Over the winter I spent countless hours treating thousands of box elders that have invaded my 21 acres of crp pines. Use garlon 4 25% in fuel oil as a basal bark treatment. Also used tordon as a slash and squirt tx. on some. Now they are leafing out like nothing is wrong. A few look dead and some have leaves coming out only on top branches. My question is, is this a slow dying process and should I just be patient or did the treatments fail.

I haven't tried either of those methods, but they may take time. If you are serious about killing them try cutting the tree, and spraying the stump ASAP.

Box elder are tough trees (ugly too). Seems to me the chemicals have run their course - I'd cut/girdle the trees left - or let them be. The pines will eventually outcompete the Box Elder - with some control on your part.

FH

I agree with the Farm hunter. Boxelders are pioneer species and don't do well with competition. Your pines will outgrow them and shade them out. In the meantime whack the more troublesome individuals off.

Are your pines big enough to do a control burn next winter? Knocking them back should give the pines an advantage.

Pines are 8-14 ft. tall and spaced tight together. Due to large quanities cut and girdling would be labor intensive. I have a smaller tractor and brush hog that will fit between the rows of pines. I could cut the larger trees and spray them and than brush hog over the smaller ones, spraying them as well. Than the pines should be able to take over..

The pines will take over anyhow - they are usually a Climax species - and Box elder are relatively short lived. The box elders usually show up in a poor soil - disturbed site first - but 30 years is a long time for most Box Elder - especially when competing with Pines.

Knowing this I'd cut the largest ones, and monitor the rest - thier numbers should start declining now.

Good news, the battle is not lost. Box elders sustained heavy losses over past two weeks. Many that have leaves curling up and fallilng off, in some areas there are no leaves on any of the elders. There are some that still look fairly heathy so I plan on waiting a month an hitting the healthy looking ones at that time...............dabow

Give it some time....remember the key to a basal treatment is to make sure you treat enough of the bark surface...on a stem under 6 inches, you treat from soil line up to 15 inches. If multiple stems, treat every stem.

cut the box elders down or kill them by hitting the center with a chainsaw and letting them stand, sooner or later they will fall and die. We do this alot in the woods or we just cut them down and use for fire wood