Invasion by Sumac

[nomadyane]

My neighbour has a Sumac tree (Rhus). The tree itself causes me no problem and doesn't significantly shade my garden, but the suckers appear almost all over my garden and are a real nuisance, as well as depriving my plants of nutrition. How can I stop it? I am considering taking out a deep trench along the line of the boundary and putting a sheet of metal down, but how deep would I have to go and how long would it take to destroy the network of roots and suckers already established in my patch? Any advice would be appreciated. At present all I can do is pick off the suckers when they dare to poke their leaves up and pull out as much root as I can get hold of whenever I find one - but the danger is that I pull up other plants at the same time! Help.

David

[Tam]

These are dreadful trees for invading - does your neighbour have an army of them yet ? If he hasn't I bet he soon will. I'm afraid I would use glyphosate on the little beggars. You could either surround with plastic and spray, but I think I would be inclined to paint each one with the roundup. You could use a perimeter shield, but that seems like a big job. I wouldn't need to be awfully deep as suckers from roots are normally thrown up from fairly shallow roots.

[vicky]

If you use glyphosate this may kill your neighbour's tree too! (Maybe you want to do this, but make sure you wait till the neighbours out/at night!!!)
You could put down vertical paving slabs or something along those lines but it would be quite a hard job to do. It would certainly be worth digging along the boundry and severing roots that cross into yours, but you'd have to do that as an ongoing job.
Does your neighbour like the tree? Maybe he could be talked into removing it?
Personally I really like these trees and at my old house was delighted when my neighbours suckered into my garden!

[peanut]

I have one in my garden and I like it but it does sucker all over the lawn, I've been here for 2 yrs now and the constant mowing is definately reducing the amount of suckers appearing.

[rustylady]

They are beautiful trees, specially when they colour up in the Autumn, but the suckers are a b****y nuisance. I would go for the glyphosate as soon as the suckers have four or five leaves. I don't think it will actually be strong enough to kill the parent tree, but should hopefully kill the shoots and roots that have invaded your plot. They are fairly shallow rooted, so if you do decide to go for the perimeter trench/shield you could probably get away with using paving slabs rescued from skips or from freecycle sunk vertically into the ground near your boundary.