The best way I have found to kill honey locust is to girdle them by cutting through the sap wood all around. Once they die completely, they can be cut down. This seems to prevent the suckering you get when they are cut down live.
Agreed!
I used to use this method before I started getting powerful herbicides from the county guys. However, it is difficult for me to girdle many of my mature Honey Locust trees because the droopy branches are also viscious.
RAH (and others),
Do you know WHY girdling works to prevent suckering and adjacent pop up trees from the root nodes?With the heartwood still in place, do the roots keep wasting energy trying to send sugars up the phloem layer to the girdle? And this process is what robs the tree of the ability to sucker or spread?
I have never observed evidence of a liquid ring around my girdled Honey Locust. I do also clear a lot of Siberian Elms (piss elms). They run watery sap when cut, and I frequently see evidence the next spring of liquid transport from the roots. Those elms also like to sucker off of the stumps of felled trees.
(Just trying to learn more, because I too hate Honey Locust trees.)
