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I have a hedge row near my house that I would like to keep thick with low growth but prevent new trees from growing. The reason is they grow fast and block my cellular antenna.
Is there some sort of spray available that will kill off trees but allow lower growth to live?
Is there some sort of spray available that will kill off trees but allow lower growth to live?
Not that I know of. Each plant is a whole organism. If you kill the tree top with a spray (poison) you damage or kill everything.
Usually, depending on what kind of plants your hedge is composed of, if you want them to stay short and full you have to cut off the tree tops to encourage and shape fuller growth at their lower levels.
Not that I know of. Each plant is a whole organism. If you kill the tree top with a spray (poison) you damage or kill everything.
Usually, depending on what kind of plants your hedge is composed of, if you want them to stay short and full you have to cut off the tree tops to encourage and shape fuller growth at their lower levels.
What kind of hedge plants are they?
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I'm sorry; I didn't use the right terminology. What it is more or less are wild plants such as blackberry bushes, vines and other weeds. It is just a tree row separating two hay fields in the country.
I am looking for some way to prevent tall growth so I don't have to trim the trees that start growing out of it every summer. I can get in the and trim them manually but I have to wade into the stuff and am concerned about snakes (prime habitat for copperheads).
Sounds like a barrier composed of a whole bunch of weedy plants and nuisance trees then.
Do you have to keep a barrier between the two hay fields? Does it act as a necessary wind-break? If not then why not poison or slash and get rid of the entire hedge - vines, blackberry brambles, trees, weeds and all? I think that might be easier than constantly wading through vining brambles and snakes just to keep the trees down.
........ Or else erect a tall tower for your cellular antenna.......
I know of no herbicide that isn't translocated throughout the entire plant. Plants don't have hearts, but they definitely do have circulation.
It does happen that a plant that receives only a tiny dose survives, but I don't see how you could calibrate your sprayer to deliver a dose that small, or how you'd prevent gravity from acting on the herbicide if you tried to just spray the tops of the plants.
However, if I am understanding you correctly, you do want some kind of hedge there, but would rather not go to the trouble and expense of ripping everything out and starting over with a new mix of plants. In that case, I'd just whack the tops off of everything once a year or so. This treatment might cause some trees to give up, but others will turn into "bushes", as long as you keep up the whacking.
How about relocating the antenna? It would be less trouble in the long run.
not sure how much growth is acceptable to you, but our arborist at work treats some of our trees with an inhibitor that limits the growth of the crowns of the trees...not sure of the product they use but it's probably similar to this...
Get a brush bar for your tractor (the kind that mounts on the side). Set it for the height you want the hedge row to be, and run down the hedgerow trimming off everything that is taller. At first you will have to do it often (weekly) after a while, you will only need to trim it down once in a while.
I think I get it. You have a natural hedge and tree seedlings are germinating and coming up into the hedge, and right now you need to go in manually with loppers to cut out the seedlings and saplings as they come up. Probably squirrels are burying nuts that produce these saplings.
So what can you do? You can use a focused spray of roundup on the seedlings once they come up even an inch. Just don't get it on the lower leaves of the hedge. You can find a way to keep the squirrels from burying the seeds, maybe with chicken wire? You can hire someone to go in every couple years and do just what you are doing. It is a tough one.
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Each plant is a whole organism. If you kill the tree top with a spray (poison) you damage or kill everything.
What it is more or less are wild plants such as blackberry bushes, vines and other weeds. It is just a tree row separating two hay fields in the country. 
