Ailanthus

I actually cut down the original mother plant and as many of her babies as I could
get at with a saw last summer. So now I'm mowing the ones in the field & pulling
those in my planted area. I guess I'll refresh myself on the nasties to use on the hack
and squirt next year - I know I read a few articles on them but I've forgotten the
recommendations. (My memory isn't so hot these days. I use the Just-In-Time
research techniques. Look up what I need w/in days of shopping & starting the project).

Thanks for the reassurance on the pulling technique.

Tam

Take another look at the poster above. There is a section for management. See if anything there is to your liking to deal with momma.

I can tell you what I have been doing to Tallow trees lately and it seems to be working. Get yourself a extra large medical syringe (with a cap) and a cordless drill with a large drill bit. Fill the syringe with full strength Brush-B_Gone. Drill multiple holes around the trunk at a downward angle and fill each one with the chemical. The tree will start looking stressed after about 2-3 weeks. It's probably too late to do it this year, so you would need to wait until next summer.

This method doesn't seem to trigger the suckering response. The tree is fried before it knows what hit it.

Excellent suggestion. I've used this on Black Locust as well as on other species.

Around the perimeter of the tree with a 1/2" drill bit. Right next to the bark so that you're drilling into the cambium layer. This is my trick too. Been doing it for years.

Yes, too late to do it this year for Ailanthus. I believe this may be one of the techniques used by spartacusaby too.

You're right, Equil, I've used both "drill & inject" and hack & squirt" on the bigger ailanthus here, with BrushBGone concentrate used full-strength in both cases. So far two out of three of the big trees are dead, and the remaining tree (the largest) is definitely wounded; I have high hopes that she won't releaf next spring.

Tammy, my experience with ailanthus has been that it works fine to pull the seedlings; but if you pull the root suckers, it just promotes more suckering. That's why I use the BrushBGone on root sprouts as well as on the larger trees, if the sprouts don't appear too close to desirable plants. I can also tell you from experience that cutting down the big trees REALLY promotes root suckering; I've seen many folks in the neighborhood try it, and in every case they're shortly infested with fast-growing root suckers. Like I said, ailanthus is a real beast. Lots of folks say the cockroaches will inherit the earth when we're gone; I'm betting on ailanthus.

Well - I cut down the mother tree & a bunch of her large babies
this summer. Didn't do research on it ahead of time so no herbicides
preceded this. Now I'm mowing & pulling the babies. I will do
the drill & inject method next spring when the remaining trees
juices are flowing.

Thanks!
Tam

And I'll repeat again my experience with Ailanthus.......when we moved into this house, May of '05, I had no clue what the large tree in the backyard was. I noticed another tree just like in the Church lot behind and another one in front and caddy corner and yet another one same side, 3 doors down. One day a crew from Asplundh was in the alley behind us and I asked them what it was. I had heard of tree of heaven before, but surely not in a yard that went with the house "I" had bought!! When they guys all agreed on an Ailanthus and pointed to all the other ones I knew were the same as mine, I was devastated. I called another tree service and hired them to cut the thing and grind the stump. They made a huge hole grinding out that stump. It was at least 4' deep and somewhere around 10-15' wide. This was done in '06. I'm happy to report that the roots did NOT sucker anywhere. Sure there's thousands of seeds that sprout up every year, but the main trees roots, did not sucker. At all. Our neighbors had baby Ailanthus, about 4' tall up against their foundation. I cut them down and immediately squirted Tordon RTU on the remaining stem/stump. They have never sprouted up elsewhere either and the Tordon didn't kill any of her daylilies that were right next and in this same bed.

Equil - THANK YOU for referring me here!! I was thinking of checking with my brother-in-law (Army Colonel, Armored) to see if he had any ideas for small explosives, but these suggestions are MUCH better, and probably more legal.....

You have friends here! I am relatively confident we all feel your pain.

Welcome, dryad57 to Ailanthus Haters Not-At-All-Anonymous; yes, we certainly feel the pain of anyone fighting the good fight against the beast. Small explosive devices do sound tempting; but alas, illegal, and probably would just promote more root suckers.

You have a valid point there sparta. The explosives would probably only do in the above ground vegetation. Thank you so much for pointing that out! You rock!

Good heavens sparta, I hadn't even considered the effect (sp?) of showering thousands of speckles of that nasty thing all over the place, and I didn't even realize the result of leaving the root in place. I think that would be at least a 60-day misdemeanor......I can envision the community service I'd eventually be sentenced too as well - ROTFL. Now all I have to do is dig out the small ones in my yard, and work out a death-sentence for the one growing behind my neighbor's garage (I don't think they even know it's there). That looming nightmare is a good 6" caliper - I sense multiple years of effort from the postings I've read about adult trees. I don't think it's a female as I don't recall seeing anything on it other than leaves last spring.

(As another aside story - I did a small front yard area for a nice older lady this year who stood next to me the entire time I was working, lamenting on how she couldn't do the work any more - it was fun having her stories and supervision while I dug, weeded and planted. She had two massive old evergreen foundation plantings pulled out and had me redo the front of the house. Imagine my surprise when I found THREE of these things, all apparently well over a couple years old, underneath where the evergreens had been. You'd have thought the idiots would have at least yanked those as well. She and I have scheduled a time next spring when I will be over there digging some more out. No explosives....sigh.....)

Leaving the root in place is not an issue providing you leave the stump at about 18" and paint it with happy juice. Leaving it at 18" after you cut it down gives you a second go at it with your chainsaw if it tries to sucker and usually it does. It doesn't go down without a fight normally. If it suckers, what you do is you re-cut the stump down to say 6" and you've just provided yourself with a fresh surface that's ripe for more happy juice. Don't cut it down to ground level until you are sure the thing needs to be read last rights. That remaining 6" could just provide you with one last shot at applying happy juice. I think every Tree of Heaven on this continent should be given multiple drinks of happy juice. Anyway, leaving roots in place without chemically going after this tree would be a big problem.

As far as what kind of a tree you have- yup, probably a female. Although both males and females flower in spring, the panicles of the male are about 3x the size of the female so people tend to notice the males more.

Well, that's certainly good news about the female and male panicles :-/ OK then, we'll be brewing up some happy juice!! What's the general consensus on Tordon RTU - is that our best bet? I think I'll go in halfsies with the neighbors to hire someone to cut it to 18-20" - it's right near the fence line between us and I'm already dealing with all sorts of spawn in my side of the fence. They're a nice young couple who just had their first child, I'm hoping they don't care and will let the tree come down. Otherwise I'll be shinnying over the fence in the middle of the night to do a little slash and soak.......

No to Tordon based on my personal experiences although it supposedly controls it and there may be many who disagree. Active ingredient in that is picloram and 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. Personally, I think a combo cocktail of happy juice using two different products that have triclopyr and glyphosate as their active ingredients are going to be your best bet.

Ah, what would we do without those two for just such emergencies? I hate chemicals as a rule, but then there are things like this and poison ivy....Thanks!

Umm, wait till spring to go get em girl, ok? Applying chemicals to them now would be an exercise in futility.

Yeah, I know. Which is fortunate - the spring list is getting long, this will give me time to schedule and get it cleared with the neighbors. Sometimes winter actually comes in handy - lol.

Got any other ickies or nasties you want gone? I'm not an expert in much other than our own kids but I'm getting pretty close to the expert category in getting rid of European Buckthorn and I might as well toss in Japanese Honeysuckle, Burning Bush, Barberry, and Privet. I've got a t-shirt that says "Die Buckthorn Scum Die" so I guess that should count for something.

ah, burning bush - too bad it doesn't......I do have some on the north side of the house (I have NO idea what they were thinking when those were planted) and while they're not my favorite, I've pruned them in such a way that no one will be investigating the north side of our house without getting some pokes! I had some REALLY pretty purple loosestrife in three places which appeared to have been purposefully planted, but I got bored one day so those got dug out (or perhaps it was the fact that they were starting to bud and I was scared of seeds....)

No, other than bindweed, creeping charlie, tree of heaven and wild violets...those are the worst. I'm just thankful I've got nothing poisonous to deal with! Now, if I could just train the dogs to dig the weeds, instead of at the fence to play with the neighbor's dog..... (my sister's solution to her barberry issue was a Jeep and a chain.....I was jealous)

And based on my personal experience, I would say yes to Tordon RTU. I've used it extensively in my parents woods with no ill effect towards any other plant and I used it to get rid of Ailanthus growing up next to my neighbors foundation. Again, no ill affects towards any of her plants. Anything else I inquired about (or read the label, including Round-Up brush killer), was supposed to be sprayed or applied till run-off occurred. Not so with Tordon RTU.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!

There's the person who used the Tordon effectively but she's not alone, there are a lot of other people who swear by it for Ailanthus too.

I got to thinking about the explosives a little bit more and I'm thinking at this time of year they present definite possibilities if detonated in the ground. Re-read this post carefully-
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4215447
Why go to all the trouble and expense of hiring somebody to grind out a stump when you might be able to get the same postive results using explosives? I see definite possibilities here for a new way to control Ailanthus at this time of year. Explosives might just work after all! Can we all come and watch?

Of course it probably wouldn't hurt to sit back over the winter dreaming about preparing the ultimate coctail of triclopyr, glyphosate, picloram and 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid for that purty lil Ailanthus.

The whole explosives thing was prompted by a story my Dad once told me about working on the family farm (before WWII) as a young man and one day his uncle asked him to go get rid of a big old stump at the edge of one of the fields. He told Dad where the dynamite was in the barn, to be careful, use the tractor to drag the stump afterwards, yada, yada...... So, Dad, not knowing bupkiss about explosives of any kind, uses FIVE STICKS of dynamite (Uncle later said half of one would have been sufficient). Dad said the way that stump sailed far up into the air, gracefully turned upside down and then buried itself right back in the hole completely upside down was a slow-motion thing of beauty. My sister and I still giggle to tears at least once a year over remembering how Dad told the story.

The neighbors' houses and garages are too close for me to emulate my Dad. (And, we might have a better chance of getting away with it on the Fourth of July, don't you think?? Then it would be a proper party!) But I do still like the idea of blowing them to China.

This message was edited Dec 7, 2007 10:08 PM

A proper party? Nooo, please don't do a proper party. You'd have to exclude us. None of us are prim let alone proper.

Cute story about the dynamite. I'll have to ask my Dad if he ever used it when they cleared fields. They probably did. I've found a lot of old back and white photos of horses pulling stumps out of the ground but I never thought to ask how it is they got them out of the ground to be able to drag them over to the fence line.

Dryad, if your target ailanthus is about 6" caliper, you could take it out with one whole growing season of hack & squirt. The two smaller ailanthus I killed this way were about 10" caliper or a bit larger, and they went to their tree heaven after a year of hack & squirt; this fall we had them cut down, and applied happy juice again just to be sure. The neighbors wouldn't even know, if you use this approach! The tree I call mama, because she sat between the other two, is larger and female, has had two years of treatment, and looked pretty sick this year; I have every appendage crossed in hope she won't leaf out next year.

I never found a source for Tordon, so have used undiluted BrushBGone concentrate applied immediately to the cuts each time I do hack & squirt. Two ailanthus down and one sickly mama left standing, so it does work; it just doesn't work as quickly as you'd like if you hate the blasted tree as much as I do. And of course I'm still dealing with the seed bank in my beds, and will be for years.

You definitely want to lose the beasts near the older woman's foundation; I've read horror stories about ailanthus poking through walls and garage floors when they're close to the house. While these sound a bit like urban legend, this is the tree that grows in Brooklyn - so anything is possible.

Wow, your laundry list of pests is even worse than what I inherited here. And I agree, wild violets are obnoxious; they seem harmless space-fillers when you first move in, then they take over the entire world.

Love your dad's dynamite story...

Equil, I love the idea of blowing ailanthus to kingdom come; wouldn't that make for an awesome round up (the DG type, not the herbicide)? Let's all get together and blow the beast away!

ah, Equil, see - my definition of "proper" party simply means that everyone agrees on a date, time and location, and that not everyone will bring desserts ;-> (That whole sugar shock thing makes it hard for adults to drive home afterwards......)

I'm off to the neighbor's this weekend to see if they would like to chat about some hack and squirt on that tree - and then get their permission to traipse through their yard next year to visit the monster. They have a lot of area behind their garage that this tree takes up, and with a golden retriever and new baby I would think they'd want all the running room they could get.

Thanks, sparta, for the details on what you did with your invaders. I'll be taking some pics of the neighbor's vixen so we can document the demise and eventual reformation of that area of their yard.

In reviewing the earlier post about the large excavation:
"It was at least 4' deep and somewhere around 10-15' wide. " (terryr)
Do you all think it would be OK to grind the stump out after the hack & squirt kills it off?

And I'll be pulling out my calendar to schedule some time next spring to go digging along that lady's foundation. The problem there is she also has some poison ivy, which I TRULY hate, in and amongst her beloved roses (the ones her late father planted). I did find a supply of plastic gloves that come up to your shoulder, so I expect between the poison ivy and ailanthus I'll be getting some exercise in her yard!

Oh, that's a workable definition of proper. I'm ok with that. I don't do sugar, I'm too hyper as it is without it and can't imagine what I'd be like on a sugar high. Scary thought actually.

Yes, please do document the demise of the Ailanthus. Nothing better than a demonstration thread at DG. I think a demo thread would be in order. We already have a wall washing demo buried in the threads somewhere as well a toilet bowl scrubbing demo and a host of others and I'm thinking your demise of the Ailanthus thread would be right up at the top of all the demo greats.

If you paint the stump with chemicals and if you make darn good and sure the thing has really donned wings and gone up to plant heaven, you don't need to stump it out and can just chainsaw it down flush with the ground. It will return to the earth so to speak over time. I don't generally stump anything out in favor of planting back in the same area after a month or so.

Thanks Equil, and we'll plan on having fruits and veggies at the proper party for you

You're welcome dryad57- I make an exception in the sugar department if Thin Mint cookies are available, a gal has to break some rules every now and then. Thin mints and fruits and veggies would be a real nice combo ;)

Dryad, I'm with Equil; I'd rather cut the dead tree to the ground than to dig and grind it. I think terryr's beast was still living when she used that approach. But to echo Equil, you need to be absoutely positively sure the thing is dead before you cut it down; you wouldn't believe how it root suckers if cut while still living. My two smaller ailanthus failed to leaf out last spring, convincing me they'd gone to their (hopefully miserable) reward; even so, I waited until the end of summer to have them cut down, then still treated the stumps. I really really didn't want them to come back; can you tell?

Poison ivy: yuck! I'm so allergic I swear all I have to do is see it to start itching. Here's a solution that actually works for me. Go to www.homeopathyworks.com, and get their combination tablets for poison ivy. If I take the tablets for about a week before working around the blasted vines, I get nary a spot nor a single itch. Don't ask me how homeopathy works, I can only tell you this stuff really works for me. Of course I'm still caught by surprise sometimes ["what is that? oh no"], but taking the tabs after exposure lessens the misery. The tabs are not expensive, and well worth trying to see if they work for you.

Yes, mine was alive and she was adorned in her lovely seeds when she was cut down. I tried the hacking off to the cambien layer, but I didn't have the Tordon RTU at that time. I had something only Ms. Equil knows for sure on the name of. Anyway, whatever it was, did nothing. I think it actually laughed at it. So, I called a tree company, they cut it down and ground out the stump and took all the dirt with it. I have NO root suckers. Nadda. Zilch. I was told my tree guy didn't know what he was doing. That I would have root suckers all over the place, since my tree guy was such an idiot and all. Well guess who the idiot was? The person who said my guy was an idiot, that's who!! ;p

It was Garlon 4 that I gave you that spring pre-mixed with mineral oil as a surfactant.

When you told me it didn't work, I was left scratching my head thinking you had some particularly mutant Ailanthus. Until my neighbor said it wasn't working for her on her buckthorns any more. I went out and took a look at some buckthorns I had tried to nuke this fall and they were all suckering. Odd I thought. In subsequent years as well as the previous fall it had worked like a charm now all of the sudden my Garlon 4 is not working at all??? Bizarre, figured it went bad over the winter some how and must admit I had totally forgotten I had given some to you.

I mentioned to my husband that my happy juice wasn't working anymore and he said to go buy some more and toss it out and that maybe it only had a shelf life of a year or two. I told him no, it should have worked as well this year as it did in the past. Easy for him to say just buy more. I don't think he realized I was getting that from Conserv Farm Supply in a concentrated form for over $200 without the cost of the mineral oil. Anyway, it wasn't until this fall that I started putting two and two together after I couldn't find my Imidacloprid or my powdered sulfur and asked him where the heck the rest of my products were because they had been right there on the shelf that now had car parts on it. He said he put all that stuff in the back garage where he had also put the Garlon 4.

Mystery solved. He moved all my stuff out of the heated garage attached to the house so he could get his new toy in. That pushed all of my "stuff" to the back unheated storage barn in the middle of the windswept yard where everything would have frozen solid then thawed then frozen solid again then thawed then frozen solid again over winter then heated up in that attic to that storage barn to well over 100°F this spring when we got those unseasonably warm temps then cooled down at night then heated back up. He said he didn't realize those products couldn't take freezing or heating up. Well they can't. I had to toss everything this fall when I found out where he had put everything.

Sorry Terry, you got absolutely worthless product because it wasn't stored properly and I didn't even know it when he brought it to me to share with you. It should have worked and probably would have worked if he hadn't cleared out my stuff to make way for his stuff.