black locust tree removal

[littleschnebs]

I have rented a patch of ground that has quite a few black locust trees on it. Some are bigger, and some are almost small enough to pull by hand. I will be no-tilling beans into the ground this spring but I need to remove the trees. It is impractical to cut them all down individually and i'm afraid the bush hog won't cut low enough and the small twig stumps will eat the sickle sections alive on the combine. Have any of you guys done something that seemed to work in this case? I thought about using a flail chopper and blowing it into a silage wagon but I would think that would be pretty rough on it and I don't want to destroy equipment. I checked into a forestry mulcher that mounts on a skid loader but they run around $30k. Noone around here seems to rent them out either.

 

[JMS/.MN]

I have a manure fork/grapple on the skidloader. That and the backhoe worked very well for clearing brush and small trees. We have a dealer nearby who rents a brush hog for the skidloader....$175/day for the hog. They retail for 6-8 grand.

 

[Richard G.]

Got lots of black locusts here. Best firewood we ever used. You do realize that when you cut down one, 75 will sprout up from the roots that are just under the ground all around it.
Richard in NW SC

 

[Mike(NEOhio)]

Also best fence posts, except for osage orange.

 

[Richard G.]

Yep, split and sold 3300 fence posts back in the early 80's. Could not do that now.
Ran into one of my old Clemson proffs a few years ago and he said the posts I sold him were still good after 25 years in the ground. I said "that is great because the warranty on them was 25 years"
Richard

 

[D beatty]

Years ago we took out 10 acres of black locust trees. We had a freind come in with his D4 dozer and push them out so we could get around them to cut them up for post and fire wood. We plowed it with a single bottom plow the first season. I went around field pulling out roots that dad plowed up. We put the field under cultivation for the next 5 years to kill off any them from suckering up. The brush pile from that clean up was huge and burnt for over three days we even had police out to the house wanting to know if we wanted to put fire out and mom told them we were going to plant corn in there and wanted the brush pile gone..

 

[notjustair]

I ripped out a tree row of locust this fall. It had slowed grown into the field and I was planting through locust shoots 50 feet into the field. You are right - they don't do sickle sections any good. Your best bet is to have someone come in with a track skid steer and pull them with a tree puller. Then put it into tillage for a good long while. Even then you will have suckers but they will be small enough that the combine can handle them. Does it have prairie on it now? I've been known to burn off pasture and put a small stack of firewood around every tree that needed to go so that they burned long enough to kill the cambium layer. Lots of work, but it isn't going to be easy any way you do it. Locust spreads like wildfire.

 

[Russ from MN]

This spring we are going to cut some Tag-Alder brush in N MN, and to prevent it from re-sprouting we are going to spray the stumps with a very strong Glyphosate solution. Has anyone else ever done this and how strong do you mix it? I understand it needs to be sprayed within 30 minutes. If I had to do your job I would go in with a chain saw and cut the ones you don't dare run over with a brush cutter. Then run over it with a brush cutter and spray.

 

[Buzzman72]

In the late 1970's when Buck Stoves became all the rage, the Indiana DNR was encouraging folks with wood stoves to plant black locust trees. They said it had one of the highest BTU's for burning, and that if you could devote 15 acres to black locust, plant one acre a year, and then harvest one acre a year for your personal firewood use after the first acre has grown for 15 years, you'd have a perpetual firewood source.

Yeah, they were advocating turning the black locust into a crop, for self-sufficiency purposes. But most folks who farm think of it as a nuisance, because it doesn't have the cash "payback" of other crops.

 

[Stan in Oly, WA]

My memory of using black locust for firewood is that it smelled bad when burning, and was some of the most difficult wood to split that I ever encountered. I suspect that the same species of tree may have different characteristics in different parts of the country, so maybe those things aren't typical.

Stan

 

[Richard G.]

Been lucky I guess. Have not had any odor problems with the wood, I do let it get pretty dry before burning. Almost no smoke visible out the chimney.
Very clean burning.
Richard

 

[D beatty]

Black locust is good fire wood and burn hot.Use to burn a lot of it but not many left around here. I burn a lot of wild cherry and oak now. When I can find it I like the smell of sassafras burning but doesn't give off a lot of heat.

 

[Mike(NEOhio)]

It's also a legume, a nitrogen fixer.

 

[Prawn Farmer]

I have cleared several acres of both black locust and honey locust with my Bobcat T250 using a root rake/grapple attachment. Locust pushes over fairly easily. Since I don't have high-flow on the T250, I couldn't use a forestry cutter so I bought a Marshall saw to use on white/red oak or other long taproot type trees as it cuts below grade and will also stack the felled trees for firewood later. As already mentioned, locust makes really great, hot burning firewood.

Had no-tilled beans on it last year no problem and have a winter wheat crop on it right now.

 

[Dusty MI]

I once read that Poplar yealds the most BTUs per acer per year, because of it's fast growth.

 

[jeffcat]

Is this not the tree that will remove all of the air from your tractor tires????

 

[JOB]

I have used that high Glyphosate solution found in round-up with the purple cap. Very expensive though. The round-up worked well for me mixed 50/50 with diesel fuel. I paint the stumps with a small paint brush within 20 minutes The park service mixes it 50/50 with anti-freeze for winter use. I have some round-up that is maybe 4 years old that I stored in a freezing environment and it will no longer kill stumps.

 

[steve terplak]

Burns hot. Dries fast. Can give some odor - wet bark...splits easier than just about any other true hardwood...heard it makes beautiful foooring, never seen it in real life...nails easy wet but like concrete dry

 

[Russ from MN]

I think what I buy is about 40%, probably too thick to spray, may use the paint brush idea, Thanks!

 

[JOB]

I seen it at wallmart with 41% I think, the round-up version with the purple cap is 45% I think. That stuff will kill stumps

 

[littleschnebs]

I'm definitely sure that the 3 inch thorns on the tree would probably deflate every one of the tractor tires in a matter of minutes!

 

[Lazy WP]

Why would you not use TordonRTU? Anyone can buy it, and you don't have to use near as much. Comes in a quart container, but there is a generic out there, that I can't remember, and its a whole bunch cheaper, and comes in 2 1/2 gallons.

 

[Russ from MN]

I see I can buy tordon for $22 a quart, I pay about $37 for 2 1/2 gallons of 41% Glyphosate, does it work that much better? Not being a smart-alec, just wondering.

 

[T in NE]

We spray thistles with Grazon or hired hand. Add a little surfactant and it kills cedars graveyard dead.
I believe it's tordon mixed with 2 4d.

 

[WCS]

Look for a better price than $22 for a quart of Tordon RTU. I just paid $14 per quart, in Iowa.