You should be about right on the mesquite with the remedy/reclaim mix (foliar) now. The soil temp is up there, the leaves have turned, and you have had moisture. I've never used it on retama - it is a tough customer. I've never found anything that could survive a remedy/diesel cut stump treatment.

A fall foliar treatment with a picloram product is the prefered method for huisache. It is wired differently than mesquite.

Thats what my experience has been, B1. The Remedy/Reclaim mix will get Retama, too, it just takes more chemical because of lack of leaves on the plant.

Basal spray with remedy and diesel works very well on retama/palo verde, they are easy to kill that way. The "trunk" is pretty soft compared to huisache and mesquite and sucks it right up. Not much leaf there for foliar spray. Basal spraying works well in the heat of late summer, especially if it's dry.

Picloram/22k/P+D works well as a foliar spray on briar roses if you have those.

You can "knock back" mesquite with a quart of P+D per acre, but you won't kill more than 20% or so. But you do get some control of new growth.

Napalm is the only thing that will work on mesquite & cedars.

Tordon kills everything

The landowners of our deer lease cut down the mesquites with a chainsaw as close to the ground as possible, then pour about 2.5 inches of rocksalt around the base of the stump, then pour diesel over the stump and rock salt. They swear that the rocksalt and diesel around the stump prevent any new branches/saplings growth. We cut down a good size mesquite last yr, so when i head down there next time, i'll take a look at it to see how that stump is doing and if it works...

Don't mesquite trees usually kill off other nearby competing plants by slowly increasing the salinity of the surrounding soil over time, or something like that?

Uh, no. Competition for sunlight and water does it. There's nothing prettier than a native "bull mesquite" bottom where it turns to Texas Wintergrass and Wildrye in the winter after the canopy drops.

lglidewell....

are those red-berry junipers?

The reason I ask is that I dont have any experience with those, but the blue-berry junipers will die (99%) if they are cut off and all green is removed. This is the way we killed them back in "the old days" before Bobcats with cutters and sprays that will actually kill them now.

I still kill them this way. I suspect you cannot kill a red-berry one that way.

Makes sense. Kind of like nothing wants to grow under a big juniper or liveoak, either.

We had tons of Mesquite at our place in Madisonville. The only way we could keep the land clear of them was by bull dozing the trees and then apply herbicides regularly. You can get the herbicide at any feed store. We did this 15 yrs ago and the land still looks great.

Allen76, I really am not sure. But if they landowners of our lease say it works, it must, because the mesquites on that place are very few and far between. The junipers on their place they doze over with a bobcat and they are periodically coming back through the open fields on their place dozing those junipers - seems like those trees are almost impossible to get rid of...

dp

[This message has been edited by lglidewell (edited 5/22/2008 2:00p).]