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My yard has severe root sucker problem, it's like the picture on 30% of my yard. so I decided to take the tree down (stump not removed yet), but after that, I don't know what should I do next to get rid of the problem. I have 2 options in my mind.

  1. Pour chemical to the stump and hopefully, it brings the chemical to the root so I don't get root sprout all my yard, once the stump died, either grind or take the stump out.

  2. Just go straight and grind it now. but the problem is, I have seen horror stories where even without stump, the root suckers still coming out for years and years... and I have no way to kill the root now/

Could you give me some ideas?
suckers suckers2
Bence Kaulics
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Yichaoz
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2 Answers2

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Trees can look nice, take care of themselves, and help local ecosystems, so keeping them alive has big benefits. Many tree species will just die when you cut them down, but many other trees are very good at coming back after a trauma. They react to being cut by working hard to replace the leaf area they lost. If you don't cut the main stem, the tree will make fewer low branches and root suckers and because of that, even some invasive species are dealt with in forests by not cutting them down (just mowing the seedlings). So in leaving a main stem, you invite the tree to do its business out of your way up in the canopy.

If you really want to kill them, it's not very hard, but can be some work. Grinding out the stump is one way, but it also works to continuously cut off the newly sprouted branches until the tree runs out of energy.

If you just keep mowing the lawn, the perceived problem will most likely eventually disappear. So if you're not in a rush, there's no need to bring out the big guns.

Rohit Gupta
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iwein
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I have had oaks, sweetgums ,and elms cut down with no root suckers. Crepe myrtle will put up a lot of suckers, but it is more of a shrub. So it depends on what kind of tree you mean. I see nothing that looks like root suckers in your picture.

blacksmith37
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  • Do you see those plants in between of grass, they are sucker that come from the root of the live oak tree, I digged and verified, they are in a very large area. I tried to pull them but they keep growing back so I decided to cut the tree down. But now I don't know if I should use chemical and grind or just grind it – Yichaoz Jul 30 '21 at 02:22
  • For some reason I can now expand the photo and see the oak shoots. I would think frequent mowing would eventually stop them. My oaks ( Water) did not do that. – blacksmith37 Jul 30 '21 at 17:09