Herbicide use on hardwood planting

[dewwood]

I have 50 acres of two and three year old plantings of mixed hardwoods in the extreme northeast corner of Indiana.  I am planning on spraying for weeds, especially Canadian thistle this spring.  My current plans are to use a  Princep and Roundup mix about the first week of May or whenever the first flush of weed growth occurs.  I may also spray again later in the summer with the same mix to get sustained season long control.  I have a sprayer with one nozzle which will direct the spray along the sides of the row of trees overlapping slightly in the middle to give a strip about 30" inches wide, a little will hit the base of the tree seedlings.  I did hand spray with Roundup last summer and it worked well but it is far too slow doing it by hand, it took all summer.

Has anyone had any experience spraying seedlings and if so do you have any suggestions or recommendations?

Any thoughts will be appreciated.

Thanks
Dewey

[DanG]

Dewey, I ain't got a clue.  Just wanted to say HI, and welcome. Stick around, and some our exspurts will give you a dandy answer to your question, and you can look over the rest of the stuff, too. Then you'll be hooked. ;D

[Ron Scott]

Contact a local nursery in your area for their methods for efficient and effective applications on your type hardwoods species and acres to cover. Also contact the local Extension Service for advice and seek out a Certified pesticide applicator to do the work for you if you don't have equipment for more rapid coverage of your area.

A 4x4 wheeler (ORV) with tanker and sparayer often works well. Just be sure to use an  EPA approved chemical in correct amount of application for what you want to kill.  

[Texas Ranger]

Ya gotta control your drift and oversprey, is it possible to use a drag instead of a sprey?

[swampwhiteoak]

You can use Oust and spray over the tops before the buds break dormancy.  Oust works as both a pre and postemergent.  

Surflan, Pendulum, and Goal are others that are commonly used.  The rates and combinations depend somewhat on what you are trying to control.

Stinger and Transline are both commonly used as thistle control agents.  You can overspray hardwoods if memory serves.

General Recommendations - Use the commercial grade of Roundup w/surfactant.  Don't spray the leaves (watch for drift).  Use a CFV valve on your tank if it is a handpump model.  And be sure and wash your hands after all mixing.

For whatever reason, if you are going to use Princep you have to use Princep Liquid, not Princep 4L (according to the label).  

Weed control is usually most important in late spring/early summer since that is when the tree is doing most of its growth.  

[dewwood]

Swampwhiteoak,
Thanks for the info, I have used Oust in the past by a custom applicator and felt it was causing too much damage to the trees in the lighter soils.  Not familiar with Stinger or Transline but will check them out, Canadian thistles are a major problem in our planting.  I am using a tractor and sprayer with a roller pump, one nozzle mounted near the front tractor tire to maintain constant nozzle height.  We are using 2qt Princep and 1 qt Roundup per acre with a surfactant and a neutralizing agent.

I appreciate the help, I will check out the other chemicals you mentioned.

If you get up this way stop and have a gander at our project.  I am two miles into Indiana from the Ohio line on US 20 and one half mile north.

Good talking to you.
Dewey

[swampwhiteoak]

I appreciate the offer, Dew.  The governor tells me I can't venture outta Ohio without super special permission on state time other wise I'd drive by and take a look.  If I'm going to be in the area on my own time I'll drop you a line and stop by.  What county are you in?  Are you across from Williams Co. or Defiance?

I added a few forum directory links on herbicide info, one or two have a search function and you can read any label.  Comes in handy since most of the herbicide people in these parts don't know much if it isn't for a grain crop.

[dewwood]

Swampwhiteoak,

Thanks for the links, there is a lot of information on them.  I have not had a chance to look up everything I want to yet but I'm sure it will be very helpful.  You are right about the chemical & fert people,  they don't have much info outside of the grain crops.

If you get up this way I'm in Steuben County, just two miles from the Ohio line and about five or six from the Michigan line.  We are just 1/2 mile north of US 20 on Old Rd One.

Thanks again for the information.

Dewey

[swampwhiteoak]

I missed this before
Posted by the Don of Texas

Ya gotta control your drift and oversprey

I thought all you southerners did was aerial arsenal the whole thing and try to keep it outta the creeks.

[Tom]

You pretty much got it, Swamp of the Quercus.  Our conifer forests can stand it and it takes a plane to reach all the corners before the trees reach maturity.  These things grow so fast down here that they keep us on the run.  Arsenal, the bane of the hardwoods, spread across the midwest and northeast would leave nothing but high-rises if you weren't real careful.

[dewwood]

Update:
Just a note to say the spraying with Roundup and Princep went quite well.  We achieved excellent control for the first six weeks and are now spot spraying by hand.  I have still not decided for sure if I will administer a second dose sometime in July or not, it will depend on how it looks out there at that time.  We did have a serious freeze in May which was very hard on some  of the smaller trees which were just starting to leaf out.  Overall I am happy with the way things look right now.
Dewey

[Texas Ranger]

Hey, SwampRabbit, we Texicans do a lot of aerial work, unfortunetly, they wont let us spray Louisiana!  Anyway, we also do a fair amount of ground application from the back of a modified log hog with sprayers attached, works well.  And we can customize the chemical mix and application pretty well.  Also use ATV's in some circumstances.

[Smallfarmbigplans]

Hi Dewey:

I am new here and I am preparing to start my own 7 acre timber farm. I live in southern Michigan and my land has been used successfully for the last several decades to plant a variety of crops. The soil here varies greatly from one square foot to the next. I can dig three holes side by side by side, and have dark sandy loan in one, rocky sand in another, and hard clay in the third. I plan to convert from crop to timber one to two acres per year with planting to start in 2017 ( I will use the tail end of this year and all of next year to prepare the ground for my first and second planting, mainly determining spacing, type, and killing the sod).

Please give me all the advice you can about how to spray for weeds and not kill the trees, as well as anything else you learned slong the way.

Thank you,

Smallfarmbigplans

[curdog]

Small farm, welcome to the forum.  I'm not Dewey,  but I'll throw my two cents in for whatever it's worth.  What type of tree's are you looking to plant and what type of vegetation are you looking to control. A glyphosphate based herbicide works well prior to bud break on your trees as long as the surrounding vegetation is actively growing. I usually mix oust with accord for open field planting. But pine and hardwoods will tolerate different herbicides so a little more info would help.

[thecfarm]

Smallfarmbigplans,welcome to the forum. I like your user name.

[Smallfarmbigplans]

Small farm, welcome to the forum.  I'm not Dewey,  but I'll throw my two cents in for whatever it's worth.  What type of tree's are you looking to plant and what type of vegetation are you looking to control. A glyphosphate based herbicide works well prior to bud break on your trees as long as the surrounding vegetation is actively growing. I usually mix oust with accord for open field planting. But pine and hardwoods will tolerate different herbicides so a little more info would help.

Hello Curdog:

We want to plant black walnut, white oak, red oak, and sugar maple for sure. We already have 200 Norway spruce. Possibly others as well, but all hardwoods. In the areas that are not currently farmed, we have a variety of grass and weeds. There are prickly weeds, flowering weeds, sticky weeds, clovers, crab grass, dandelions and others (sorry I don't know the technical names of most). In the farmed areas, there is not much unplanted vegetation aside from some flowering weeds. I don't know what will happen when we start to convert to trees, though. We have winter wheat now and will have hay when we start to convert to trees.

Hi cfarm:

Thanks for the welcome.

[curdog]

With a small acreage being planted you could spot spray with a glyphosphate based herbicide. That would be the cheapest route. 1-3 weeks before planting you could spray a circle in your planting area at the desired  spacing. You can follow up with spot spraying around the planted trees. I like using a road cone for a herbicide shield or if the seedlings are small enough, a coke bottle with the bottom cut out shoved on a broom handle.  This would prevent any spray drift.

[Smallfarmbigplans]

With a small acreage being planted you could spot spray with a glyphosphate based herbicide. That would be the cheapest route. 1-3 weeks before planting you could spray a circle in your planting area at the desired  spacing. You can follow up with spot spraying around the planted trees. I like using a road cone for a herbicide shield or if the seedlings are small enough, a coke bottle with the bottom cut out shoved on a broom handle.  This would prevent any spray drift.
[/quote

Thank you for the advice. How do you protect the trees from deer and other leaf-eaters?

[beenthere]

 sfbp
I planted around 3500 trees in '98, by hand. 1200 red oak mixed with Norway spruce and white pine.

I had deer damage when they ate the oak buds off during the winter and nibbled the white pine pretty bad. One winter, I stapled small white paper popcorn bags on to the terminal buds of the red oak. That was quite effective for deer browse. The bags took the wind, the snow, the ice, and the rain all winter which I didn't expect. Previous years I used some "deer away" white egg mixture which didn't do much except plug up the Solo backpack sprayer. I think it was a bit effective at first but washed away in a short time period.

My only regret was planting the spruce between each two red oaks because of the fast growth of the spruce. In the 17 years, the spruce are about 30-35' and crowding the oak. A nuisance to get the spruce out of there to release the oak, but have been going at it slowly. The intent was to crowd the red oak to grow up faster and not out. That was accomplished IMO. 

Red oak paper sacks on terminal bud.
 

 
Grubbing out spruce using tractor forks to pop out roots. Now they have to be cut at the ground with chainsaw.  

 Remaining stand of red oak after spruce removal.



 Recent spruce removal using chainsaw and leaving one row of red oak.

[luvmexfood]

Monsanto does or did have on their website plans for building a pipewick to drive over weeds and wipe Roundup on them without getting it on surrounding vegetation like spraying. A 3" piece of PVC pipe with loops of rope coming out of it and looping back into it. Each rope has a type of connector where it penetrates the PVC to keep it from leaking. Even tells where to purchase the rope and fittings. You mount it on either a loader bucket or 3 point hitch.