Post oak with understory trees

TheresaM

Hello, I live on a ranch and have many very old post oaks. Many of the oaks in the house area are surrounded by young oaks ,some a few feet away, some barely under the canopy of the big ones. Question please: Do these share the root system as the old oaks, or are they just baby oaks from acorns ? How do you tell? I want to poison some of the smaller 2-4 feet tall ones, but do not want to harm the old oaks.

dov

You might find this thread quite interesting.

TheresaM

The small oaks I have next to the big ones are much larger than the ones in the photos in that other post. Mine are 4-5 ft. Seems it could be dangerous to poision these babies even if they are on their own root system, as they might be grafted to the old oak nearby. Am I correct on this? Should I just be content with whacking them down manually, ie no poision?

dov

That's about it. Manual methods are by far the safer option. They leave a nicer finish afterwards as well.

TheresaM

My poison method leaves a neat appearance. On our ranch, here in Texas, we kill mesquites by chainsawing them to the ground, then drill holes into the stump, and then paint with undiluted. "Remedy" which contains triclopyr. I did this to one of the oak babies yesterday, I now have regrets. Thanks for your help.

Brent Ferris

It is a pity that we can tell people what not to do, and they just try it out, because -- in their experience -- it worked really well for this plant, so it will probably work just as well for the problem plant. And after all, most of us don't live in the questioner's neighbourhood, so how could we know.

It is a lot like telling a child not to put their fingers in fire. They always get a far better idea ignoring you, and stuffing the pinkies in. Pity......