How to kills small locust trees on Conservation Rrserve Land

Need to kill about 10 acres of 2 too 3 inch locust trees. Goverment would not allow mowing for many years now want all in just grasses. Dozing is costly even with my dozer and leaves dirt balls. Too big and tall to cut with rotary mower. Might spray but what spray would be best?? Have considered girting ( cut bark around base. Have young help on this. Would use corn knife to just peel bark in small circle. Goverment is ok with killed trees just standing so could just leave alone if dead. Lots of thorns, however I do have set of steel wheels fitting spray tractor if spray. Bought 24d lv however no directions for mixing barrel of spray for brush, just per acre direcrions which is useless in spot spray. What would you fellows use?? I know many will scoff at this , but girting or spray in dark of moon in August will kill best. I used to laugh at this but tried it and was amazed. Thanks for your help Bill

If they are as indicated 3" max, pulling them out might be easy. use a long chain (longer than the locust is tall) and wrap 3 times around from far enough away to avoid thorns. Pile them up and be done with it.
The brush killer will work, but more slowly. Dead standing trees have issues with looks and fire as well. Jim

2,4d will have very little effect on locust trees. I have limited recent experience, but "Brush Killer" will get them. Probably do not want to just broadcast spray the brush killer as it will kill grass also.

Welcome to the Government junk land program. Take fair land and put it in the CRP and you will get junk land out of it. The wash outs and trees make it fun to get back into productive shape.

Farm a few miles away has been in the CRP two times. Twenty years ago I farmed the ground. The tree hugger daughter talked her mother into the CRP program. There are wash outs that are twenty feet deep in some of the low spots. The rest of the ground is six to ten inch trees that are all junk types. Then mix in a bunch of Multiflora rose bushes and you have the farm.

Mother is now in a rest home. The CRP payment is not enough to keep her going. The daughter has had the place for sale now for two years. I heard her last asking price was just $3000 per acre and still no takers. It has four years left on the current CRP contract. So it would be costly to buy it out of the contract. She is only getting $125 per acre on the ground. The next door farm is renting for $275. So the daughter's advice is cost "Mom" big money now.

2012 Farm Bill says CRP may not be what it is/was in the past. They want to make most of the land in there HEL (highly erodbile land). Bye-bye payment, hello having to have a conservation plan actively applied and approved by NRCS. They are going to allow grazing and hay production on the land it sounds like now.

Been a while, but I usta use Remedy (Triclopyr); it worked GREAT.
brush control here

I chop a series of notches completely around the trunk of them and apply full strength glyposate ( Round-up or a generic ) to the notches with a pumper oil can or liquid dish soap type squirt bottle . Do not completely remove the bark all the way around the trunk as there needs to be enough bark left intact to get flow of sap and herbicide both up to the leaves and down to the roots. Killed them for me.

A TLB can easily handle that size tree without disturbing too much soil.

Before you do anything of course check with the program people,you may get yourself in trouble if you spray. Locust is tough,but they are a legume type of plant,thats why they grow where nothing much else will. They are one of natures soil builders that add nitrogen to poor soils. As such they are suseptable to high nitrogen fertilizers much like clover and alfalfa is. Ive been out of the conservation reserve program for a long time,so i am not current on their regs but I think you can fertilize,but maybe not spray,even though spraying would be much cheaper. I currently dont have a problem with locust,sold that place,but i used to use roundup brush killer,mixed about twice the normal rate to kill it there. And it did a pretty good job on the smaller trees (the larger trees ,it was more of a problem getting enough coverage i think).As far as keeping them from spreading into pastures i would fertilize very heavy along the borders. I do however have locust groves on some places planted years ago intentionaly to make posts that i farm around.Those mostly i plow around with a moldboard plow to keep the roots out while farming and when i fertilize for the crop give the edges a little extra. Has kept them contained for nearly 70 years. And just fyi,august is the time to control weeds by whatever means. The scientific reason is that weeds etc are generaly stressed more during that time.Annual and pereinial weeds are trying set seed,its normally hotter and dryer,and if you deal with them then they simply dont have time to grow again and set seed before winter so you get better weed control next year. BUT your idea of doing it in the light of the moon may have some true benifits also.First since its normaly dryer and hotter during the day,weeds sort of shut down to avoid losing moisture,but since there is also dews at night they work harder to absorb it then.If of course you spray then you get a better kill. but also theres the old sign thing too, that my grandad swore by. Since it works,it hard to say its a old wives tale,maybe simply another way of marking the seasons for old folks who were closer to the land.

This will work on them... or most anything of that size...
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200365512_200365512

Get a real Rotary Cutter.I can take my 10ft Sidewinder and cut 3" Locust and not slow up.Or cut the trunks of the big ones with the chainsaw as they make great firewood.

I have an old Sunmaster heavy duty tow behind brush hog it will take down 3inch trees and make chips out of them. It mulches like a mulching lawn mower so you get a nice clean field ready to plow under. Hard to find now but a great brush hog to have.
Walt

What do you get paid for having land in the CRP? I have wondered this due to it seems like a real sweet deal to NOT farm and get paid for it. (if that is what this is)
A per acre price?
A flat rate?

Are you sure the gov will not pay someone to take them out? I know it has been done.

Gee Neighbor, all ya have to do is claim you saw a spotted owl or a snail darter or a blind fish in a mud hole somewhere or found an indian artifact (ancient burial ground) and the Government will take it over and all your worroes are over lol

Im in San Diego (RV Road Trip) visiting my Marine/Secret Service Agent/ICE Special Agent son already saw musician son in Memphis and architect daugher in Austin Texas, will return mid July after 6 national parks in Utah and Colorad, take care

John T

I'm not altogether sure you are correct here.From a conservation stand point,sounds as if this program has done wonders for this place. After all,a bare plowed field,or one planted to a single crop is far less attractive to wildlife ,bio-diversity,etc as the land you described above. Just because its value as flat level stripped bare farm ground has lessened,doesnt really mean the conservation program has failed. Simply that its acheived a different goal. As a haven for wildlife and things,it may be a complete success in the middle of acres apon acres of cropland.Harvesting a deer there is exactly the same as harvesting a crop ( though it may not be the crop YOU want). And if you were completly honest,the problems that caused it to wash,etc were problems that would have plagued you all these years also when you were trying to farm it and quite possibly were residual effects of you farming it in the first place!. The idea of this program is to take marginal land,which you yourself claim it was ,and set it aside. Sounds to me as if it has succeded in this case. And to make a blanket statement that the crp program turns every bit of land into worthless crap is certainly not true. Not my place to judge ,but it sounds as if there may be more than a little hard feelings here.Lets face it,out there in nature,there are no junk trees,theres no worthless land,all grass is good as is every weed. A washout holds water for a few days supplying water to a rabbit,every bite of briars that a deer eats is one less it takes of your corn.That ALONE could actually put more money in your pocket than if you had actually farmed it,if it were marginal ground to start with. Its simply a matter of perspective.

That's their goal. To make it too costly to return to row crop.

I would think any GOOD brush hog would make short work of 2" and 3" trees. I know the old IH model we have will cut them off if you can get them to bend over under the deck. If they are too big to bend over they are too big to go under the deck.

Locust is a clone..A grove, or stand, is all one
big plant, connected by common roots. If you cut
or pull, the remaing, underground part, is
stimulated to put out more growth. We had sucess
on a Wisconsin "State Natural Area", by the
following: The DNR sent in a special Bobcat
equipped with a front mounted cutter/mulcher.That
knocked it all down.Stumps were treated, where visable, with Roundup, from a squirt bottle. The
next spring, profuse new growth appeared every-
place in the stand..everything was sprayed, in that juvinial stage, with "Triclopter". It took
2 years before it was all gone.

In the 80s, a lot of FmHA borrowers with productive land were talked into the CRP program when the borrower was in default. Sell the livestock, enroll in CRP cuz the payment could go to the lender to cover the loan, and the farmer works an off-farm job. Rolling ground was declared HEL, flat sand could always be included as HEL due to "wind erosion".

Result? lots of good acreage taken out of production, switchgrass seeded with gov help turned into weeds, blowing more weed seed across the country to increase the weed pressure on the cultivated acres.

Foreclosed farms were mandated to be turned over by FmHA to US F&W- more weed farms. Wetlands were recreated by busting tiles that gov paid for in the 50s. In "85 I rented a nearby farm that was half tillable- other half cattail swamp. F&W got it, broke the tiles, let it grow up in brush. It"s next to 40 acres of Sportsmen Club land, my 30 acres of cattails, but they never get enough, even if it can"t raise a deer or two ducks. How many people were fed from that farm? Most farms here are +- 70% tillable, north central MN, under 50%. How much land do the huggers need to control from the ones who OWN it?

People starve for food, while good land goes to waste. Granted, there are many acres that should not be farmed, but CRP has been a boondoggle in many ways. Good intentions, lousy execution. It"s called "guv program".

If you are sure that you will not get into trouble by applying a herbicide to "program ground" I recommend Tordon RTU. It comes in a quart squirt bottle. I get it at the local farm supply store. Either cut the tree off and apply to the stump or take a machete and scrape some of the bark off of the tree and apply the Tordon. It needs to get into the inner cambium layer of the bark to get carried down to the roots. It will kill the tree including the roots. I have used it on my property that has a large number or locust trees on it I have cleaned up quite a bit of it using this method.
Dave

its not a program to pay you not to farm,its simply a program to take marginal,or not very productive ground for crops,plant it back to native species grasses. Its simply what it says ,a conservation program. Since the US taxpayer pays for it, it sort of sets aside wild natural areas for us. If a person had really good crop land he would be stupid to put it in crp. But for those areas that are very marginal,or that makes a crop one out of five its a good deal.But its not a real money maker in any way. Part of the requirements is that you have to have farmed or tried to farm these areas for the last few years, And by the time you meet the criteria of the program its doubtful if you make much money at all. I think its paying around 125 or so. note this is not for all lands,Only for ground thats been farmed.its a great program sometimes,simply because it plants ground,and stabilizes soil that normally would have been walked away from and left to blow or wash away when crop prices are low.It also,which a lot of folks dont realize here as being important,gives older folks a certain peace of mind to deal with the us gov instead of some neighbor.and in fact this is what leads folks to the program in lots of cases. Older folks who have farmed most of their lives, see it lots of times as a alternative to fueding kids,neighbors they dont trust etc.its a way for them to hold their land oftentimes for future generations but still have a limited income from it instead of it being a total liability. And many times it allows them to live out their lives on the land when health problems would otherwise force them off. If you pay attention,the largest detractors and voices against the program are those who want to rent or buy this land for their own gain. but trust me, to a old man facing health issues who has farmed the land all his life and nothing else,theres a certain piece of mind knowing that land is safe,and that a check is coming guaranteed from the US gov,and you wont have to deal with a neighboring farmer who probably wont take care of the place like you would. Thats a real inducement towards crp.

A good way to think of crp is soial security for lifelong farmers who have fed the rest of the US all their lives.since they were self employed they may not be eligable for SS,but with crp many times they can instead of just stopping farming for whatever reason and leaving ground bare,plant it to grass,sort of lease it to the US taxpayer,as a conservation zone for animal and plant species belonging to the us taxpayer.

I wish i had locust on my place. Great fence post and poles for building polebarns. I have scrub oak and sycamores on my that i am going to remeove . Glad you had the grabber link. That is what i was going to look at to pull mine up. Still will try to get some use out of them.

go to www.raycomfg.com and check out the forestry mowers. This is exactly what you need for that job. They can be rented.

If you have a front end loader there are brush forks out there that have teeth that bite into the trees and you rip them out. Three inches is getting a bit big for one though.

you know,Ive been all over the US,ive never seen a piece of crp land turn into a "weed farm".In fact the very reason this program exists is to preclude this.It stops folks from simply walking away from a piece of ground. Now I do agree if you considered switchgrass,sideoats,bluestem,gammas,etc as weeds you are right,seeds will blow.but there again it depends on your point of veiw,here those plants are what we want to feed our cattle. sure wish i had 10,000 acres more covered with those CRP "weeds".

CRP is designed to stop soil erosion and enhance wildlife habitat on marginal or eligible cropland. It does this (if you follow a conservation plan) by planting grasses and in some minor cases trees. In Iowa they just approved 100,000 acres to go into the CRP program from this spring sign-up under the old farm bill. And some attractive payments will go with that.If the CRP program wasn't here there would be much more corn planted and harvested in Iowa which would lower the market price farmers receive for corn.Lower prices might be good for livestock producers but terrible for grain farmers. Nationwide there is about 30 million acres enrolled in CRP programs.This has a positive effect on the ag economy thru commodity prices, less soil erosion going into creeks and rivers like the Mississippi and some wildlife enhancements for those that want it.Storm water runoff from CRP acres is generally much cleaner and clearer than runoff from tilled cropland. Most people are in favor of cleaner water if the cost does not bust the budget.

Coupla guys with chainsaws, and you with a can of Tordon and a paintbrush, could sure put those locusts out of business in a hurry. Well, maybe "hurry" overstates it, but I think it would be about the easiest way. Pulling isn't going to do it, because they'll sprout from the other roots.

I have decomissioned various bushes that are famous for putting up shoots from the stump, by cutting, immediately painting with 50/50 solution of Roundup and diesel, then putting a piece of Saran Wrap over the stump and covering with dirt. Not a single shoot.

Forestry suppliers (if I remember the name right), has a hatchet, that has an injector, that applies a squirt of Tordon, into the cut that you make, in the tree. You have to be careful, with Tordon, as it is water carried, and can take any kind of an overdose, downstream, from your target. Anyway you slice it, this will be a lot of work!

You should come around here and watch the Canadian Thistles blow there seed all over the place from the CRP acres they grow on. I have complained to the county FSA office. I have even written the state and federal office. Nothing ever gets done. I never had them until the CRP program came out. Now I have to fight them in my pastures and hay fields. The government should keep out of the land business.