Garlon 4, Canola Oil, and Buckthorn
Wisconsin
Just thought I would report on our progress with the Buckthorn infestation. We have been basal spraying the Buckthorn the last couple weeks with a mix of Garlon 4 and Canola Oil. After less then a week the Buckthorn is severely wilting, even the big ones that are 7-8 inches in diameter. I will get some pictures next week to show you guys. I think the Canola oil is a great alternative to using diesel. The Canola is actually more expensive, but probably better for the environment. We buy the Canola in bulk at Costco but I think you can get it at any grocery store. I hope this helps some of you who are looking for ways to get rid of the Buckthorn infidel!!! Kurt
Awesome news! With the number of people I consult with, this is super! Thanks for sharing. Basal bark spraying is sooo easy. I wish more people understood how easy it is to kill buckthorn...spray (or paint) on bark...dead buckthorn!
Kurt,
A couple of questions: 1. Can you use a standard hand held pump style sprayer? 2. What ratio do you mix the Garlon 4 and Canola Oil?
Thanks
Kurt, and where did you get the Garlon-4?
You can get the Garlon 4 from your local Co-op or feed store. Treefarm knows a few other places to pick it up. In a mixture of one gallon it is 30%Garlon 4 and the rest canola oil. We use a back pack sprayer, it comes out in a small stream, but it only needs to only trickle out onto the base of the Buckthorn. Just make sure on the bigger ones you cover all the way around the trunk. The smaller ones you can just cover a 8-10 inch area near the base of the trunk.
I don't think you need to go with a 30% mix, that stuff is EXPENSIVE. I use a 1:4 mix, or 20%.
Yes you can use a regular hand (garden) sprayer. If you have a lot of spraying to do you might consider fiting it with a low volume spray wand, they run a little over $100 but you waste a whole lot less spray. The on/off valve is at the tip so no driping going from bush to bush. You spray at a lower pressure and that helps you put the spray where you want it instead of wasteing it on the ground.
Many feed stores have Garlon 4 as mentioned but all ag chemical suppliers have it too. Down side is that it comes in 2.5 gallon jugs (and some make you buy a case which is 2 jugs) at over $100 per gallon and the average person only needs a quart. So, find someone to share it with like Treefarm is so willing to do. I have a quart to spare from my last purchase if anyone in SE MN or around Hayward needs some. The stuff works on almost anything including box elder.
Wow, 7-8 inch diameter is big stuff. I bet there is near noghing growing under it. I know of one place adjacent to one of my hunting places that is also that bad but that landowner won't do anything about it.
I'd like to split a jug with someone. The white log end to the left of the beer can is Hawthorn, the rest of the trailer is all Buckthorn.
Wow, you could measure that in board feet or chords!
Not sure what happened to my last post...hmmmm. Anyway, this is all great information. The Archery club I belong to has a bad case of buckthorn infestation. The hard part is convincing some of our Directors that it is a serious problem. Some have told me that this is just how forests regenerate, they have no clue what buckthorn is. I have told them and it seems to not bother them. I am hoping to get a State forester in to look things over and confirm my findings then make a report to the rest of the BOD. Keep the info coming.
Tom
I've always used diesel fuel with the Garlon, 9:1 mix. It's killed even the large Boone & Crockett box elders that are over three feet in diameter.
When spraying an area, I somewhat roam with my backpack sprayer and don't remember where I've been. I can see the diesel on trees I've already sprayed, it's sort of shiny. Can you see the canola oil, too?
SD
You can actually buy a penetrant for mixing with Garlon, it comes with a dye so you can see where you did. Expensive route tho, or at least it was before off-road diesel fuel reached $4.40.
You can also add dye to your mix to help keep track of what you did. (food coloring kind of works) I just use an old can of spray paint and spot the treated trees at shoulder high and always on the north side, or any direction, just so you don't have to walk all the way around the tree to look for your paint. This way you can guage your effectivness the following year, eliminates you wondering if you missed one or if it somehow survived.
Randbow, excellent approach, geting a forester to tell them the same thing you have may get their attention. You just don't get it until you have seen it as bad as Sag and Kurt aparently have it.
Trust me, we have it bad. We select cut a large number of older trees sometime back and this stuff really took off. Had I known what it was back then I could have stopped it a lot easier. My thanks to Treefarm for bringing it to the attention of folks here and getting me interested enough to find out that we had an infestation. I will need to approach the landowners on our borders and see if they will join the fight.
Tom
Yes if are spraying in the winter you have to use the diesel mix. The oils get to slow to flow properly in any temps below 45 degrees. Yeah Jeff we have a serious problem with the Buckthorn. Some stuff is so big that we can't even spray it, some is 10 inches in diameter at the base! But hopefully if we keep working at it we can slowly get it under control.
Some of you older guys might want to check out this link before ridding your land of Buckthorn. Seem's there is some benifit to have some around :)
Sounds like a bunch of crap to me :}
Hey, Maybe we can sell the stuff to that company. Get rid of it AND make a profit...lol.
Tom
If anybody has a lathe (sp) for turning, buckthorn wood is beautiful.
For basal bark spraying (no need to blaze the bark), 20% active Garlon 4 (triclopyr ester)(I use generic called Element...used to be Tahoe 4E) used in conjuction with penetrant oil. You can use this for cut-stump treatments too. I use BasOil Red for my dye. It is an oil soluble dye.
Foliar spraying can be done at 5% (v/v%) Garlon 4 (ester) in water. It makes a great emulsion. Ester is oil like, Garlon 4 is the ester. Garlon 3A is the amine...water like, does not mix with oil penetrants.
The BEST time to apply is late fall through winter, however, at 20% with penetrant, I am successful year-round!
I buy my triclopyr...Garlon 4 active... (ask for Element) from UAP Timberland. I call the Kasota, MN warehouse and ask for Daryl. Daryl is the one to ask foir, he knows whats what. $260.00 shipped to my door in 1 day! That includes $13 tax on that, we shouldn't be taxed.
If everybody gets 5 people engaged in removing buckthorn, we would be much better off. Kinda like that pyramid scheme! Education is key.
Tell everybdy to look for the Oat Rust on thge leaves of Common Buckthorn now. The rust is fruiting and is orange spots under the leaves of every buckthorn. Go out and look now, it is unmistakable.
Also- for the younger plants- you can just pull them out of the ground. With all the rain we've gotten in the last few days, the ground has softened up quite a bit and a lot of them will pull right out. Much better than spraying if you can help it.
Fredbear, I agree if you can avoid spraying that is the best way to go. If you have an area like ours, it is a matter of doing both. We are simply over run with it. I try and fill a few 5 gallon buckets every week with new seedlings and it still hardly makes a dent. I try and pull the seedlings around or new plantings first(spruces) and then move to the other areas. It makes me sick, as I drive around for work, that every wood lot in our area is just full of Buckthorn but most people just shrug it off as oh well.
Oh, ya I think I will rush out and clip some shoots off and chew on them like beef jerky. or maybe not
the only thing with garlon 4 is that you really have to watch your over spray, as this stuff will kill everything it touchs or at the least wilt it bad. when i use to work for wrights tree service,every time we did a right of way, every thing we cut had to get sprayed and we use to mix the garlon 4 to 1 with diesel fuel, and then we put a blue dye in it to see what we sprayed and what we didn't.
OK, CALL ME DUMB HERE, but wouldn't a tractor, and a good 20,000lbs strap work in just pulling the whole damn bush out of the ground?
i'd think you could pull hundreds a day and burn a great bon-fire in the evening.
i know...this will only work on the bigger bushes....but hell, thats the ones you'd want to rid first anyway.
treefarm and others...am i wrong?
137buck, We have noticed that with the Garlon 4 it is not as bad for over spray with the Canola Oil mix. But also we are trying to get rid of Buckthorn in an area that it has taken over as the dominant species. So there is not much to hit with the over spray. Serb, I like your idea but it is not practical for where we are working. We have to cross a wetland area and a creek to reach it and we have not yet constructed a bridge that can handle anything more then foot travel. However in the winter we plan to take the ATV's in and drag out all the big stuff and then spray the bases with Roundup or a Garlon 4 and diesel mix. There is so much of the Buckthorn we are going to build "funnels" around our stand sites!
Serb, it sounds like you & I are fortunate that we dont have to deal with it on our properties.
I have done work on properties that 90% of the understory is buckthorn. The only way they walked their property was to stay on the trails they had brush hogged.
These were taken less then 2 weeks after application.
Kurt, I shed tears looking at those pictures...tears of JOY! Way to go, we need to go after the people with light infestations as well before they wake up in ther morning and see infestation such that you are dealing with. Education, education, education. To wait (procrastinate) is too late.
June is invasives month in WI. I have not been inundated with any information, has anybody else seen information from the Council on Invasives?
A good group to join is IPAW. http://www.ipaw.org/
Link to IPAW. You can purchase the
Invasive Plants of the Upper Midwest by Elizabeth Czarapata from that website. A great pictorial reference book!
Excellent site, got a real education .
Kurt...love to see that buckthon puttin' up the white flag!
Oh come on now, it may be fun to yank stuff out with a D9, for the first hour or so. But it is a lot easier to spray a little Garlon on it and forget about it. All that cuting, pilieing, and burning is for people with too much time and energy on their hands.
Overspray with Garlon, not too likely when you should be basically touching the trunk when you pull the trigger. You should have the tank pressure as low as you can manage with. A driping nozzle being carried around might get a few desireable species tho if you aren't careful.
Our neighbor has his bobcat rigged up to yank some of the smaller ones out of the ground, I'm going to take the cheaper route but not as fun approach and spray the darn things. It's disturbing looking back at video of a couple of our hillsides ten years ago to now and seeing how fast the buckthorn has spread.. Thanks for the info on killing this stuff
I actually just checked some areas where I sprayed. Most of the buckthorn is so dead the leaves have fallen off! Even the big stuff, close to 2 liter size in diameter is dead. I did not notice any damage around the sprayed areas either.
Garlon works just as good on Box Elder, Prickly Ash, and just about any other undesireable tree of bush.
I was out last nite and from a distance thought I had a few box elders that survived last years assault. Turned out the green was grape vine takeing advantage of the sun geting thru the dead branches.
Hello all!
First off let me admit that I'm an interloper here. Not a deer hunter, but a professional wild land manager that has staged a number of deer management hunts, but I digress.
This thread is what caught me attention. I am planning to begin a new buckthorn eradication project on a new site (I've done a number of them) and the idea of using Canola oil is extremely attractive because this site is extremely sensitive (can you say "endangered species?") and if I can replace the diesel with Canola, I'd love to try it. Can I get an update on how well it is working? I've seen plants wilt and recover, so I'd like to see how they're doing now.
Let me close by saying how thrilled I am to see such a thoughtful discussion on an important topic that many hunters still don't recognize. What's more, I'm impressed at how many of you are so motivated to action! Kudos!
Thank you for your time,
John
Vespid,
Welcome to the discussion! Buckthorn is a nasty invader.
I can say that every Buckthorn that I sprayed with the Garlon 4 and Canola oil is DEAD! One large tree my uncle sprayed has come back to life but we think that he did not get all the way around the base of the tree. We were successful killing Buckthorn that was up to the size of a 2-liter bottle down to the smallest diameter we felt needed spraying. Anything over about an inch in diameter I sprayed all the way around the base. Not sure if I had to, but I decided to be safe then sorry. We also have not noticed any other trees around the Buckthorn being effected and over spray is very minimal in the basal spraying process.
Thanks for your kind words, but I think we are all just trying to make our hunting lands better for our kids, grandkids, and ourselves. Good luck with your work!!
alright you botanist's....what the heck is this stuff?
Wild raspberrio or blackberrio Serb.
your too good treefarm.
i have enough of this stuff to feed Etheopia.
My blackberrys and black raspberrys do not look like that. Blackberrys do not have a 4-5 leaf star pattern like that plant or as many thorns. Don't know what that plant pictured is, do the deer eat it?
"My blackberrys and black raspberrys do not look like that. Blackberrys do not have a 4-5 leaf star pattern like that plant or as many thorns. Don't know what that plant pictured is, do the deer eat it?"
Yep - it's a blackberry - many 'varieties' of blackberries around.
Here's a website that might come in handy for some folks: http://www.botany.wisc.edu/herbarium/ If you 'click' on 'Wisflora' you will go to a page that will ask you for a part of a scientific name or common name.
Deer will eat it - typically the leaves, but it's not real high on their list like some other things like soy. If you have it in your area and the woodlot is thinned or clearcut blackberry often comes in real heavy.
"If you have it in your area and the woodlot is thinned or clearcut blackberry often comes in real heavy."
REAL HEAVY??? How's heavy enough to make every person in Africa look like Jarrod , BEFORE SUB-WAY....LOL
I MAY NOT HAVE BUCKTHORN.....But i sure do have berries. And although they may eat them....i have just never seen that personally. Then again, the deer on our properties would rather eat pine bark than brassica and rape.
BUT they sure love beans!!! and the only thing that outdraws beans is this.....ponds!!!
I dug this old thread up from the past because it is that time of year to really hit this stuff. I have been hiting mine hard for over 2 weeks now.
Chris84 posted the following source for a much cheaper triclophor, same concentration as Garlon-4. So use it exactly like Garlon -4 and save a bumch of money. His post says you have to buy a case, two 2.5 gallong jugs. They now also offer cases with four 1 gallon jugs, same price per gallon. Several of us have used this cheaper brand and gotten the same great results as with the original Garlon-4. They ship right to your house and no chemical applicator license is needed for this product.
" The cost was $230 and change for 2 - 2.5 Gal (5 gal) jugs delivered. You have to order at least 2 jugs because they won't break a case. The brand is Vegetation Manager which is the same as the link Badger Bucks (I think) posted. To order contact: Gerald Reeves Alligare LLC Regional Manager (937) 689-9457 [email protected] He is the rep for our region & he said they sell directy to the user (no dealers). Hopefully this will save you guys some money on the fight against buckthorn"
People have posted here good results by mixing one part of 'garlon' with anywhere from 4-9 parts of deisel on cut stumps or on the base of trees and leting them stand. If your buckthorne is smaller you can also mix 1 part 'garlon' with 25 parts water and spray the foliage. I did this last summer on BT and prickly ash with unbelievable results. I was even able to foliar spray very near desirable plants without killing the good stuff. (well most of them anyway)
This stuff will kill just about anything you put it on. Kill all the female box elders you find too but spray a lot on the base of larger box elders. If you miss even one little strip it will take a followup dose the next year.
I started spraying several weeks ago. This was the first time I'd tried so early in the spring. It worked GREAT. Since buckthorn is one of the first things to green up in the spring, it makes it easier to pick out. (It also stays green later in the fall, but most of us have other priorities at that time. Besides, it's 'easier' to spray diesel fuel all over my hunting land in March and April, but a little harder to justify in November.)
For basal bark spraying I have been using the Triclopyr 4 from genericherbicides.com - mixed 0.5 gallons with 3.5 gallons diesel. Works great. I'm going to try the foliar application Jeff mentions above. I have been using Crossbow which is a combination of 2-4-D and triclopyr, but that stuff is pretty pricey too.
Now I will go through and spray the buckthorn I missed - after I get done messing around with the garlic mustard. That stuff is horrible!
BB, the foliar mix with Triclophor works on garlic mustard too.
Yeah, but 2-4-D is $85 for 2.5 gallons and per the label gets mixed 1.33oz per gallon. Check my math, but I think that makes dilute 2-4-D about $0.35 per gallon and dilute triclopyr (per your recipe and pricing) about $1.80 per gallon!!
The only problem with 2-4-D is that it rarely kills 2nd year garlic mustard before it goes to seed. (Same for poison hemlock.) I'd bet that isn't the case with triclopyr. I'll have to try it next spring!
I'm spraying 1st year plants from now through October so that's not an issue. I've been using the 2-4-D on smaller (<18" tall) buckthorn and it seems to be killing them as well.
Your math sounds pretty close. I was gonna say, ya but at least you could avoid having two chemicals around but I pretty much always have 2-4-D around anyway. But, if you are out there doing foliar spray on buckthorne you can hit other 'weed' species with the batch already in your hand. Not having to make two rounds sure makes the price difference less of a factor.
Now that other plants have greened up I should take a pic of the dead patches of buckthorne, prickly ash, and sumack treated via foliar to post. Quite a contrast between dead sticks and desireable green stuff.
bring to top and to reset the clock on this thread falling into the bit bucket
OK.
I'll bite.
Milestone. 3 oz. per 15 gal of h20 plus a surfactant.
Puts the beat-down on willow and cottonwood.
Buckthorn?
I know a 3 percent mix (ie, 33:1 ratio) of garlon-4 generic with water puts the kill on prickly ash and buckthorne when applied to the leafs in early summer. Not sure if it will do as well this late in the year. The only stuff that didn't die was some prickly ash that was so high that I couldn't reach the upper leaves with my sprayer. Had to go back and do trunk treatment on those.
What type of sprayer are you guys using when using triclopyr in a 20% mixture with bark oil? I have a SP sprayer with 62 psi and have tried different nozzles but they only either dribble or send out a stream instead of a diffuse spray which is needed.
Try diluting the oil viscosity with mineral spirits? or apply with brush.
I use what is called and ultra low volume spray wand. Google it to find sellers. Down side is they sell for about $180. Advantage is it sprays a good mist, has the valve at the tip so you don't get drips after each spray, longer than normal wand, build in screen.
It works good for getting a nice even coat of sealer on decks, concrete, and block walls too.
Get a spray tank that doesn't have the funnel like top, it catches too much junk that ends up in the tank. Consider adding a small filter at the bottom of the pickup tube in the tank.
Jeff....you've been around for a long time. Googling buckthorn mitigation brought me here.
Been here a lot longer than 2008.
Re: Two posts above, I thought those ultra low volume sprayers had gone up in price but they are still right around $180
I have been treating my farm for buckthorn this fall. I have been buying my garlon 4 from http://genericherbicides.com. They sell it in quantities as low as 1 gallon. a gallon is $76.99 ans a 2 1/2 gallon jug is 147.50. larger quantities are available and are cheaper. I have been mixing it with "Bark Oil Blue LT" which is sold by http://www.4-control.com/ (Menomonie Wisconsin) for 15.60 a gallon of less in quantities. They also sell a really good 2 Quart Heavy Duty Pump-Up Sprayer for $38.00. I used the sprayer for invasives in my restored 12 acre tall grass prairie as well as to treat the buckthorn. I have been using the generic garlon for a number of years now with excellent results. Can't recommend these suppliers and the equipment enough.
Both the WIDNR and the NCRS have money available for buckthorn removal. They can be contacted through your local FSA county office.
GW, generic triclopyr is cheaper at this link. They ship it right to you. Gotta get a whole case tho, 2-2.5 gal, 4-1 gallon, or 6 quarts to a case.
