Desperately Need a Root

[NeoMatrix]

About 3 years ago someone walking through my neighborhood demonstrated girdling on the red maple in my front yard. At the time it was ~75mm diameter at the base.

No matter what I did the top very slowly died. Unexpectedly the root system sent up lots of feeders. When they got to about a meter high, I cut back all but the 3 straightest tallest feeders. At 1.3m I left the best two feeders. At 1.6m I left the one best feeder. It's back to 5m tall now, about where it all started 3 years ago. As long as the root system is sound, it can survive a lot. =^..^=

I had to Google girdling...
In Oz girdling is known as ring-barking or cutting the bark off a tree in a ring around the tree. Another term used is chemical Tordoning, where an axe cut or hole is drilled into the tree and sprayed with Tordon-Chemical; the tree obviously dies.


Nice little so-and-so neighbourhood vandal... I'm guessing one of your neighbours doesn't like messy deciduous trees in their neighbourhood.

Years ago I remove one big Poinciana tree from my residency when we first moved in. It was a messy deciduous tree that caused the neighbours a lot of regular gutter cleaning grief... A massive storm broke off large branches that narrowly missed our house, over the footpath and the neighbouring fence. The council an I decided it was time to remove what was left of the tree.

[Iowatech]

About 3 years ago someone walking through my neighborhood demonstrated girdling on the red maple in my front yard. At the time it was ~75mm diameter at the base.

No matter what I did the top very slowly died. Unexpectedly the root system sent up lots of feeders. When they got to about a meter high, I cut back all but the 3 straightest tallest feeders. At 1.3m I left the best two feeders. At 1.6m I left the one best feeder. It's back to 5m tall now, about where it all started 3 years ago. As long as the root system is sound, it can survive a lot. =^..^=

If there is any chance that will happen again, you may want to set up a defensive perimeter. And for that, I recommend boxelder trees!
Sure, they are probably one of the most massive weeds on Earth, but they are almost impossible to kill (I've got a rather large boxelder tree in the backyard that apparently was unsuccessfully entirely cut down at least once).
Also, boxelder trees are part of the maple tree family. So you can use what you call the "feeders" on the grill to give the food a nice smokey scent.
(We actually tapped a boxelder tree back in the day and made syrup from the sap when I was growing up. I don't recommend you trying that though. It turns out you need a lot more sap than you'd think to make an appropriate amount of syrup to apply to even one standard waffle.)

[NeoMatrix]

If there is any chance that will happen again, you may want to set up a defensive perimeter. And for that, I recommend boxelder trees!
Sure, they are probably one of the most massive weeds on Earth, but they are almost impossible to kill (I've got a rather large boxelder tree in the backyard that apparently was unsuccessfully entirely cut down at least once).
Also, boxelder trees are part of the maple tree family. So you can use what you call the "feeders" on the grill to give the food a nice smokey scent.
(We actually tapped a boxelder tree back in the day and made syrup from the sap when I was growing up. I don't recommend you trying that though. It turns out you need a lot more sap than you'd think to make an appropriate amount of syrup to apply to even one standard waffle.)

Well there you go...
I never knew you could get box elder(maple family) syrup out of a box elder tree.
I naturally thought that maple syrup was just the sales label for a shop bought product.
I assumed the shop bought syrup was made from just regular sugar,artificial flavour and colours.

I've been headjamacated....

thank you Iowatech.

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[Lagonda]

When we lived on acreage in the hinterland hills we had rich red volcanic soil and the fruit trees loved it. I used to bring boxes of lemons, limes, mandarins and grapefruit into work just to get rid of them. We then had a sea change and now live in a beach side suburb with crappy sandy soil where everything struggles to grow. Our one lemon tree grows in a large pot and struggles to produce enough lemons a season for Mrs Lagonda's gin and tonic.

The one thing that does grow well around here is cocos palm trees, the bloody things are weeds. We are fed up with the large fronds from next doors trees crashing into our garden and everyone of the 1 millions seeds it drops on our side of the fence germinates as well. They might be a sudden casualty of glyphosate die back!

[NeoMatrix]

When we lived on acreage in the hinterland hills we had rich red volcanic soil and the fruit trees loved it. I used to bring boxes of lemons, limes, mandarins and grapefruit into work just to get rid of them. We then had a sea change and now live in a beach side suburb with crappy sandy soil where everything struggles to grow. Our one lemon tree grows in a large pot and struggles to produce enough lemons a season for Mrs Lagonda's gin and tonic.

The one thing that does grow well around here is cocos palm trees, the bloody things are weeds. We are fed up with the large fronds from next doors trees crashing into our garden and everyone of the 1 millions seeds it drops on our side of the fence germinates as well. They might be a sudden casualty of glyphosate die back!

There is some productive soil growing areas down around your part of the country, particularly around the inner hinterland Sunshine Coast area. I've had the opportunity as youth to live around the South East for a few years. I spent my youth on a small farm around the Bribie Island area. We grew small crops on about 3-4 acres out of the 70 acres we had available. We mainly grew produce like watermelon, pumpkins etc. The soil around the coastal fringe where we were was not the most productive, we always had to fertilize a lot, which after operating costs,made the market sale of the produce almost pointless. We sometimes sold off the road side to get a better return.

RE: palm fronds.
I have a similar problem with neighbours palms. The fronds fall over the top of my vehicles. I don't mind to much they haven't dent the vehicles yet.

[blackcat4866]

I've had one of those box elder experiences. A friend had a box elder growing in the midst of his strawberry patch. At first we girdled it. Then we took off all the bark up 2 meters. The persistent bugger sent up tendrils of bark, connecting to the upper part. Then we cut it down entirely and it continued to push up feeders. Then we built bonfires over it. The feeders kept poking up their little heads out of the ash. After nearly 3 months of building bonfires over the stump it finally gave up.

I fully expected it to shoot up feeders out of the blackened hole. =^..^=

[NeoMatrix]

I've had one of those box elder experiences. A friend had a box elder growing in the midst of his strawberry patch. At first we girdled it. Then we took off all the bark up 2 meters. The persistent bugger sent up tendrils of bark, connecting to the upper part. Then we cut it down entirely and it continued to push up feeders. Then we built bonfires over it. The feeders kept poking up their little heads out of the ash. After nearly 3 months of building bonfires over the stump it finally gave up.

I fully expected it to shoot up feeders out of the blackened hole. =^..^=

What you refer to as "feeders", we refer to as "saplings, off-shoots or suckers".

Bugger... Sounds like you need a good dose of chemicals to get rid of the box-elder trees.
Try some home hardware chemical like caustic-soda.
I know caustic-soda will remove tall Pencil Pine trees if place into the root system.

You would believe a fire at the base of the stump would remove all the feeders for sure.

[Lagonda]

I've had one of those box elder experiences. A friend had a box elder growing in the midst of his strawberry patch. At first we girdled it. Then we took off all the bark up 2 meters. The persistent bugger sent up tendrils of bark, connecting to the upper part. Then we cut it down entirely and it continued to push up feeders. Then we built bonfires over it. The feeders kept poking up their little heads out of the ash. After nearly 3 months of building bonfires over the stump it finally gave up.

I fully expected it to shoot up feeders out of the blackened hole. =^..^=

We had a similar problem with camphor laurel trees on our acreage, they just shrugged off ring barking so I had to go around the tree cutting deeply into it with an axe then quickly fill the cut with glyphosate. If you missed an inch of circumference of the trunk the branches above that section didn't die. Even after the main trunk had died the roots kept pushing up suckers, I had do dig every one of them up, cut them and poison them one by one.

Camphor laurels are a problem tree in SE Qld, they are known locally as "green cancer" I think the came from South America but have run riot and are pushing out a lot of the native species. However if you slab them they make magnificent solid timber furniture.

[SwisSeV]

My dad had an avocado tree with 4 varieties on it. The cool part was that they were all fruiting at different times of the year. The one tree always had fruit on it and it was constantly changing through the year. It's a great idea and blew peoples minds. Apparently recent attempts failed, so there is lots of skill and luck involved to get everything to "take".

[NeoMatrix]

My dad had an avocado tree with 4 varieties on it. The cool part was that they were all fruiting at different times of the year. The one tree always had fruit on it and it was constantly changing through the year. It's a great idea and blew peoples minds. Apparently recent attempts failed, so there is lots of skill and luck involved to get everything to "take".

Interesting... 4 varieties on one tree.
Why would the different grafts flower at different times of the year ? You would believe normal seasonal change would make the fruit appear all around the same time.