Herbicides

[Bill Johnson]

I got a call to-day from a fellow asking about herbicides use on his trees at home.
Since historically I've only practiced mass eradication of undesirables species I thought I'd put the question out here for the forum to help me with.
This fellow has planted a wide variety of hardwood and softwood trees on this lot in the last couple of years. They are now at the stage where the grass is starting to crowd them out and he is thinking of spraying glyphosate (roundup) to control the grass.
Where I run into the problem is several of the trees he has growing are suckers off the same runner. If he accidently sprays one or two of these will the product translocate through the root system and take everything out thats growing on the same parent root system.
I told him that if he is going to spray around his trees with a hand sprayer it would be prudent to shield the base of each tree.
If he only had conifers it would be no problem but with hardwoods they tend to be quiet sensitive to glyphosate
Does any one have any thoughts on this?
Bill

[Don P]

Yes it will translocate. Michelle says they made cardboard cones for the sprayer. Serviceberry bloomed today.

[Bill Johnson]

Thanks Don and Michelle. I'll pass that on.

Bill