Need help to kill a tree

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Mysterious, Jan 29, 2013.

  1. Mysterious

    Mysterious Junior Member

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    Well this question is a little contra to the focus of this forum on "planting, growing, nurturing plants"!

    The situation I have is that I have had a sizeable camphor laurel tree taken down to the stump in my front yard (Sydney, Australia). I have since drilled holes into the stump, coated it with urine and horse manure and thrown some of the woodchips of the tree back on top in the hope that i could compost it to death.

    Pulling back the manure and woodchips after about 6 weeks I have found that the tree is still sending out new shoots.

    what I thought i would do would be to chainsaw it back further and try and hot compost around it again.

    Just wanted to check in if anyone had any thoughts on this?

    I am planning on putting in a malabar chestnut tree next to it an hope that down the track the decomposing stump and roots will provide nutirents and moisture for the new tree to grow.
     
  2. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

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    If it's not suckering and it's just reshooting you can have a go with a piece of black plastic spread over the trunk and pinned down. Leave it there for 6 months or so (however long it takes) and the thing might give up.

    Suckering causes its own special problems - poisoning or cutting down the main tree can compound the problem too.

    Vigilance and black plastic are going to be your good friends... Good luck
     
  3. Mysterious

    Mysterious Junior Member

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    Thanks Grahame. I'll get some black plastic involved. I'm very reluctant to bring poison into the mix unless I can find something that is not going to cause me problems down the track with toxicity.
     
  4. pippimac

    pippimac Junior Member

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    Grahame got in first with the black plastic!
    I'll add a couple of things that I wish I'd done in my first black-plastic killing mission:
    1) Use heavy plastic, or at least a few layers. If a tough plant finds a gap, it can photosynthesise its way back to health.
    2) Don't skimp on the plastic's 'spread': the kind of tree that takes this kind of punishment and survives, will often pop out scarily far away from the trunk.
    3) Dump plenty of heavy mulch on top to weight the plastic down.
    4) Check on it periodically to make sure 1, 2 and 3 are all working ok.
     
  5. briansworms

    briansworms Junior Member

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    Camphor Laurel are a pest in northen NSW. Down there they bulldoze them.
     
  6. Terra

    Terra Moderator

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    I tried the black plastic on an Oleander it just kept coming i stripped it down to nothing wrapped in black plastic then put a 200L drum over it 6mths later it still had pale green shoots on it .

    Dont know how it can produce green with zero light in the end i turned it into a open cut mine site .

    Hmmm how about ethanol thats supposed to be lethal to plant life ???
     
  7. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    Dig the stump up and sell it. Else, try boiling water into multiple holes bored deeply into the stump. Boiling water is best thing to kill stubborn weeds if you absolutely need to. Lastly the truly best thing to do, would be to contact someone in the know and find out which mycellium is the best to inoculate the stump and have it mushroom to death.
     
  8. jonathansmith

    jonathansmith New Member

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    well, I am also in favor of using plastic as a solution.
     
  9. bluesapphire

    bluesapphire Junior Member

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    nailing a piece of tin on the top and sides of the stump is an old remedy, I think using copper nails was also popular. Also makes a funky tabletop as well. The stump eventually rots.
    Cathy
     
  10. Jet84

    Jet84 New Member

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    new here but hope this helps

    hi all, very new to permaculture so not sure if this is an option however i work for a land managment group out of the eyre peninsula, one of our main targets is the tough as nails olive. although very useful tree also very invasive on native areas.

    anyway to kill these trees we clear around the base, and drill hundreds of holes roughly 20mm in all the way around the trunk. spacing the holes out also to roughly 20mm. after this we top the holes up with a mixture of round up attack which is mixed at a rate of 1 to 4. depending to the size of the tree it will drink this up pretty quick and normally a min of 3 top ups is applied.

    this method has been extremely effective on this type of tree, the poison is absorbed into the tree and through its system including roots before its recognised and the tree shuts down.

    anyway hope my two cents help best of luck
     
  11. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    :rofl:NO NO NO! Tsk Tsk Tsk!:rofl:

    So now for a safe way that won't kill you, give you cancer, or contaminate the property... ..get a hold of a mycologist and use mushroom spores. It will degrade and hopefully provide food & / or compost for a long long time while maintaining soil integrity and health.

    As an example:
    https://www.fungi.com/shop/plug-spawn-for-log-and-stump-cultivation/plug-spawn.html
     
  12. bluesapphire

    bluesapphire Junior Member

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    What a great answer to stumps. Those mushies not only look beautiful but are edible. has anyone here in Aus done this? Is the spore availalbe here or can it be imported ?? quarantine regs. My browser is a bit out of date (at work, on morning tea break) so i couldn't see all the features on the site. I'll check it out at home tonight.
    Cathy
     
  13. gbell

    gbell Junior Member

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    In Australia, we have https://www.fungi.net.au

    I thought only a few fungi would invade/kill living tissue? Thus, your stump needs to be dead before the fungi will have a go at it - they won't kill it for you.
    Someone put up the mycologist 'bat signal' :)
     
  14. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    i'm with Jet84;

    the objective is a dead tree - so have some 'humanity' and do it quickly.
    give it the chemicals and finish it.

    drop the rabid greenie fervour for a wider view - it is a big old tree, it has presence ( so much so that it has to go ).
    covering it in black plastic ( the slow smothering )?,,,death by a thousand cuts?,,,
    have some heart, i beseech you....it lives.
    death by chemical injection is more than pragmatic - it is compassionate.
    Paganly yours,
    K
     
  15. NGcomm

    NGcomm Junior Member

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    Most of the saprophytic mushies can be weakly parasitic if the tree is old and of poor health. Best to use any of the pleurotus group (oyster, tree, abalone etc) as they are good decomposers and one of the easiest to grow. Instead of using plugs just grow out a batch on something like euci wood pulp or even begasse, grow it out till the substate is colonised, drill holes, cram it in and watch your tree turn into dinner but be aware this will take a lllllooooonnnnggg time to knock it to the grown.
     

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