how would you get rid of wild guavas?

[digigarden]

so i finally have land to grow fruit trees but it was full of wild guavas... they have all been cutted down but the main roots are still on the ground.

the plan is to pretty much dig out the new guava sprouts and cover what i can with black plastic.

any ideas?

[fruitlovers]

so i finally have land to grow fruit trees but it was full of wild guavas... they have all been cutted down but the main roots are still on the ground.

the plan is to pretty much dig out the new guava sprouts and cover what i can with black plastic.

any ideas?

This land where i am at was the same when i first moved here. It is a very hard work to remove guavas. Just cutting down to stump will not work. The stumps will resprout and be even more vigorous. You need to fully remove the roots. What i did was to either dig them out, for small ones, and for big ones pulled them out with my truck. Dig a bit around them, then hook up a chain arount tree trunk and then to your back bumper. You need to have a good big strong truck or you will ruin your clutch or pull your bumper off. If you have a very big land best is to use bulldozer or a backhoe machinery to get the roots  all out.

[digigarden]

thanks for tip,don't have a truck for this and the land is about 3 acres.

do you fully remove even the root hairs or just the crown will kill them ?

i thought they would die under plastic without any light? at least re sprouts from thinner roots?

[red durian]

When it is the driest time of the year, have a bulldozer come in and rip them out systematically.  If you count your labour as money, this will be the cheapest way.  Once the largest bits of the guava are out of the ground, you could go finer with just a farm tractor ploughing and harrowing. 
In the DR this operation should cost around 10 000 USD I would guess for 3 acres.

[luc]

so i finally have land to grow fruit trees but it was full of wild guavas... they have all been cutted down but the main roots are still on the ground.

the plan is to pretty much dig out the new guava sprouts and cover what i can with black plastic.

any ideas?

This land where i am at was the same when i first moved here. It is a very hard work to remove guavas. Just cutting down to stump will not work. The stumps will resprout and be even more vigorous. You need to fully remove the roots. What i did was to either dig them out, for small ones, and for big ones pulled them out with my truck. Dig a bit around them, then hook up a chain arount tree trunk and then to your back bumper. You need to have a good big strong truck or you will ruin your clutch or pull your bumper off. If you have a very big land best is to use bulldozer or a backhoe machinery to get the roots  all out.

Had to do the same on a new lot , still coming up here and there and I don't wanna mention the bamboo .....

[Cookie Monster]

Does slash and paint with round up not work on those?

[FarmBoy]

Does slash and paint with round up not work on those?

Hey Cookie, you are absolutely right, guava's hate roundup !!!

Otherwise you have to remove the main roots. We just removed 1900 older guava trees with the tractor loader from a 10 acre field, ground them up in a chipper and planted all new trees.
It was a real back breaker job but we got it done, and added a few gray hairs...

Oh Yea, they are already 4 - 6' tall.

Farmboy

[Cookie Monster]

HAHAHAH Why can't mangosteen be like that.

[red durian]

You could announce a contest at the local school.  First boy to fully dig out a tree gets a hundred dollars.  Have age divisions.  You might get a lot of trees out that way.

[fruitlovers]

Does slash and paint with round up not work on those?

Yes herbicides will work, but not if you just paint them. You will have to make notches on the trunks and fill up with some of the herbicide kool aid to really kill the roots. Triclopyr works better than Roundup. Ofcourse if you do this you won't get certified organic for at least 3 years  The bulldozer is not a perfect solution either because dozers weigh like 50 tons and compress the soil something terrible. A backhoe is much lighter and you can focus on just digging out the trees where they exist rather than ripping the whole lot. If you only have a few dozen trees the chain and truck method works well enough, is cheapest, and most gentle on the soil.

[Recher]

okay I got deep well drained volcanic soil. Cut and drip pure glyphosate works fine for me

[digigarden]

thanks everyone for the suggestions, was there this morning and i estimate 150-300 underground roots with 1500-2500 new shoots 








small guavas and seedy 


found the cause of this infestation...next farm is almost an abandoned jungle full of guavas so there are pigs and other animals that enter my property to poop these seeds 




going to hire someone with machinery to pull them out...no chemicals much less monsanto.


but in better news...look at the cashew tree blooming over there 

[fruitlovers]

Birds also eat guavas and spread them far and wide.

[Future]

A better problem to have than others.  At least you can eat some guavas in th e mean time.

[fruitlovers]

A better problem to have than others.  At least you can eat some guavas in th e mean time.

Spoken like a man who has never had to deal with removing guavas gone rampant! 

[Future]

A better problem to have than others.  At least you can eat some guavas in th e mean time.

Spoken like a man who has never had to deal with removing guavas gone rampant! 

True, I have never had this problem.  But it does beat Mexican peppers - which can form massive trunks), palms, ultra spiny gooseberries and other invasive inedibles.  I'm just saying.

[fruitlovers]

A better problem to have than others.  At least you can eat some guavas in th e mean time.

Spoken like a man who has never had to deal with removing guavas gone rampant! 

True, I have never had this problem.  But it does beat Mexican peppers - which can form massive trunks), palms, ultra spiny gooseberries and other invasive inedibles.  I'm just saying.

True the photos from Dominican Republic were not so bad. But if you had seen my land when i first landed here: impenetrable guava jungle, then i think you would think otherwise. I spent many years of my life trying to remove them. The very word "guava" still sends a shiver up my spine. 
True on planet earth, no matter how bad your situation is you can think of something worse!