Control of rhododendron in woodland

[peds]

What's popping dudes,

 

One avenue I'd like to get into in the near future is eradication or at least control of invasive species in forests and woodlands, specifically rhododendron due to its devastating behaviour, but anything growing in the wrong place, really. Just drive around on a tracked chipper all day shredding them, stacking any worthwhile logs as habitat, and treating the stumps appropriately to prevent regrowth. I've seen people using Ecoplugs for this. 

Being a smelly hippy, I'm 100% opposed to spraying herbicides of any kind, because of the damage they do at all stages down the line, and because it simply isn't as effective as using sharpened steel followed by the removal or destruction of all material where necessary and denying the opportunity for any regrowth - quicker maybe, and probably cheaper, but definitely not as effective. 

 

But... I don't have any experience of using Ecoplugs, and given the enthusiasm for rhododendron to just keep on trucking and the necessity for repeat visits to keep it snipped, I'm prepared to be schooled on why they are the only technique that would be viable in a commercial sense. If anyone can suggest an alternative that would be more in keeping with my own scruples I'd be absolutely thrilled, but I'm also willing to make allowances if needs be, if it's done in pursuit of the greater good. 

 

In a garden I'd be covering and tieing the stump with thick plastic sheeting,  lorry tarp style, recommending the customer just snip any suckers with secateurs whenever they appear, and to give me another call if it gets out of hand again. Not really a viable option on a woodland scale, though.

 

So yeah, that's my question. Looking forward to any advice or experience you might have. 

 

Oak, birch, and chestnut woodland being eaten by rhododendron 

[nepia]

My (large) garden experience of ponticum is that for every stem large enough to get an Ecoplug or two into there are 20 stems too small.  The plant doesn't conveniently grow from a central trunk with all other growth emanating from that; the root and stem system is more of a shallow tangled mat.  On a woodland scale I'd expect to need to rip up the entire mat.  In hot dry weather you may get away with it being stacked and left to desiccate but in winter it would certainly root and grow again.  So ideally you need to burn it or shred it but I get that on a commercial footing those options may not always be viable

[slack ma girdle]

I stopped using Ecoplugs, because it is a very expensive way of treating stumps, and the plastic will still be there in 500 years

I just use neat round up in a 10mm hole, 1-6 holes depending on the size of the stump.

I use a hand held sprayer which has a pump handle on top, you just need enough pressure for the Glyphosate to trickle out.

[Muddy42]

We've had a few successful localised eradications of rhodo.  The approach has been to cut and bonfire it by hand.  The bigger the bonfire the more efficient it is.  A combination of hand tools and electric chainsaws work well for this.  Petrol saws are ok, but they just spend ages idling. Painting glyphosate, on freshly cut stems with a paint brush works well and is kinder to the environment than a spraying regrowth.  Whatever you do you need to keep at it, shoots and seedlings will keep appearing for years to come. On small areas you can simply pull up smaller stems and nip out seedlings by hand.  However on large areas of bare ground you will end up with a carpet of thousands of seedlings that would be impossible to pull up manually.  I've heard of people using chippers, bulldozers and there is even a type of bailer available.  I've used a digger once, we made piles of branches and set fire to them after a year - worked well.

[peds]

1 hour ago, slack ma girdle said:

I stopped using Ecoplugs, because it is a very expensive way of treating stumps, and the plastic will still be there in 500 years

I just use neat round up in a 10mm hole, 1-6 holes depending on the size of the stump.

I use a hand held sprayer which has a pump handle on top, you just need enough pressure for the Glyphosate to trickle out.

 

How expensive per unit? As I say I've never used them, I'm ignorant of the economics of it.

I know the pump you mean, I use one for mite control in the henhouse. Handy wee yoke.

I've seen vertical plunge cuts made with picco bars (or similar) into bigger rhody stems and filled with chemical too... but that's not really my style, and something I'd rather avoid!

 

Burning is not generally allowed for disposal of arisings here in Ireland, but people often tend to look the other way for agricultural purposes... I wonder if a prolonged and controlled burn directly on top of the rhody stump would encourage the ****************er to stop growing back, but again, it's not really a practical approach for hundreds of individual stumps throughout a forest.

 

Tricky question really. 

[peds]

1 hour ago, Muddy42 said:

We've had a few successful localised eradications of rhodo.  The approach has been to cut and bonfire it by hand.  The bigger the bonfire the more efficient it is.  A combination of hand tools and electric chainsaws work well for this.  Petrol saws are ok, but they just spend ages idling. Painting glyphosate, on freshly cut stems with a paint brush works well and is kinder to the environment than a spraying regrowth.  Whatever you do you need to keep at it, shoots and seedlings will keep appearing for years to come. On small areas you can simply pull up smaller stems and nip out seedlings by hand.  However on large areas of bare ground you will end up with a carpet of thousands of seedlings that would be impossible to pull up manually.  I've heard of people using chippers, bulldozers and there is even a type of bailer available.  I've used a digger once, we made piles of branches and set fire to them after a year - worked well.

 

Ah, just saw this after writing my last post. When you say bonfire, do you mean on the stump to kill it, or just to clear the brash? I reckon a tracked chipper trundling through the woods is the simplest and, here in Ireland, the most legal solution... but it's killing the stumps, en masse, that has me stumped!

 

Regarding the wee seedlings, I'd imagine a walkaround at least once a year per site pulling them up would be a fairly nice day out!

I already do that when I'm out with the dogs anyway, it gets the job done easy enough. 

[Muddy42]

Just now, peds said:

 

Ah, just saw this after writing my last post. When you say bonfire, do you mean on the stump to kill it, or just to clear the brash? I reckon a tracked chipper trundling through the woods is the simplest and, here in Ireland, the most legal solution... but it's killing the stumps, en masse, that has me stumped!

 

Regarding the wee seedlings, I'd imagine a walkaround at least once a year per site pulling them up would be a fairly nice day out!

I already do that when I'm out with the dogs anyway, it gets the job done easy enough. 

 

Just to clear the brash.  Its a nice idea to have a bonfire on a green stump to kill it but it doesn't kill them off and is impractical for a whole wood. Rhodo doesn't have single roots, but a maddening series of stumps roots and creepers.  On a woodland scale, I can't see how you are going to kill it without some form of glyphosate.  If you go down the chipper route, make sure its a big one, you want it to be able to cope with the biggest/widest branch you can lift. Recutting sections takes up time and rhodo branches comes in all shapes and sizes

[peds]

3 hours ago, nepia said:

My (large) garden experience of ponticum is that for every stem large enough to get an Ecoplug or two into there are 20 stems too small.  The plant doesn't conveniently grow from a central trunk with all other growth emanating from that; the root and stem system is more of a shallow tangled mat.  On a woodland scale I'd expect to need to rip up the entire mat.  In hot dry weather you may get away with it being stacked and left to desiccate but in winter it would certainly root and grow again.  So ideally you need to burn it or shred it but I get that on a commercial footing those options may not always be viable

 

Yeah, there really doesn't seem to be a one size fits all solution. I wonder about processing everything above ground as part A, then coming back with a digger and grubbing all the stumps out as part B in the future... but that might just piss off what little is left in the ground and encourage it to bounce back stronger!

They are a bastard, rhododendrons.

[peds]

10 minutes ago, Muddy42 said:

 

Just to clear the brash.  Its a nice idea to have a bonfire on a green stump to kill it but it doesn't kill them off and is impractical for a whole wood. Rhodo doesn't have single roots, but a maddening series of stumps roots and creepers.  On a woodland scale, I can't see how you are going to kill it without some form of glyphosate.  If you go down the chipper route, make sure its a big one, you want it to be able to cope with the biggest/widest branch you can lift. Recutting sections takes up time and rhodo branches comes in all shapes and sizes

 

Yeah, I see what you are saying with all of the above, especially the big chipper. I'd love to invest in a big tracked fella, I'm hoping to get the finances together enough next year for one.

 

And yeah, I'm a total smelly hippy, I'd tiedye my chainsaw trousers with mushroom pigments and run the chipper on upcycled chip fat if I had the luxury of time, glyphosates are far from my usual toolbox, but I'm willing to concede that this might be a problem where the nuclear option is probably the only realistic one, when someone else would be paying the bill. 

[5thelement]

I watched Bobs team @aspenarb strip out some pretty extensive Rhododendrons from a Larch plantation near Westerham a good few years back. 
Digger with rake and decent operator was slowly pulling up each main stem, the layered shoots being pulled out along with it, pushed up on the ride to be mulched into oblivion by a large HP tractor. 
The only stuff that needed chainsaw and spraying was growing close to retained trees. 
I went back there a couple of years later, very minimal regeneration.