In my climate it lasts for about a year and a half in the soil, as far as I can tell. I’ve used Tordon quite extensively to spot spray trash trees in pasture and fence rows. In soils around here, it will migrate about 5’ away from the spot it was sprayed. If soil is lighter or more sandy, it could travel farther.
Perhaps the concern about using it around a pond is that it could migrate into the pond and kill vegetation you don’t want killed. It has relatively low toxicity to aquatic life, so it shouldn’t cause a fish kill unless someone went crazy with it.
As Clark mentioned, it can travel via root grafts of plants trees of the same species. Or you could see some injury of different species where roots overlap, as Clark mentioned.
I’ve used it under lots of trees carefully with mostly no accidents. I’ve used it to kill trash trees in a tree wind break with no issues. But I didn’t just spray it under the trees. I cut the trash trees out and treated the stumps.
Once I sprayed it under some pawpaw trees in my backyard to kill some poison ivy. That did injure the Pawpaw trees, noted by deformed foliage, but the trees recovered.
That tree was there before we put a raised bed near it. They were only 8 ft apart. In addition to the distance, there are other matters you need to consider:
Will you spray your fruit trees with chemicals?
If so, what will you grow in your raised beds. You may not be able to grow those plants/veggies organically.
a fruit tree can be close to a raised bed if the tree does shade the bed more than a couple of hours.
That makes sense. I did not think of it that way. I thought it was because it contaminate the ground around it. It makes more sense what you mentioned.
Last winter I slept poorly while deciding to remove four apple trees out back.
Hunt & Rosemary Russets produced wooden golf balls for years on end. Since summers keep getting longer & hotter, there seemed no reason to keep them. I sent scions several places & will graft them both for someone high in the woods. (This is the latest spring I can remember. Some of the apple buds on remaining trees are just now opening!) Maybe there they will produce good fruit.
Bardsey attracts codling moths like no other, not even Liberty. I will not use poison here and covering with orchard socks works for all the others. After 9 years, it comes down.
Connell Red was an experiment. The tree is vital, hugely spreading and productive. In this dry heat all flavor dissipates and the really big fruit are bland in the extreme. Down it goes.
Shackleford (thanks Dave B!) and Otterson were waiting for somewhere to go. I needed another plum & ordered one. They are planted now. When Rosemary gets some leaf surface I’ll whack it and cleft graft that stump.
I sleep better now.
Sorry to hear that Hunt Russet didn’t work out for you! Ours has not been a prolific bearer as of yet - and the birds seem to like to nibble on the buds, which doesn’t help - but the few apples we’ve gotten have been very tasty. (Though the fruit does seem to be on the harder end even in our significantly less arid climate.)
I’m going to remove Snow Queen, I got this tree from the farmers market, so far I had maybe 3 fruit at max, but I didn’t see the suckers, I thought they were part of the tree, so the tree is almost dead. I managed to regraft some branches to my Donut peach.
This empty space or container will be used to plant English Morello, I need a sour cherry, sweet cherries are very cheap here, but you can’t get sour cherry unless it’s in a can.
Reading through this thread, I’m amazed that I don’t have most of the problem here. My biggest pest for growing fruit trees is maybe one squirrel, a few grasshoppers, and not enough chill hours for some varieties.
I hung onto Hunt Russet for years, since its first fruit - after a mild summer - was unlike anything I’d encountered: tangerine and the sharp tang of rose finish, 18 & 19 Brix at harvest, quite chewy early on. I’d love to see how it is by this time of year, for it is a formidable keeper. It is semi-spur with one (!) to five lovely pink flowers per spur, which partly limits production. The tree on Antonovka or its own roots can live 200 years, about twice the apple average.
Plums. This year Methley and Shiro and are out. Burbank came out last fall. Poor production, taking up too much space and loaded with black knot. I am done with plums i think. Maybe beach plums some day.
Romeo cherry - time to just rip off the bandaid. 6 years and all i had was a spindly 3 foot stick. I dont think it liked the high humidity here.
YOUNGBERRY. The devil’s own bramble. Monstrous, unmanageable, ok fruit in small amounts that bc it sets low in the bush un-harvestable. Took over about 400 sf even with me trying to contain it, and i will be cutting out tip root spots for years. Never plant this berry.
There seems to be something genetically wrong with this variety, although it produces very flavorful peaches in its season- here there’s a tremendous difference between varieties because, to me, a couple points in brix IS a tremendous difference., but I digress. Autumn Star gets weird cambium damage on trunks that usually only appears on stressed trees but seems a general trait with AS. I can’t say they are shorter lived here yet, but they end up not growing as vigorously or evenly as most other varieties I grow.
Another variety that sometimes has problems here, but in branch die-back instead, is Glenglo.
My Autumn Star lasted about 10 years but after 8 years, its production started to decline and there was not many new growth despite urea fertilizer application each spring.
I took it out two months ago. It looked pathetic. I like the fruit, a large tasty peaches but I put it out of its misery.
Understand completely.
A bit older and not much wiser here, but i’m going to put my energy into things that do well. Apples peaches and pears thrive here and i get results.
Do you juice a lot of yr fruits?
Yes i do but in this case " The saying is the juice worth the squeeze is a question people ask when they wonder if all the hard work is worth the reward at the end ." not literally juice.
Lol … i completely missed that joke.
OR my mind is all about juicing bc hub and i are thinking about doing some home distilling.
Either way my brain is a bit tipsy.
Not exactly removal, as they were still in pots, but I just culled a bunch of apples that were suffring from a variety of things. Oddly, most were Antonovka rootstock that had all arrived in one order last year. Two others have been hacked severely back and advised to fight off the problem or follow their friends to a bagged grave. A pair of them had the first ever aphid infestations I’ve ever seen. One was those little whooly buggers. I released lady-bugs, but htye are more interested in… err…other things.
I did remove a Robert Livermoe walnut that appeared to be suffering and failed to leaf out this year after having barely done so in it’s first year. The buds were all black and, when chopping it up, I saw that it’s core was also black. I hacked back a Pedro that had been ordered at hte same time and suspect I’ll be removing it soon, but it is at least trying to grow.
Ultimately, the why is that I’ve planted a lot of things and have been fairly fortunate that I have not had many unhealthy trees. I don’t feel like risking the rest for one or two varieties I can try again later.
One problem we have with Glengo is that we get a little more blind wood on those trees more easily. We did receive some branch die back on them from last winter’s unusual cold snap in the Midwest, and Glengo was one of the worst varieties we’d seen that on, but it’s the first time we’d seen it on them.
