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Controlling Smooth Sumac 6/29/2012 1:43:11 PM

Be better titled as eradicating Smooth Sumac.

This stuff is invasive and seems to thrive on lack of water and poor soil !

From what I can see the stuff can easily take over several acres a year, and it chokes everything else out, even the deer don't seem to like to eat it.

It has no benefit that I can see.

I've probably got 2-3 acres of this stuff growing, some of it 6 foot tall and so thick you couldn't walk through it.  Eradication has started.  Cutting this stuff does not work, it comes back even stronger.  Plowing it does not work, as even the smallest root segment will sprout LOTS of new shoots.

So I'm actually doing a combination of cutting and spraying to erradicate it.  If you are going to cut it, do so before it starts putting out seeds (see pic), if you allow it to go to seed before you spray or cut, you are going to have a lot of work as the seeds stay viable for 2-3 years.  In some places it was so tall and so thick I ran it over with a brush hog, and then waited 4 weeks or so and started spraying the shoots.

I think it will take a 2-3 years to erradicate it, as you have to break the cycle of the seeds and the roots from shooting up, but well worth it.

 

 

 

 


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