Control of Chinese Tallow?

I recently bought property which has sat untouched for the past 6 or more years. I hope to eventually have an organic microdairy there. While taking a close look on the acreage, I found a good-sized chinese tallow, no obvious shoots anywhere, growing alone in a sunny location. I have heard that chopping it down will create a nightmare of new shoots, but don't want to use any non-organic herbicidals. Anyone with suggestions or resources on how to eradicate this tree? Thanks in advance.

Amye

I think chopping it down followed by physical stump removal may be the only way.

If you don't remove the stump, I'm fairly certain that these things are pretty tenacious about coming back up. I think there are some biological agents for stump removal that are based on fungi and such, but they require a pretty dead stump and are really for hastening the already going rotting process. These trees are likely to grow faster than you can get the biologicals going. You probably want to cut it as close to the ground as possible, then try to force it to rot, which may be really tough if the roots are still alive and growing. Moistening it and covering it with black plastic or other material that blocks out the light might do it, but maybe not. Sometimes really tough plants will grow right through it looking for light (I think bamboo will grow right through anything you use to cover it up, for example).

The site at:
http://www.landscape-america.com/landscapes/trees/tree_stump_removal.html

has a description of "organic stump removal," so you might read it for some pointers.

This message was edited Jul 21, 2009 12:14 PM

I was thinking that this direction was the bottom line. Thanks for the details and the link.

Amye

I should just say that I don't have any particular experience with Chinese Tallow although I have heard that they're particularly tough to deal with. I have had issues with other small trees popping up around the house and no matter what I've done in terms of trying to cover them up, the only way I've completely stopped them from coming back up was to dig them out. Luckily, I haven't had to work with anything too large. Even the one that was coming back up right next to the foundation of the house over several years, I finally was able to dig it out by hand.

Good luck!

When I said good sized, I was talking about 4-5inch diameter trunk, so it is not huge, but not small. I didn't even know what it was - the septic/well guy was the one to notice it. He said it was invasive and I'd want to get rid of it. When I checked out PlantFiles, I saw all the negative details and thought "oh no"

I am hoping that continual mowing of the area will also keep saplings from popping up everywhere if I can get control of stump.

Maybe when the septic guys come to put the tank in I can talk them in to doing a little extra excavating :)