Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Will drying kill cattails?

I have drained my forage / sediment pond. It dried sufficiently, and I mucked it out with my small tractor. There were a lot of cattails in the shallow areas. Before I was able to scrape all of them out, the ground became hard and dry, so the tractor bucket won't dig at all. It's all sunbaked now and the remaining cattail roots I have dug up with a pick are kind of limp, like noodles. Are they, hopefully, dead? There are a lot of dry cattail stubs still sticking out of the parched ground.

Make that dishwasher quality gloves and not nurse gloves.

Treat cattails in late Summer/early Fall when they are sending nutrients to root systems to make it through the Winter. If you treat earlier likely only burning leaves and will result in partial control. Trick to permanent control is getting herbicide to the roots - so patience.

John,

I can rent a John Deere 17D excavator for $190/day (Kansas). It is only about 4200#, so you can haul it with a 1/2-ton pickup.

For a little more, you can rent a larger mini-excavator if you have access to a truck that can handle more weight. (If you don't have a suitable trailer, you can probably rent one at the same place.)

I keep a list of excavator projects for my farm. When the list gets long enough, I grab a rental and put in a full 8-hour day on the meter.

In my experience, HP at that low price is a bargain compared to my pitiful man-power!

I would spend the first four hours trying to figure out how to work the excavator before I could be productive.