Mesquite war results so far

[oldandslow2]

I ordered a quart of Crossbow to see if it was effective and used it on a small bush about 3' high and a larger one in the 7-8' range. I followed the directions exactly on mixing it with diesel and how to apply it. The smaller bush appeared dead within a week and remains so. It took quite a bit longer for results on the larger one and I missed getting 3 branches enough to kill them and resprayed them this morning. I also sprayed 3 large bear grass ASA as soapweed yucca by the smaller bush just to see if they would die. Yep, Crossbow appears to kill bear grass. Goody, as I have plenty of them to get rid of.

Due to some rain in the last of August I needed to take care of the lawn and trimmed and edged the back yard after doing the mesquite but that is far as I made it. I have been taking cipro which does not play well with sunshine even using sunscreen but I thought it might be out of my system as I took the last pill Sunday morning. After about 45 minutes of sunshine I felt like I being held over hot coals and I haven't quit stinging yet. I'll get back to killing mesquites and mowing next week.

[Dee]

I smoked a couple a racks of ribs with mesquite Sunday.

[DDZ]

I ordered a quart of Crossbow to see if it was effective and used it on a small bush about 3' high and a larger one in the 7-8' range. I followed the directions exactly on mixing it with diesel and how to apply it. The smaller bush appeared dead within a week and remains so. It took quite a bit longer for results on the larger one and I missed getting 3 branches enough to kill them and resprayed them this morning. I also sprayed 3 large bear grass ASA as soapweed yucca by the smaller bush just to see if they would die. Yep, Crossbow appears to kill bear grass. Goody, as I have plenty of them to get rid of.

Due to some rain in the last of August I needed to take care of the lawn and trimmed and edged the back yard after doing the mesquite but that is far as I made it. I have been taking cipro which does not play well with sunshine even using sunscreen but I thought it might be out of my system as I took the last pill Sunday morning. After about 45 minutes of sunshine I felt like I being held over hot coals and I haven't quit stinging yet. I'll get back to killing mesquites and mowing next week.

The plant you are trying to kill, the crossbow may work better if its sprayed on the plant when it first starts to leaf in the spring.  A forester told me that is when to spray crossbow on Multiflora Rose. Multaflora rose are pretty tough and the crossbow killed it completely when spraying at sign of first leaf in the spring.  Whats nice about killing multiflora rose is its the first bush in the woods to start getting leaves in the spring. So they are easy to spot.

[Dee]

Here mesquite is the last to leaf out in the spring.

[Ranger99]

Not exactly sure what was in the
bottle, but I saw an arborist killing
junk trees with a machete and a
spray bottle of some brush killer
and water. He'd hack a slice out of
the bark and give it a liberal squirt
of juice.  Pretty sure it was glyphosate
imazapyr mixture
I do remember it was 20% poison
and 80%water

[oldandslow2]

Over here on the west side of the cap desert willows wait several days longer than mesquites to put on leaves. We had a big desert willow that I climbed around in as kid growing up on the east side of the cap but I can't remember if it leafed out a little later than the mesquites or not. I'm a thousand feet higher in elevation here and that may have something to do with it.

I had been getting one and two year old mesquites with weed-be-gone until this year and it no longer worked. The reason is they cut the percentage of 2-4-D way down in the new stuff and also raised the price. Crossbow contains almost four times as much 2-4-D as weed-be-gone now and one other chemical is different and it costs a little less. I applied it to the larger bush just as the instructions said, spray the trunk 18 to 24 inches above the ground and around the base.

After I left home my dad killed a large number of much larger mesquites than grow here with a hatchet and kerosene. He chopped thru the bark around the tree and soaked the cut with kerosene.  Of course mesquites, being a very invasive species, have returned in the 50 years or so since he did it.