Re: water sprouts/suckers

> Reid Family wrote:
> 
> Hello All:
> I thought I would tap the collective wisdom and experience of the
> group for a pesky problem I have with suckering on a two old flowering
> pears....
> Does anyone have ideas that really work for inhibiting this?  I have
> considered layering a double thickness of weed cloth along the one
> particularly pesky root, but wonder if my efforts will be in vain.  I
> don't love using chemicals, but this bed is not near anything edible,
> if there is some inhibitor I could use that wouldn't adversely affect
> the bulbs and Gaura I've begun to plant underneath.

 Karrie 

This is not so much a solution as  a warning about using weed matting. I
have become very dissolusioned with it after finding it had the same
effect on plant roots as the continuous film -the roots obvously felt
smothered in spite of the fairly open weave and started to grow over the
top of it. So it seem likely it would just make matters worse.

I have  several trees in my garden that produce suckers. My big (seed
raised) Tokyo cherry grows a new crop round the base of the trunk every
spring and my Burbank plum also produces the odd basal shoot (presumably
of the stock) while one of my quinces which has a cultivate border
growing beneath it puts up little tufts of tree each year along some of
its roots.

I really don't know of any chemical treatment which would not
translocate back and damage the trees, but I find a once-yearly cutting
back of the cherry and plum suckers (which come from the crown not the
roots), trying to remove every bit right down to their origin, seems to
work well. At least there is no regrowth during that growing season,
though a new crop appears every spring. As to the quince, I haven't been
so successful and now sort of put up with the bunches of small shoots as
though they were an integral part of the furnishing of that border. Such
root suckers are usually the result of superficial roots having been
damaged by cultivation (or even in lawns by the mower)

One of the most notorious tres for suckerig I have met up with is the
common elm. I was once called in consulatation to a garden where they
were finding tufts of tree coming up in their vegetable patch. I soon
diagnosed these as suckering elm roots, but they didn't even have an elm
in their garden, so this was a fair puzzle. In the end I looked over to
the neighbours and right on the far side of that garden (all of 80-100
feet away) was an elm tree which was evidently the culprit.

Never underestimate the spread of mature trees. it is obvously much
greater than the traditional "root zone". No wonder they do not usually
need any feeding with such an enormous area to draw on!

Oh just one sudden thought. We now have an organic weedkiler here 
called Interceptor, which is apparently pine oil and this will kill any
vegetation it contacts, but is not translocated and does not spread in
the soil. It is said to work even for woody weeds like gorse but I use
it mainly for weeds in paving, though it takes two or more goes to
finish off perennals such as dandelions. If you could get a similar
produce locally it would at least keep down the shoots for a full season
I should think, but is unlikley to make your pear trees sick if you only
spray the suckers.

Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.     Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
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