Hard to say without knowing what the plant was, but likely a good fraction of the offsets are on their own roots now and the "mother plant" is nonexistent. These offsets are one of the ways they survive if the main trunk goes down.

You may kill some of the plants on a root by spraying a petrochemical, likely not all. I'm not sure squirting with a little RoundUp and calling it good will work on this type of plant anyway. Likely will have to be a concerted effort of soaking a rag in RU and covering lvs with a black garbage bag and coming back in 2 weeks to hit the next batch. Not a solution for this forum, surely.

Lastly, anything you spray will drift if there is a wind. I can't imagine why you would put something like muriatic acid near your soil but feel bad about RoundUp. If you want to go organic, you may very well be pulling for months this year, months next year, weeks the year after that. Are there actually children in Phoenix that can be hired to pull sprouts?

Dan

Vinegar won't get yucca roots, not even sure roundup will on established fleshy tubers. Sorry, I'd move the annuals and stump grind that sucker and take out every bit you can. Don't underestimate how hard it is to eradicate yucca, search around for a few stories and you'll see there are no simple solutions. In LA it is considered one of the hardest plants to permanently eradicate.

They would have to be some super-children to handle these sprouts! We're not talking bean sprouts here. We're talking 6" tall and 4 inches wide, popping out of the soil from nighttime to morning! I'd have to have grandchildren that could handle chainsaws to hack away at these suckers!
Please give me more information on stump grinders. I also have about 5 palm stumps that I need to get rid of.
To Dan-isn't muriatic acid the same as sulfuric acid? Wouldn't that break down to sulfur and water in my alkaline soil? It's put into our pools around here all the time for pH correction, I can't imagine it's terribly toxic to living beings or how could we swim in it? (diluted of course)

Muriatic acid is hydrochloric acid. Sulfuric acid is battery acid. Neither is an organic solution to your problem, IMO.

HCl spilled in soil in sufficient quantity & strength is required to be reported as a hazardous spill.

Dan

You can often rent these by the day at equipment yards or hire someone by the hour with one. Yucca actually is a bit easier than a hardwood stump to grind down.

{{gwi:141469}}

They would have to be some super-children to handle these sprouts! We're not talking bean sprouts here. We're talking 6" tall and 4 inches wide, popping out of the soil from nighttime to morning! I'd have to have grandchildren that could handle chainsaws to hack away at these suckers!
Please give me more information on stump grinders. I also have about 5 palm stumps that I need to get rid of.
To Dan-isn't muriatic acid the same as sulfuric acid? Wouldn't that break down to sulfur and water in my alkaline soil? It's put into our pools around here all the time for pH correction, I can't imagine it's terribly toxic to living beings or how could we swim in it? (diluted of course)

I had two clumps of Yucca, each consisted of several yucca trees whose stumps had grown together into two huge stumps, each about four feet in diameter. It was back breaking work but I got rid of it with a chain saw and a mattock. I wore out several blades because if there is any dirt where you are cutting it is instant dull blade. The Yucca never grew back. Yucca wood is actually pretty soft and easy to saw and chop, but the roots are tough.

You can wrap a thick black garbage bag, or even two, to suffocate it. I killed 3 this year of huge picker bushes that grow like mad. I would cut them down to the ground and in just a matter of about 2 months they were right where I started from.

This year I cut them down, wrapped them in garbage bags, and not one shoot or sprout from them. You have to twist and tie it slightly loose, but snug, at the bottom, but it should be the end of it.

The eruption of sprouts is their survival method. The presence of the mother plant has an inhibiting effect on the root nodules that make sprouts.

Sharpen a shovel and slice the sprouts off below ground level as soon as you spot them. Or dig them up, pot them and sell them.

The worst will be over in a few months.