I completely agree with esshup's method! For expensive herbicides it is significantly more efficient using a brush to apply it exactly where you need it. I get 2" chip brushes at Harbor Freight and just throw them away after use. (They used to be $10 for a 36-pack.)


More advice:

Trees start to heal up very rapidly. I usually cut a small stand of trees, then clear the cuttings, and then poison every stump and stub immediately thereafter. If you clear one day and poison the next day, I believe your kill rate will go down.

However, when utilizing the method described above, it is very nice to have a strong color dye in your herbicide! (I like the bright blue.) You would think it would be easy to remember which stems you have treated, but as you cut larger areas it becomes surprisingly easy to miss some and to double-treat others.

I do not think "more is better". The innermost layer of bark (phloem) is where the sap transport system is located in the tree. That is how your herbicide is spread to the roots. I try to make my cuts horizontal. Sharp angle cuts just let some of your poison run off the cut and be wasted. I just paint the top with a single brush swipe such that it is all wet and maybe a little excess is barely running down the stump/stem. For bigger stumps, make a couple of passes to make sure you get the entire thing wet. For REALLY big stumps, I only paint the outside rim. (That was for 40" diameter trees, but yielded a 100% kill rate.)

I would definitely spend some money on a really nice pair of loppers. (I have the old Fiskars loppers with their "power gear", but of course they don't make my exact model any more. If I keep it sharp, it easily cuts 2" saplings - but I am a big guy.)

When I need to clear more ground than that, I use my Husqvarna Brushcutter. I then put on my mask and gloves and use a sprayer to apply herbicide and go fast. I will always miss a few, but it seems easier to me to go fast and get any survivors the following year rather than go slow and tedious.

I hope that helps you make a more efficient treatment plan. For doing farm labors like that, I always want to hear from the old geezers on the most efficient way to do the work!

P.S. I get my herbicides from our county Noxious Weed Department. (It will probably be called something else in Texas.) They sell me the herbicides at cost. Further, I can talk to the head of the department. I just tell him what I need to treat, and he tells me which product the experts use in my exact same climate. They even gave me some dye for free last year because one of the new guys accidentally poked holes in some of the bags while unloading the boxes.