Question Poisoning Regrowth

Perry

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G'day,
I have searched the forum to see if there is anything regarding my question but cannot find anything.
I have had my paddock slashed because the grass was too long and I had small trees growing. I want to stop the trees growing again. I have read articles on the net regarding this. It indicated that you should not poison the trees in Spring. Please could somebody tell me what is the best poison that Farmers would use. Round Up would be too expensive as I want to purchase 20 litres.
Cheers Perry
 

ClissAT

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Hi Perry, how big is the paddock you had slashed?
What sort of trees are you dealing with?

There area few chemicals that do regrowth but as you say 20lt is the best size to purchase if you have a lot of regrowth. Your local rural supplier will carry whatever chemicals will do the best job. Just remember that many chemicals these days require a licenced operator to apply them.

Depending on the trees & size of your paddock, it sometimes is just as easy & cheap to keep slashing, because many types of trees hate being cut down all the time & soon their roots loose the vitality to reshoot.

However, this being Australia, we do have many very vigorous types of trees that will never die & as soon as you leave them alone for a season they come back thicker & stronger than ever!

The thing about poisoning is that it will leave a residual effect on the soil so bear that in mind when deciding your method of treatment.
 

Flatland

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We used Brushoff on olive regrowth. Olives are very hard to kill so if Brushoff works on them it will work on anything. Look up Brushoff find out its chemical name & buy the genetic version. It's very cheap it's a granule & a little goes a LONG way. You have to use a surfactant like Pulse with it or it doesn't work. Don't use a wetting agent or dishwashing liquid it has to be a surfactant. People will try to tell you you can get away with a wetting agent you can't. Pulse is expensive but if you use a wetting agent which is cheap the results are so poor you are just wasting your time. Brushoff is s woody weed killer so doesn't kill the grass around the trees but does kill clover. It does have a residual effect in the soil for up to 6 months depending on soil type. It will stop seeds from sprouting so can't be used if you are going to plant a new pasture. It is a lot less dangerous than Round-up and is good gear as far as I am concerned In SA you don't need any special license to use it. It will take awhile for the trees to die after poisoning but it works
 

ClissAT

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Flatland I understand what you are saying in your post but I feel it is important to clarify the meaning of the scientific term SURFACTANT & it's common name "wetting agent".

A surfactant is a molecular agent having the capacity to interface between 2 differing structures, be they solid or liquid, water or oil based.
There are 2 main forms of surfactants, ionic (Anionic) & non-ionic (Cationic), plus another group called 'zwitterioni' being a combo of both positive & negatively charged ions.

The term 'interface' means the molecular structure of the agent is made with 'keys' that fit neatly into ''key' holes" at precisely the right angle in the molecular structure of the solid or liquid (oil) it is being applied to. An example of a solid would be a waxy leaf. An example of a liquid would be an oil spill. The reason it has to fit at an angle is so the defences are broken down & slide away from that which they are protecting. ie the wax on the leaf or the surface tension of the oil.

The reason washing up detergent does not work very well is that it does not have the capacity (molecular structure) to interface correctly with the chemical it is being used with. It still is a very viable surfactant (wetting agent) in its own right when used for the purpose it was designed for!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfactant

short excerpt from that very informative Wikipedia page:-

A non-ionic surfactant has no charged groups in its head. The head of an ionic surfactant carries a net positive, or negative charge. If the charge is negative, the surfactant is more specifically called anionic; if the charge is positive, it is called cationic. If a surfactant contains a head with two oppositely charged groups, it is termed zwitterionic.

Commonly encountered surfactants of each type include:
Anionic: Sulfate, sulfonate, and phosphate esters.
Cationic head groups: are based on chlorides (salts).

Zwitterionic surfactants are the 'amine' group.

A wetting agent is a surfactant that, when dissolved in water, lowers the advancing contact angle, aids in displacing an air phase at the surface, and replaces it with a liquid phase thus allowing a permanent bond & keyhole for the advancement of the chemical into the solid or protected surface.

Now having this information, you can see that some agents work better with some chemicals than others do. That's why some agents seem to work better than others. Some chemicals are designed to only work with specific agents while other chemicals may work to some extent with various agents.

Here is the information about one herbicide:-


http://www.herbiguide.com.au/Descriptions/hg_Sempra.htm

One thing you will note regarding this particular herbicide is right down the end of the page they give the withholding & half-life of the chemical in the soil. It says it has a 2year withholding & half-life! That means nothing will grow in that place for 2yrs!

Perry, are you ready to have bare dirt for 2yrs allowing certain weeds to prosper that are immune to the chemical & agent you use? Those weeds could be even harder to remove.


Perry, here's an ebay page belonging to the ebay shop called "The Farm Shed" at Toowoomba. They have free postage.
Now that you know the difference between the various types of wetting agents (surfactants), you will be able to decide which agent goes with which chemical & get it here with free postage.


Now in the interests of balanced comment, here is an article by Jerry Colby-Williams where he discusses the down sides of wetting agents. In this situation he is talking about soil wetters. However all surfactants can be considered soil wetters also because they have a half-life in the soil where they continue to act. That's why plants wont grow where they have been applied so the soil has been affected just like if you had applied certain types of soil wetters. Soil wetters can change the fungi balance in the soil for the worse, often on a permanent scale.


https://jerry-coleby-williams.net/2007/02/27/wetting-agents-are-you-buying-trouble/


So with all this above being taken into consideration, physical removal of your weeds can be the best & possibly easiest in the long term. So if you can buy a decent tractor with a good slasher & keep onto that tree regrowth, it could turn out to be the best way in the long run.

Also, by investing in a decent tractor, you get a very hard working tool for long term future use. Whereas if you invest in chemicals, you may just be buying a whole lot of bother!
 

Flatland

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We certainly didn't have bare earth for 2 years! We didn't have bare earth at all. Brushoff doesn't kill grass so for a start you have all the grass that is around the tree that you are killing. I've used it on an area that I was reseeding in 6 months time & had no problems with the seeds not sprouting.
Don't have a problem with people deciding not to use chemicals. I agree it is better if you can get away without using chemicals but I am a realist & in some places it is just too dam hard to dig the weeds out. Where we used Brushoff on olive regrowth was the side of a hill & any idea of manually digging out the olives was just not on. If we had used Roundup (expensive) we would have had totally bare earth which is never a good idea and on steep slopes can be disastrous
Not doubling your information just saying what my experience is
 

Flatland

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Just had another thought. I don't know how many unwanted trees you have but if there aren't too many you could cut & swab. You cut the tree off close to ground level & immediately swab the stump with roundup. That kills it & you don't use as much as if you are spraying the whole tree, you also don't get the dead sprayed patch around the tree. But if you have lots of trees to get rid of this method is pretty labour intensive
 

Mark

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I don't know much about chemicals used for preventing regrowth of native trees but wouldn't regular slashing eventually deplete the saplings of energy and die off?

I went to a lecture a few years ago run by our local council on organic treatments of sporting grounds and how it's becoming common practice to simply mow the grass more often as a way to control weeds and improve the soil instead of spraying.

Perhaps I'm just ignorant of how regrowth works on large parcels of land and it's not that easy... It's an interesting question!
 

ClissAT

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Yes Mark, you are right there. Regular slashing should be enough to control most woody weeds.
The issue I think is around the cost of slashing as opposed to the cost of spray.
Fuel is very expensive whereas chemical is not in comparison.
 
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