Post-forestry mulching

[mark02tj]

My experience is to mulch it, seed it and keep it maintained. I've got areas on my property that I mulched down over 20 years ago and I've never had any stump issues. Most were hardwoods with some pines and cedars mixed in. No holes to be found. I normally mulch anything in my path up to 20" dbh but take out larger stuff when required to.

Kind of funny - I actually came to the "Land Clearing Equipment" section to start a thread asking pretty much the same question as the OP. I had a guy out today to talk about mulching about half of our 4.8 acres. It's overrun with honeysuckle and we have a lot of dead Ash trees due to the Emerald Ash Borer. The Ash trees range from a few inches in diameter to maybe 24".

My biggest concern is how to keep the honeysuckle from coming back up. I really don't want to spray a bunch of stuff that could harm the trees that are going to remain. We're really just looking to have "a nice wooded area" when we're done. Should I plant grass? Put in ferns or some other types of native plants?

I have a box blade - should I drop the scarifiers and try to pull the remaining honeysuckle roots up?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Hopefully I'm not hijacking the OP's thread since we're both kind of asking the same thing.

 

[treemuncher]

Kind of funny - I actually came to the "Land Clearing Equipment" section to start a thread asking pretty much the same question as the OP. I had a guy out today to talk about mulching about half of our 4.8 acres. It's overrun with honeysuckle and we have a lot of dead Ash trees due to the Emerald Ash Borer. The Ash trees range from a few inches in diameter to maybe 24".

My biggest concern is how to keep the honeysuckle from coming back up. I really don't want to spray a bunch of stuff that could harm the trees that are going to remain. We're really just looking to have "a nice wooded area" when we're done. Should I plant grass? Put in ferns or some other types of native plants?

I have a box blade - should I drop the scarifiers and try to pull the remaining honeysuckle roots up?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Hopefully I'm not hijacking the OP's thread since we're both kind of asking the same thing.

Keep your cut area bush hogged at least 3 times a year for the first year or 2 as a minimum to knock back stump sprouts and encourage grass growth.

If you want to spray the cut area, I recommend spot spraying using RoundUp or any other Glyphosate product to knock back any re-emergent growth from stump sprouts. It should knock out the honeysuckle. It will not harm your trees unless you coat the entire tree. You can delimb lower branches of trees by spraying Glyphosate just on the branches you want to kill off and the rest of the tree will be fine.

If you only want to kill off the woody vegetation and you are trying to establish grasses, use Crossbow or generic versions of it. Crossbow only targets woody growth and does not kill your grasses.

 

[mark02tj]

THANKS for this, TreeMuncher!!

Just to clarify - spraying the Crossbow won't hurt the remaining trees as long as I don't directly spray them? I only want to kill the honeysuckle.

 

[treemuncher]

THANKS for this, TreeMuncher!!

Just to clarify - spraying the Crossbow won't hurt the remaining trees as long as I don't directly spray them? I only want to kill the honeysuckle.

I should not think so. Trees are pretty resilient unless you coat the entire canopy with a chemical, infect the root structure with numerous dozer blade strikes or similar actions, or introduce a tree killing chemical (Spike, bleach, acetone, paint thinner, etc) direct to the root system.