Hi, I volunteer with a community garden in my neighborhood. We have a large tree of heaven (in pics) that sits on the border of the garden and a duplex. This year we got massive amounts of spotted lantern flies living on the tree for the first time. Duplex owner wants to take the tree down because his cars sit under it and are covered in sticky black honeydew. Gardeners are complaining because their plots are underneath it, same issue. So it needs to go.
I’ve read some articles suggesting hack and squirt, then waiting for the tree to die before cutting it down to avoid the root suckering. My worry is that this will mean there’s a dying tree right by the duplex and the garden where little kids play, and where people park their cars, and it might fall and hurt someone/something.
Duplex owner got a quote for someone to cut it down and then inject herbicide into the stump. This seems safer in terms of the tree not potentially falling but then I’m not sure this will take care of the root suckers.
What’s the best way to deal with such a big tree of heaven in a populated area like this? Appreciate any advice you can offer, we’re totally volunteer run and trying to do this on a budget.
by CrunchyCarrot9858
4 Comments
You hit the nail on the head with the hack and squirt method. You want to get the herbicide into the phloem while it’s still actively transporting nutrients down to the root tissue, and hence transporting the herbicide. After it’s good and dead then cut it down, and run everything over with a stump grinder.
Hack and squirt first, then remove a few months later. The estimator proposes to cut first then apply herbicide because that is more profitable.
The tree won’t become instantly more likely to fall just because it is dead (root decay takes a few years), and applying herbicide while it is translocating food into the roots for winter will be most effective.
Definitely hack and squirt now, then cut it down in the spring.
Though if you cut it and immediately (like within a minute, no time too soon) do a cut stump application I can’t imagine that it won’t have the same effect and could reduce the number of return visits, but the tree may decide to just take residual energy and dump it into suckers, where I suppose cut and squirt now and again in spring when it’s waking back up might take enough energy from it that dropping it afterwards might reduce the number of suckers/kill it outright.
I generally tend to take any assertion that an invasive can be treated completely successfully in one season as a magical “looks great from my house” solution that isn’t realistic. People do say that these tend to be brittle and at high risk of coming over faster than other trees though.
Ultimately, that you and the rental owner and the community garden members are all on the same page about getting rid of it is a great place to be no matter how you deal with it, and either method is probably going to work with the understanding that some suckering will occur and require some followup either mechanically or chemically, depending on which is more accessible to you.
Alternative idea here because this is a community garden you have access to a large labor force to do weeding of new growth and removing the tree all at once will be cheaper.