Honey Locust trees excavator, Track loader, Dozer

petepilot said:

kind of like attacking an aircraft carrier with a 2 pound hammer

Click to expand...

What do you mean?

Welder Dave said:

Looks like a hare scrambles race... cool.

Click to expand...

Yes, pretty much same thing. Had 400 racers in three groups Saturday and two groups Sun.
I have Reuben Frazier coming out to take a look. Sounds like he has a lot of equipment/experience in this area, so I look forward to seeing what he thinks after taking a look.

Dad pulled a locust tree out of the ground, roots and all with his old Farmall back in the day. Said it was the only way he could kill it completely and that the root system was insanely long.

aighead said:

@Old Doug Holy crap! I thought mine were bad with just some here and there, that's insane! A good lesson has been learned!

Click to expand...

I dont know if you know this but you can start a fire around the base and burn the thorns off guys do this when they are going to cut them up for fire wood but if you leave them after a burn the thorns will grow back like mad. Six inch thorns are normal.

Mowingman, have you considered a mesquite grubber. I looked at one for clearing Prickly Acacia here in Oz. There's a good report from the University of Texas, Dallas Campus including costings per acre if it interests you.

Tones said:

Mowingman, have you considered a mesquite grubber. I looked at one for clearing Prickly Acacia here in Oz. There's a good report from the University of Texas, Dallas Campus including costings per acre if it interests you.

Click to expand...

We looked at those things, but it seemed they would be too slow. Our areas are so thick with Mesquite that you can not even walk through them. Also, we usually are doing 20 or 30 acres of this at a time. The way the branches spread out, I don't think you could get close enough to the stump/root area to dig them efficiently. Some years ago, we used a forestry mulcher which worked great, for a while. However, many of the areas got no care/mowing for 10 years. Thus, the Mesquite grew back as shrubby trees. Now, we are digging them out with the excavator, and getting most of the roots. We are also going to use a root plow on the areas, plant grass, and hopefully they will mow the areas 2 or 3 times.year. The landowner furnishes the equipment and pays us by the hour. So, we will do it however they want it done.
Jeff

The Uni claimed that no follow-up treatment was required for 5 years so although the grubber was slower the end job was better and more cost effective.
I do appreciate the fact that the client is right.
I watched a video of one working on a 20 ton machine, the plot was as you described. My thoughts were at the time was using a 30 ton digger fitted with along reach boom and standard dipper arm you could really up the anti

Looks like Rueban is coming out next week with his Cat CTL drum mulcher. He's going to be cutting them down n mulching down the stump, I'll be using my Deere 333E CTL with a grapple to make piles and burn. I'm hoping to spray some of the mulched down areas with some Remedy/diesel, before we get it covered up. Hopefully get the locusts burning while we are at it. I'll post a few pics of the progress. I bought some new Trojan 18" tracks for mine, deciding if I want to tackle the job of installing them this weekend before we start. The old tracks are narrower 400mm wide tracks, and have been derailing too often. But I don't think just moving trees around will cause any problems. Looking forward to getting most of these trees off my property, hopefully I won't get too many shoots in my hay next year.

If you are not digging out the stumps, the trees will come back with a vengeance. Sprouts will come up all over the place from the roots. Even spraying the stumps will not help. I cleared over 1000 acres of this type of mess during 2007-2009. now, I am back reclearing some of the same places, and Honey Locust and Mesquite trees are everywhere. I will say, areas that were mowed regularly, are not nearly as bad.

mowingman said:

If you are not digging out the stumps, the trees will come back with a vengeance. Sprouts will come up all over the place from the roots. Even spraying the stumps will not help. I cleared over 1000 acres of this type of mess during 2007-2009. now, I am back reclearing some of the same places, and Honey Locust and Mesquite trees are everywhere. I will say, areas that were mowed regularly, are not nearly as bad.

Click to expand...

No not digging them out, he's mulching down into the ground, I assume a few inches down, not really sure. I had another bid that wanted to use a big dozer and root rake. Much more expensive, and I fear would spread thousands of thorns everywhere, and still not going to get/remove all the roots and sprouts from seeds. Rueban says he has good luck doing this technique. I know I'm going to get some sprouts no matter what, with all the roots and seeds that will be left no matter what type of removal is done, I'll have some to deal with. I've cleared some areas over the years, and honestly it doesn't seem to be the roots that sprout as bad as the areas that still have a few trees dropping seeds, but I'm really not sure, but at least I'll hopefully kill off one source, the trees/seeds.. I'm dealing with tons of sprouts now, so I'd at least rather deal with sprouts without hundreds of trees dropping more seeds every year. There seems to be Pros/Cons on dozing, mulching, chemical only, excavator, root raking ect ect. I'm hoping we are taking a cost effective approach. Time will tell. I do know I'll have to stay on top of it.

Let us know how it goes.

I know you are in a hurry, so that is your only way. If you have a few years, killing the trees first is the best way. Then there are very few/no sprouts. Your local ag extension agent should be able to give advise about what chemicals/best timing for good results.

I had Reuben Frazier come out with his Cat/Fecon mulcher and he brought a Virnig grapple for me to use on my Deere 333E. Meant to take some pics/video, just didn't have time. My camera caught the Cat here though.
I ended up with about 12 piles to burn. I tried burning one and could get it to burn in one spot well, just couldn't get the whole pile to catch. I'll let them dry a few months. In all I think we probably took out about 300 trees in 2 1/2 days. I spent 1/2 a day spraying stumps, shoots and the main areas afterwards, but plan on spraying again in the spring with Remedy/Diesel (in the 4-5 acres where the trees were pretty heavy) and Grazon (all 100 acres). The bottom 3'-4' of every tree was mulched and taken to about ground level. I didn't have time to spray as we went, as you had to kick a lot of mulch around to even find where the stumps were. I don't think my mowers/equipment will catch any of them, unless the ground shrinks a lot, and hopefully they will start rotting away soon. I would have liked to kill them first, but I've had issues with brittle limbs/thorns breaking off everywhere doing that in the past, and it's not easy spraying all around the trees, getting them all in the clusters without taking a lot of thorns. I can grab them and pile them up after he cut them down without spreading/losing too many thorns, although I still have some clean-up work to do, and will have my share of tire plugging to do. I have had pretty good luck in the past getting rid of shoots with mowing after removing the sources, it's areas with trees still producing seeds that seem to cause me the biggest problems. Time will tell, hopefully this will work well. Most of the trees were in clusters and if need be, I can cut these areas, skip haying them, and chemically kill everything in those areas and get a dozer to root rake if necessary until they stop growing. It would have been much more difficult/expensive/time consuming to get rid of roots, and impossible to really get rid of them all. I do know the place looks so much better with those evil trees gone. If there are trees in hell, I'm sure the Honey Locust are present.
Thanks Reuban!

That's awesome everything worked out so good.

Just as a FYI for anyone who gets stabbed with a locust thorn.

It has to come out!

It won't heal if any part remains in your flesh. And the tips of these thorns like to break off when you pull it out. The thorn itself is poisonous to eat. I don't know if the poison from the thorn simply prevents healing and the wound later gets infected, or if there is something on the thorn that starts the infection itself.

Dammit man I was looking forward to a big bowl of locust thorns. Since they poisonous guess I ain’t eating any of them hehe

My kids like to run around bare foot and we have a few, so this is good to know!

We have been having a bunch of locusts show up here in sw Ga. not sure what speciesbut they grow quick and have huge thorns. Thinking black locust but I may have made that up lol. Also have a bunch in west Tn where we have property as well.

Rays a great guy and pretty handy on repairs to!! He definitely had some mean thorns to remove and that guys an animal on his Deere. I thought a couple times I might end up in the burn pile myself but I’ll give him credit, he didnt mess around and flat took care of business.
He absolutely has a beautiful place as to!!!

Have both Honey and Black Locust here, Blacks will have a few odd trunk thorns but not so bad, can even cut them with a saw if can bear the pain of replacing chains as are similar to Osage Orange/Hedge for hardness. Renter uses a pasture clear mix of Crossbow, 2-4-D and Tordon to kill off sprouts as ANY root remaining in ground will resprout even without the stumps. What have seen using this mix is the root sprouts up to 3' tall get a full spray they die, being as on a parent tree root the tree gets sick, IF hit enough sprouts the entire tree dies. Only way excavation services attack them here is LARGE Excavator take them down build large brush pile and burn until gone where they were at. Dozer with Root rake after a few weeks to months to aid in leveling soil from stumps removals and kills off 99% of sapling returns. Expensive but manageable over time recovering pasture.

Pasture Clear is the commercial line of Herbicide that will clean these out.