WEEDY TREE CONTROL

Question

In the past you’ve recommended cutting woody weeds off close to the ground and putting weedkiller paste on the stump. We’ve got wilding pines, banksias and others in the bush that are too big to cut down easily. Any tips?

Answer

The easiest way is to ringbark them. The photo is of a macrocarpa ‘weed’ five metres or so tall. Cutting it down would damage nearby bush, and there’s also the difficulty of carting a chainsaw and necessary safety equipment through the bush. The only gear used here was a foldaway pruning saw, herbicide gel and gloves – easy to carry. Make two cuts 25mm or so apart, close to the base going through the bark right around the tree. Then make a downward cut between the other two and use the tip of the saw to prise the strip of bark from the wood beneath, grab a hold of it and pull, in most cases you’ll find the bark peels easily from the wood. Apply a thin layer of gel to the cut surface and the job is done. Within a few weeks the tree will be dead and it will gradually decay and fall apart causing little damage to the bush around it. This particular macrocarpa took more than an hour to track down. I’d spotted it from the road but in the bush it proved hard to find, yet only took 10 minutes to ringbark and paste. You’ll get a high success rate with this method – it hasn’t failed me yet.