Okiefamily,

I don't know if I'd use salt although eventually it would leach out of the soil. I'd probably use sugar or molasses as described by the Dirt Doctor, which I've linked below. The stump quesion/answer is the third one down on the page.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Dirt Doctor's Suggestions for Stump Removal

Dawn

That's some good info! I have a huge tree stump that was cut down several years ago, and it's been a nuisance regrowing unsightly sprouts which have to then be trimmed off. I'll go through my fridge and see if there are any old jellies, jams, etc. that I could use to treat this stump with and then maybe just toss some soil on top.

Thanks so much!

Barbara

Okiefamily, Someone with a stump grinder would be the easy and quickist way, around here their prices start at 50.00 to $75.00 and up.

There is a cheap way, (And I love cheap) If you or someone in your family are physically able you can dig it out yourself.
I dug out an 8" elm stump that I had cut down and it took me two days,
Now I'm not big or particularly strong, you just have to stick to it once you start, actualy" its not as bad as it seems it would be once you get started, and once you get the hole started you can sit down to work if you want.
All you'll need is a saw of somekind, perferably a chain saw and two shovels, one big and one small one.

Now I realize that many will not be able, or want" to do this, but if you can and dont mind the work it will save you some money.
You do need to be reasonably healthy and drink lots of water in this heat, and have the good sense to know when to stop if you get tired or to hot.
James.

I may not do things like this the smartest way, but I most often dig the dirt back a little, throw on some charcoal briquettes (match lite works well) and light up. I also stack on small stuff I have cut with the chain saw while I am at it.

I have not noticed any damage except I hang the tiller on the roots for a few years. Things seem to grow fine in the burnt spot next year after it has been tilled and a little compost thrown in.

I expect there are much better ways, but burning out the stumps is all I have ever done.

Larry

Burning has always been our method too. We wait until winter and pile up brush and small limbs from the woods, and roast hotdogs.

If the stump is very actively growing sprouts, it will be hard to burn it or to get it to decay rapidly. My suggestion would be to let it grow out until the early fall, cut the growth off back to the stump, and then put an appropriate herbicide on the fresh cut. This needs to be done within a matter of minutes after cutting in some cases to give the best chance of a total kill. You will know next spring if you were successful. Making it decay repidly or burning it will be much easier after that.

All three are along a wooden fence so burning is kind of out of the question and it would be difficut to dig them without access to all sides so I think I will resort to scottokla's suggestion but I am unsure what herbicide to use and how it might affect my veggie beds that are within feet.

If it is actively growing sprouts and stuff, then give it a shot of the bane of all growing plants: Round-up. Paint it on the leaves and let them carry the poison to the roots. That will kill the growth. You can figure out how to get rid of the stump after.

I sprayed the sprouted leaves of a walnut tree a little over a month ago. The leaves I sprayed are curled and deformed looking but just as green as they were before. It put out new shoots from another area of the stump and that looks like a healthy little tree. My next try will be to saw it off lower on the trunk and immediately coat the open surface, because spraying the leaves didn't do it.

I have experimented quite a bit with spraying 2% glyphosate (Roundup) on various sizes and ages of pecan seedlings to see what it took to kill them.

My experience has been that in summer or the beginning of fall, you can kill a seedling easily if it is only a few feet tall and you cover the seedling fairly well with glyphosate (seems obvious!). However, if the tree has a trunk of 4 to 6 inches in diameter and is 8 to 14 ft tall, it will not be killed or even significantly injured by a good wetting of 1/4 of the lower canopy (such as spraying a fence-row). This sprayed area died, but the rest of the tree was not impacted (unfortunately) on the ones I sprayed. Tree sizes in the middle of this range were somewhere in the middle.

My opinion (may not be correct) is that late summer or early fall would be the best time to try to kill the stump, and the best way would be to wipe the strong stuff (not the 2% stuff) on a fresh cut as close to the ground as possible. A broadleaf herbicide would probably beat plain glyphosate, but this is still just my guess. I used one a few years ago that did a great job, but I don't know if I would go that route again since it was so powerful. I do not recall the name and I would not recommend it since I don't know the full impact of it.

I would do some web searches for "stump" + "kill" + "herbicide", etc., and look for university extension types of publications.

I am going to toss this out here for what it is worth:

I have killed many sprouts and small stumps by painting them over with diesel fuel. I have used it on poke recently and it worked well. I may have missed the sprouts on the ash tree stump near because it has several new sprouts. I will cut those off and paint them to see if it will work on it. Learned this trick many, many years ago when we first moved out to the country.

I don't use so much that it run into the soil. An old paint brush works great.

glenda

While you guys are discussing this topic, I have a few "weed trees," i.e. trees that sprouted from the seeds of mature trees in the neighborhood, that are not only growing in undesirable places but have probably been left to grow for far too many years. The lady I bought the house from was over 80 (according to the neighbors) and walked with a cane so a lot of normal yard maintenance was beyond her.

I have tried lopping off all the greenery and cutting the stem as far down as I can, but they keep coming back. I've tried to dig the whole thing up, but some of these are located up against the house or in between large landscape timbers, and I just can't get to them with a shovel. I'm afraid to try poisons since some of them are either in the middle of or right beside other plants I don't want harmed. Is there a safe way to get rid of these?

Debra

Debra, I'd suggest a similar method (to what I mentioned) of just cutting them off somewhere on the stem and then brushing a little roundup on the cut immediately. If this is possible for you to do, I think it would work (permanently) for most of the plants in the late summer or early fall.

Glenda, I have seen that method show up in some searches I have done. I have not tried it though.

Thanks, Scott. I bought some Round-Up when I stopped by Horn yesterday and got a small paint brush and one of those small sponge brushes at Home Depot. I'll wait until maybe late September or early October to try applying it. If this works I'll owe you big! You have no idea how many of these weed trees I have. They cover all three sides of my fence plus are in the middle of beds and even in the front yard. I tried to dig up one small honey locust in the front yard last year, and all that came of that was I bent my trowel!

One more question, what sort of container can I put Round-Up into? I bought a bottle with a sprayer but will need to put it into something else I can dip the paint brushes into.

Debra

I was afraid to mention this a few days ago because you guys would call me a NUT, ( the truth hurts). I have taken out many stumps with a 4 wheel drive, a wench, and also with my 4 cyl. s10 pickup.

If you can get the wench cable to the stump, and it has limbs on it to keep the tow strap or chain from coming off you an build an "A" frame to through the chain over, lean the "A" frame over past the stump to where the "A" frame is pointing the opposite direction away from the wench. With one man operating the wench, another man working the chain, cable, or what ever you are using. As the cable goes toward the wench, the arc of the "A" frame travel will lift the stump about 3 to 5 inches before you have to reposition the "A" frame. I took out a whole row of large shrubs for my mother-in-law that had gotten too large to care for.

Now for the "NUT" part. If you can get a pickup of 4 wheel drive up to it, hook up and take off like a bat out of H---, when you hit the end of the tow strap something will move. After snaping a chain I started using a tow strap. (chains can really mess things up when they are flying through the air) YOU MUST HAVE A SOLID VEHICLE.

You can also take a recip saw ( like carpenters use), dig away some of the soil, stick the blade in and cut off the roots. You will need a 6 to 9 inch blade but they only cost $2 to $4 bucks. You can buy a cheap China made saw for about $20 bucks at harbor freight. The best thing would be to have a friend come over and cut it out.

Nearly every body has one of these saws, I have 2 electric and a battery one. They are very handy tools.

Yes, I know I am a Nut, my mother raised two of them. Larry

Debra, a couple of warnings: You may need a higher percent than the standard 2% mixture of round-up. I usually put some into a mason jar and keep that jar premanently marked for poison. The other warning is that I have had difficulty specifically with honey locust when using round-up, but this has been with spraying seedlings, not painting stumps. You may need to try concentrated 2-4D or similar for this.

Slowpoke Gardener, Hey I think your on to something there, a true friend" would come over and cut it out for you wouldn't they, LOL

Hmmmm, now just to find a true friend.

Thanks, again, Scott! Sounds Like I need to go back and get some of the concentrated stuff. Glass makes sense, I'll get a wide-mouth glass jar for it.

Unfortunately, the honey locusts I'm dealing with are seedlings. The neighbors to the north have a large one in their front yard, and little seedlings pop up everywhere. I think I tried Weed-B-Gone on them last year. Since they are popping up again this year, and in the same spots, that didn't work. Any better ideas for getting rid of them?

Debra

Debra,

For honey locust seedlings, buy the Round-Up Brush Killer that has an extra ingredient (Tricopyr, I think). Of course, like all herbicides, it is a poison, so be careful when using it. It will be most effective if you can cut off the plants leaving stumps, and then drill a hole into each seedling or sapling and pour it right into the plant. If the the seedling is too small to drill into, you might be able to hammer a nail into it to make a cavity, then pull out the nail and put the Round-up into that cavity. Or, you can girdle the seedling or sapling by peeling off a strip of bark all around the circumference of the small tree, and then paint the Roundup onto that barkless strip with a cheap foam paintbrush.

And do be careful using herbicides around pets. A friend of ours lost his cat a couple of months ago after it ingested some herbicide he'd been spraying there at the ranch.

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn, I'll look for the brush killer stuff. I did buy a cheap, liitle foam brush at Home Depot the other day. Most of the really small seedlings elsewhere on the property I can just pull up. For some reason these little honey locusts, which are in the front yard where they look even worse than the weeds, just won't come up.

I have all kinds, not just in numbers but also types, of weed trees growing all along the fence lines in the back yard. Last year I spent one whole weekend lopping them all off down as far as I could. Unfortunately, many of them have roots that are actually in my neighbors' yards so I couldn't dig them up if I wanted to. Could I kill these by painting this stuff on the leaves that are on my side of the fence? I could lop them off first and apply it but only if I can do it while keeping the stem on my side. Both my neighbors have dogs that are outdoors most of the time. I sure wouldn't want to harm them by applying something through the fence.

My cats are no longer allowed to go outside. At the apartment I used to let them out on my patio while I was there to supervise and make sure they didn't leave the area of my patio, but I quit doing that the first year West Nile showed up in Oklahoma. When I bought my house I worried that if I let them out they might not know where home was if they managed to get out of the fence so I was reluctant to try letting them out. Then I found out that both neighbors' dogs have been known to kill cats. Since my cats were already used to staying in anyway I figure they can just remain indoor cats. So I don't have to worry about my own pets being harmed by poisons, but I still wouldn't want any harm to come to the neighbor dogs. I've been making friends with them by giving them Milk Bones and raw hide chews when I see them out. I found out last weekend that Okie, the dog to the north, stashes the treats in a pile!

Debra