help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!helicopters sprouting in my mulch

hi folks,
once again those little helicopters from the maple trees have landed by the thousands in my mulch and have started to sprout like crazy. is there any way i can get rid of them? avoid there sprouting? etc etc etc.... they will continue to sprout all summer long. i've just gotten new mulch to put down and i don't want to top off the beds until i find a remedy, if any.
thanks
debi z at her airline computer terminal. :-)

I too have helicopter problems lately but mine are not form maple trees and are removing trees not planting them! They are doing some helicopter logging on the mountain behind us and the noise is driving my poog dog crazy! He seems to think that if he barks at them they will go away! They do leave to drop their loads and come right back so he Chases them away hundreds of times a day! I hope you have better luck with your choppers than I have mine! I can't pull mine up.

Zanymuse, try shooting at the helicopter....they'll stop for a while!LOL! Leave the gun with the dog, and blame him. Just tell the police that he got frustrated at the lack of response to the barking!LOL! They must be logging off quite a steep hillside, if they are using a helicopter.

My maple in the back yard dumped most of the helicopters in my flower beds in the front yard. I hadn't mulched the new beds yet so they are coming up by the thousands! Since my plants are still small I just keep hitting them with the hoe, but now they are starting to pop up around the base of my plants and I have to crawl around & hand pull. Those things are driving me nuts. I love my maple tree but wish there were a way to make it not produce the seeds! Julie

I had heard if you cut a tree down by a third it won't survive. Apparently that does not apply to seedlings. I can pull on my little maples, and if they snap off, they just send another stem up. Very determined seedlings.

If you don't have anything else in the bed, Roundup would probably work. Otherwise, assume the position: on your knees - and start pulling. Be sure to collect them in a container of some kind; otherwise, I'd be afraid they'll start growing wherever they land!

We have four giant maples in our backyard, and I'm dreading when they start sending the seedlings up.

This spring, when it got warm, we had literally millions of tiny seedlings come up in our backyard under the trees. I just mowed them right down with the mower and that was the end of it. Can't wait till they start coming up in our newly created flower beds.

Dave

I have nothing but maple trees. I have been pulling out seedlings from every bed in the yard including the veg garden for the last couple weeks...still quite a few weeks to go. :(

A pre-emergent herbicide might help keep the seeds from sprouting (if you want to go that route). Something like "Preen". But then the seeds you plant wouldn't sprout either. It must be a bumper helicopter year cause I have them everywhere too.

I don't have maples but hackberries. It's a native tree, not especially strong, and multiplies like crazy. I have to cut and cut and cut...drives me crazy. I guess it's just another price I have to pay for flowers. I suspect when I am unable to garden anymore, my gardens and beds will become thick stands of hackberries. They will win despite everything. Humbling to say the least.

turn them into bonzi!

Sounds like a great tree for re-forestation, planting in vacant lots, windbreaks in plains states, trading for something useful.(to you)

The maples are easier to pull than the hickory nuts and acorns that come up in my shade beds. By the time they emerge in the spring the roots are a foot long.
Calalily

well i can tell i'm in good company. now i know i'm not the only one cursing those @#?! things. it was
n't so bad when i had only a couple of flower beds, but now with the new beds, that are only dirt and the old beds, i feel that i'll never be done with them. so i'll assume thed position govols, :-), hoe some too. how long does rhis last for? debi

This thread reminded me of something cute my son did when he was a boy. He used to collect the "helicopters" off the box elder trees and take them to school and sell them to his classmates for a nickle apiece. I thought it was so funny. I used to tell him they were proof of God's existence. Such intricate and perfect engineering of a simple seed...I still think of it as a miracle.