tree will become 50 small trees before fall.

Undiluted RU, and even then you can expect some adventitious root sprouts up to 30 feet away. It's been my experience that all you have to do to get a new locust is nick a large root of a nearby tree and a new one will sprout from the damaged root.

 

[ropensaddle]

Undiluted RU, and even then you can expect some adventitious root sprouts up to 30 feet away. It's been my experience that all you have to do to get a new locust is nick a large root of a nearby tree and a new one will sprout from the damaged root.

I wish I had rows of them at my property boundaries

 

[Kate Butler]

I wish I had rows of them at my property boundaries

Would that be for fenceposts? Or to keep animals in?

 

[juststumps]

I have many honeylocust trees in our woods and pastures. (That's the locust with the 4" spike thorns.)

How can I cut them down for firewood without the thorns staying around to hurt the horses or equipment tires?

Ken

BUY A RAKE ????

 

[ropensaddle]

Would that be for fenceposts? Or to keep animals in?

Poachers out when I am gone!

 

[J.Gordon]

I cut some locust for a friend that wanted to clear his property, those are some wicked thorns.

He was impressed with my production compared to his so he started clearing the limbs and logs while I cut the wood.

This worked well until one log slipped and two thorns buried in his forearm about two inches deep.

After that incident I told him I would bring a propane torch over and see if that would at least burn the sharp tips enough so they wouldn’t penetrate as easily.

Do you think that would work? I also told him to set fire to the place but he wasn’t buying that one.

 

[gremlin]

Poachers out when I am gone!

Had probems with poachers on my land back home. 2X4s with nails fixed that

 

[ken45]

After that incident I told him I would bring a propane torch over and see if that would at least burn the sharp tips enough so they wouldn’t penetrate as easily.

Do you think that would work? I also told him to set fire to the place but he wasn’t buying that one.

Fire might work. We burned some junk wood by a honeylocust and it seemed to burn the thorns off. OTOH, I don't really want to get a 50' high fire going.

Thanks for all the helps guys, although most of it has been commiseration instead of useful help

As for killing the trees and letting them stand, that doesn't really remove the thorns but maybe creates a slow supply on the ground.

Some of our honeylocust trees have relatively few thorns. Others are just covered every inch with monster thorns. They are painful even to look at!

Ken