I use herbicides. I thought I would start a thread to discuss the plethora of herbicides and learn more about their proper use. If you are a strong anti-herbicide person, this thread is not for you. Please start a new thread to discuss the negative issues with herbicides.

I have 30 acres of farm land that I have converted over to a USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). My practice is to support Pheasants and Monarch butterflies. I planted 20 different wildflowers and 4 different tall grasses on the 30 acres. No trees allowed! Problem: I have a thousand or so Poplar tree saplings taking over.

I am not able to pull them up. If you mow or cut them down they come back even stronger. After researching, I decided to try Triclopyr 4 as a Basel bark killer. It's an ethyl based killer for woody and broad leafed plants. You can mix it with Diesel fuel or an oil soluble surfactant (not water). I bought a gallon of triclopyr and 5 gallons or a blue dyed oil surfactant.

Basel bark herbicides are sprayed on the base of the tree or sapling up 12 inches or so. It is supposed to work on trees up to 6 inches in diameter. In my first try, I mixed 16 oz of triclopyr with 112 oz of surfactant. Worked really well. I will try to take some photos…

In my second application I tried 8 oz of triclopyr in a gallon. Waiting for results.

I sympathize about the "popples", Frank; those things send roots for seemingly a mile and then "pop" up where you would least expect it. Good deer browse, though

What about the Roundup brush killer? will that work?

For a basel bark application, I think you need an ester based herbicide with an oil based surfactant to penetrate the bark. You can use glyphosate to spray the leaves, but it would not be all that effective to kill the roots. In addition, spraying the leaves could result in herbicide drift. I think Triclopyr is probably more effective on woody plants.

I also might try cutting the sapling down and applying a herbicide to the stump. I think when you do that you apply the herbicide at full strength.

Ew...

Have you tried pulling the poplar seedlings after a rain storm?
Poplar is one of the easiest of tree seedlings to pull...

A shovel works a treat when the tree is a little larger.

Sink the shovel next to seedling... pull tree and pry up with shovel... very easy!

@stone If they were only a foot or two tall that would probably work. Most of them are 4-6 feet, a few even taller. Also, there are probably 1-2 thousand trees.

Photos: an untreated poplar sapling and a treated one. The treated one is about two weeks after application at a mixture of about 15% triclopyr. The poplars seem very susceptible to the herbicide, so I reduced the mixture to 7%.

We use tordon here. Break a stem and spray or brush it on. Works really good. We're careful with it so as not to have it spread to keepers but it works good when done right.

frankrichards16 said:

Yup... Those come up easily.
It bugs me when the stupid electric company sends out a herbicide crew to poison the trees under the line...
They just make work for me... I don't want to look at those poisoned trees!
So they poison the trees, and then the trees are a lot more work to deal with than if they'd just requested that I take them out!

Someone that wanted butterflies... should appreciate that poplar is the host plant to the tiger swallowtail... so... one of the first things that I planted here... There were none... and no tiger swallowtails... until after I planted the poplar trees.

I might have to try tordon, looks effective.

They're a host for Mourning Cloak butterflies, too .

The CRP practice that I signed up for does not allow any trees. I guess it's supposed to be a prairie.

I think if you left them alone you would quite quickly have a poplar forest, rather than a prairie. Any forested land up here that gets logged off quite rapidly grows up into poplars.

frankrichards16 said: I might have to try tordon, looks effective.

Tordon quickly, IF, you put a cut into the tree bark and apply it to that cut.

With the number of trees you have, labor intensive.
I have dispatched trees 4 ft. tall by spraying brush killer on the leaves; best if done twice.
You could just cut the tree off waist high and brush/spray the cut trunk.

I once replanted a garden , guessing, 12 by 8 after digging up a huge number of trees, some six feet high, buckthorn and poplar.
I then took a clippers and cut them down to 4 to 6 inch twigs and put them in a 70 gallon portable refuse bin.
Filled that sucker to the point the lid just barely shut.
It had been my grandfather's garden but after he died some medical situation go to my aunt, who had been a gung-ho gardener and it, and her flower gardens sat untouched for 10 years.
Amazing how trees can take over.

the grasses and wildflowers are really at maximum growth right now, so it is very wet (dew) in the morning to cull. It is dryer in the afternoon, but it is too hot for me to venture outside. It seems like spring or fall is a better time to do this. a cut bark and tordon sounds doable.

Frank Richards, you have found the answer! Proper use of right chemical! The problem is many would not want to just apply to only problem trees, just wholesale spray everything. Have to get bac or TV show, game, etc. People today often want a fast, cheap, easy solution to any problem. My lymphoma was caused by a farmer spraying his field with RoundUp even on windy days. He did not have time to do only on windless days. Wind carried it up the bluff to me. Lucky, I went from 3 months just by eating organic, deleeting sugar and prayer from many friends. In one year I was in remission. If he had been like you, responsible, considerate of others around him, I most likely would not have gotten lymphoma.

Perennials like trees die best when sprayed in late summer-early fall, when they are moving food reserves out of the leaves into the stems, roots or bulbs. Often spring sprays won't kill due to the plants pushing those nutrients out to the developing leaves.
A pre-emergent soil herbicide such as Surflan can prevent new seeds from germinating when applied in the winter- early spring, it won't harm established plants, -check the label for that- and gives you plenty of time to get it applied over the months of winter.

A pre-emergent soil herbicide might be somewhat costly and difficult to apply to 30 acres? I have been hand spraying the trees and it seems like I have not made much progress:) I can spray one gallon of herbicide in about one hour. For me, that's a days work:)

So much spraying. I don't have the answers but I'm glad we are seeing a better alternative. It's all I can handle to try to keep a few small cultivated areas (vs. the mowed area.) There's a limit to how much one person can maintain. Not sure that trying to have a meadow in an otherwise forested area that is only possible if a lot of 'cide is sprayed, is a good idea. Saplings don't come back stronger in our mowed area but what is the fine line between mowing too often for meadow plants and actual control of saplings? IDK either...

Mowing or burning is recommended every 5 years for the CPR practice in question. I agree that saplings are not a problem in a mowed lawn. I have not hired a local farmer to spray the entire 30 acres. I am spot spraying the individual saplings. I do not see how that would be considered "So much spraying".

To someone who has never sprayed anything, spraying a gallon of it sounds like an enormous amount.