Treating Invasives with Herbicide

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I am going to be cutting some buckthorn and honeysuckle in the near future. Being it is now late fall here, will it help to treat the stumps with herbicide now or should I just wait till spring? What is the best stuff to use? I have a gallon of roundup already.
 
Stumps should be treated as they are cut. Poison works best when the plants are actively growing (don’t poison in winter for example). In the past I have used some diesel mixed with the poison (for stumps not spraying) as it seemed to help with penetration and lethality but use your own judgement on that. I wouldn’t do it if it was near a waterway etc. I usually cut across the top of the stump a few times in a hash pattern but not right to the edges so the poison can pool on the top of the stump and then cover it with plastic to ensure any rain / dew doesn’t wash it off and so animals don’t come in to contact with it.

If you can see the trees are starting to slow down for winter I’d wait until spring for the best chance of a solid kill.
 
I am going to be cutting some buckthorn and honeysuckle in the near future. Being it is now late fall here, will it help to treat the stumps with herbicide now or should I just wait till spring? What is the best stuff to use? I have a gallon of roundup already.
I'd wait till spring Steve. 2,4-D amine mixed with roundup is a good cocktail for woody brush. Crossbow is another good woody brush killer. Some of these herbicides are hard on rubber parts in your sprayer so read the label for sprayer cleanout instructions. Most labels will tell you the best times of the year to use in order to get the best results.
 
I like Triclopyr (aka Garlon, also one ingredient of Crossbow) for brush/stumps/vines. I agree that if the plant is not trying to grow then it is unlikely to circulate into/through the plant tissues.
 
I'd wait till spring Steve. 2,4-D amine mixed with roundup is a good cocktail for woody brush. Crossbow is another good woody brush killer. Some of these herbicides are hard on rubber parts in your sprayer so read the label for sprayer cleanout instructions. Most labels will tell you the best times of the year to use in order to get the best results.

I’ve used in the past with a paint brush if the stumps are big enough. Then you don’t get any drift in the wind or overspray.


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I am going to be cutting some buckthorn and honeysuckle in the near future. Being it is now late fall here, will it help to treat the stumps with herbicide now or should I just wait till spring? What is the best stuff to use? I have a gallon of roundup already.

just do it now. Roundup will work fine.
 
Tordon. Worth a read/research. County road crew boy's got bored and asked if I wanted my my road ditch cleared of tree's a few winters back. You bet! Painted the stumps with this stuff. Complete kill. I was surprised.
Just did about 150ft of ditch last month with Tordon, A very tedious job cutting out all the ash, junk elm and locust saplings. It was a 2 person job; one cutting and the other painting the cuts with small paint brush.
 
Are you planning on broadcast spraying or spot treating stumps individually? Fall is a great time to spot treat, as stated above the trees are putting energy into the roots so they really absorb the herbicide. Triclopyr and Tordon work great (I really like Triclopyr with diesel for basal bark treating) but I generally just use Glyphosate on cut stumps because it works and it's cheap.
A paint brush works fine but I highly recommend the Buckthorn Blaster (I got mine from here). I have 4 of them and one always stays in the saw box and another on the UTV since Buckthorn, Siberian elm, White Mulberry and other invasive are everywhere. Normally I just mix glyphosate and water but when it gets cold I like to mix glyphosate and diesel, they don't mix well (water and oil) so you have to shake it once in awhile. Make sure you get some Mark-it-Blue too, makes it easy to see your coverage and see which stumps you've treated even a year later. Also, make sure you apply to every stump, especially on Buckthorn, if a stump has the tiniest side shoot it will continue to grow if untreated.
 
Are you planning on broadcast spraying or spot treating stumps individually? Fall is a great time to spot treat, as stated above the trees are putting energy into the roots so they really absorb the herbicide. Triclopyr and Tordon work great (I really like Triclopyr with diesel for basal bark treating) but I generally just use Glyphosate on cut stumps because it works and it's cheap.
A paint brush works fine but I highly recommend the Buckthorn Blaster (I got mine from here). I have 4 of them and one always stays in the saw box and another on the UTV since Buckthorn, Siberian elm, White Mulberry and other invasive are everywhere. Normally I just mix glyphosate and water but when it gets cold I like to mix glyphosate and diesel, they don't mix well (water and oil) so you have to shake it once in awhile. Make sure you get some Mark-it-Blue too, makes it easy to see your coverage and see which stumps you've treated even a year later. Also, make sure you apply to every stump, especially on Buckthorn, if a stump has the tiniest side shoot it will continue to grow if untreated.
Just painting the stumps where needed.
 
I use a generic Tordon to spray stumps and small brush it works well in the fall and doesn't kill the grass if you have any in the area. Its about a third the cost of straight name brand Tordon and works just as well.
 
Phenoxy class herbicides work best when the target is actively growing, as it's a growth hormone.
Glyphosate offers good control of brush and blackberries in the Fall just as the leaves are turning color, as they are pulling winter stores into the root system.
Tordon is an awesome brush killing chemical, but is is soil mobile and has a 18-24 month soil persistence.
This time of year, I'd go with glyphosate and follow up with a cut and paint treatment with Tordon in the Spring to control any regrowth.
 
I've done quite a bit of buckthorn eradication over the past few years. For sure you NEED to treat the stump as soon as you cut them. I use Gordon's "Brush Killer for Hard to Kill Brush" mixed at 5oz per gallon (recommended mix)

https://www.gordonsusa.com/products/farm-homestead/brush-killer-for-hard-to-kill-brush/

The worst thing a guy can do is cut the buckthorn and skip the treatment. I'll come back 5-fold the next year. Also, I do this at the end of fall as it's easier to see the plants as they stay green longer than most everything else.
 
This is my second season of cutting Honeysuckle on DNR land. As such, I use 25% Glyphosate, which is aquatic rated "Farm General" brand from Home Depot. It comes by the gallon at 53% concentration, and I cut it with an equal amount of distilled water [25% concentration]. Don't use a chainsaw since it requires certification and bio-degradeable bar oil near wetlands. I have cut n painted Hive Queen Honeysuckle, at least 4" trunks, and it did not resprout. Spent New Year's Day 2020 sitting in the snow and cutting Honeysuckle. Saw a earthworm above ground, surrounded by snow [south of Sugar River]. This season, I've been cutting over by Whitewater, some by Avon, and for Honeysuckle, applying a ring of 25% Glyphosate to the cambrium kills them daid. But I always cut n paint in non-freezing temps, roughly September - March. Unfortunately, they start leafing out in late March, so I stop cutting.

Switched from a Silky Saw "Big Boy" XL 2000 when I kept running into fencerows of HS, now I have a 20v reciprocating saw. 20 oz of 25% mix does me for four hours, cutting alone. Use distilled water for a mix, Glyphosate really loves to bond with calcium, manganese, iron, and aluminum [IIRC].

I have a Buckthorn Blaster here, never used it. The idea of trying to remove the felt button and refill the bottle strikes me as something I'd rather not do. Got a Birchmeier sprayer, and it has a wide mouth for refills, does not leak, and has a flexible weighted pickup head that allows use in darned near any orientation. I started with a hand sprayer from a local hardware store, it leaked around the finger trigger and the bottle could rotate off the head and fall off after using it at different angles...

I started to cut Buckthorn this season, so I can't be sure how effective the 25% Glyphosate will be, but the DNR biologists recommend it. Except on Black Locust.
 
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