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Way too many cedar trees

P

piles of junk

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Ive got 40 acres that has about 15 acres that are unusable because of thick cedar trees. I have seen small signs in the area that read "cedar clearing $50 per hour". Ive been told its a tractor mounted saw that cuts the tree at ground level. I could use some info and maybe even some pics. I would love to own an attachment like that but don't even know what to call it. :roll:
 
(quoted from post at 09:57:51 05/18/18) Ive got 40 acres that has about 15 acres that are unusable because of thick cedar trees. I have seen small signs in the area that read "cedar clearing $50 per hour". Ive been told its a tractor mounted saw that cuts the tree at ground level. I could use some info and maybe even some pics. I would love to own an attachment like that but don't even know what to call it. :roll:
Click to expand...

Those kind of Cedars are a nuisance. They will grow right back in less than a year. They are called 'salt cedar' or 'marsh cedar'. There no real easy way to get rid of them except with a grader and ripper to pull them out at the roots. Even then, they will grow back unless the ground is tilled and planted. I have tons of them on the marshy area along my lake house. We'll never be rid of them entirely without serious work.

The $50 guy just cuts them off at the ground with a large horz saw blade or similar. Then they will push them into a pile and maybe burn in a few days when they dry out.
 

It's probably something like this:

http://turbosaw.com/tractor.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FM8d26ay5o
 
Is that horz saw a 3 point attachment or skid loader mounted? Sorry but I'm looking for the cheapist way out. At first I used the 60 horse tractor and a chain and just ripped them out of the ground but that is very slow and messy plus any tree bigger than 3" trunk wont budge. What I really need is a dozer but again that's lots of $.
 
I have cleared right much land covered in Eastern Red Cedar with a bow saw and goats on the smaller trees the goats will kill them in about a year without cutting them down.
Surprising how fast you can get along cutting with with a bow attachment instead of a bar.
 
What do you intend to do with the ground after it is cleared? Will it go into: row crops; small grains; hay; or pasture? Your county extension service might have some recommendations.
 
Ask around if you can rent a 3Pt grubber. With 60HP tractor and a single spade, or 2 spade grubber you can pull most of them out. Over 3" trunk is going to require a road grader with rippers.

Cutting them won't do it. Depending on rain and soil conditions, they will be back in 12-18 months just as thick.

The good think about a grubber is it will pull up a lot of roots along the way, even if you cut the big once off first, the grubber will rip out a lot of underground stuff. If you soil is too hard, it won't work, but Cedars usually grow in soft loam well.

The only way I would cut off flush is if I was going to sell the land to someone else and you wanted it cleared cheap.
 
Check rental rates. Local rental place I can rent a case 1150g
for about $300 for the weekend which I consider a very good
price and have a local guy with a Deere 450 that charges $75
per hour and can do more with that 450 in an hour than an
average guy can do with a d6 in an hour. If you have them cut
off they with be a problem the rest of your life and when you
decide you messed up and have someone start digging
stumps it?s somewhat slow and by the sound of the size would
be easy to miss stumps after you start digging. I know
everyone wants to go the cheapest route including me but you
will have way more in it if you have to do it twice. Just rent or
hire a dozer and be done with it. If you are worried about
money do what you can afford then save up and do some
more. Eventually you will get it done and be happy with the
results
 
Going a little to the cheep side. Next door neighbor of many years had
planted ornamental ceadars along the property line. Very nice and he
took care of them. He passed one day and his ungrateful kids cleaned
out the house of everything and out on the cirb it went. I found
several nice items that I still use. Now for the rest of the story.
The dog of a daughter took the house and rented it out. Must not have
done any back round. Well the smacked garbage that were there for
aboqut a year and a half really did a number. About a month before
they moved on to the next place to destroy they had a friend bring his
BIG arse boat in the drivewayy for a couple of weeks. Then they did
the real topper. They preasure washed this damn boat with caustic
soda. Only thing that would remove all of the crud and scum from the
hull. Do you have any idea what that stuff does in straight undiluted
full blown hot weather in a pressure washer. Killed several feet of my
Zoya grass that is very tough. Worse was it took out eight or nine of
the ornimental cedars. This stuff was all dead in about two weeks.
Sorry for a long story but you can buy lye in any hardware store,
drain cleaner, or go to a kitchen supply, or cleaning supply joint.
Not that expensive but wow does it kill stuff. Just spray the cedars
with it. CAUTION. CAUTION. Try very hard not to get this stuff on you.
Don't breath it cause it burns the lining of your lungs. If you get it
on you wash up emediatly and to neutralize caustic soda you need a
mild acid. Vinegar or crushed lemon juice and rub yourself down good
with it while your wet and then take a shower and put more acid on
you. Not kidding around. That stuff killed those cedars so dead they
just pulled out of the ground not even a half year latter. I mean DEAD
dead. The photos show a couple of what is used in commercial dish
machines. Far out powers what you use in you little toy dishwasher.
a268087.jpg

a268088.jpg
 
In Eastern KS. the type of cedars we have here when you cut them make sure you do not leave any branches below where you cut them. if you do they will come back if no branches they will die and not come back. 6 years ago my son bought an 80 that was cedar infested and we used a turbo-saw on the front of a JD skid loader and by cutting them at or a little below ground level they did not grow back. never used anything on the stumps. Got nice native grass growing now.
 
(quoted from post at 10:05:18 05/18/18)
(quoted from post at 09:57:51 05/18/18) Ive got 40 acres that has about 15 acres that are unusable because of thick cedar trees. I have seen small signs in the area that read "cedar clearing $50 per hour". Ive been told its a tractor mounted saw that cuts the tree at ground level. I could use some info and maybe even some pics. I would love to own an attachment like that but don't even know what to call it. :roll:
Click to expand...

Those kind of Cedars are a nuisance. They will grow right back in less than a year. They are called 'salt cedar' or 'marsh cedar'. There no real easy way to get rid of them except with a grader and ripper to pull them out at the roots. Even then, they will grow back unless the ground is tilled and planted. I have tons of them on the marshy area along my lake house. We'll never be rid of them entirely without serious work.

The $50 guy just cuts them off at the ground with a large horz saw blade or similar. Then they will push them into a pile and maybe burn in a few days when they dry out.
Click to expand...

In Oklahoma these will be Eastern Red Cedar. Aromatic cedar like trinkets are made of.

The good news about them is if you cut them below the lowest green branch they will NOT come back from the roots.

I have a hydraulic shear on a skid loader that does a great job. Prior to that I had a fixed blade tree shear, you just drive into the tree and the angled saw will cut it down. My tractor was not quite heavy enough for it, but I cleared 60 acres of pasture one winter, spending an hour when I went there to feed. I'm thinking it took me 40 hours to clear ten to twenty foot trees an average of 50 ft apart.

You can rent a loader and hydraulic shear but you should contact one of the tree cutter contractors and get them to give you and estimate, or hire them for 10 hours and see what they can do.

If you are engaged in agriculture there is a USDA program to eradicate cedar trees where they pay you by the acre after they evaluate it. I did that on about 600 acres and they paid enough for me to hire it done. That program may or may not have funding in your area. Check with your FSA office.
 
(quoted from post at 12:03:52 05/18/18) Ask around if you can rent a 3Pt grubber. With 60HP tractor and a single spade, or 2 spade grubber you can pull most of them out. Over 3" trunk is going to require a road grader with rippers.

Cutting them won't do it. Depending on rain and soil conditions, they will be back in 12-18 months just as thick.

The good think about a grubber is it will pull up a lot of roots along the way, even if you cut the big once off first, the grubber will rip out a lot of underground stuff. If you soil is too hard, it won't work, but Cedars usually grow in soft loam well.

The only way I would cut off flush is if I was going to sell the land to someone else and you wanted it cleared cheap.
Click to expand...

Cutting them below the lowest green branch does kill eastern red cedar. The lowest branch may originate slightly belowground on small trees but on large trees may be a foot or more aboveground. They tend to lose lower branches like pines.
 
How big are the trees? A lot of them on my place the trunks are 14-16" in diameter and 50'tall. Other than a chain saw it would take professional logging equipment to take down. If you have some that have sizable trunks you might cut them into logs and sell them to a saw mill. Cedar is considered a hardwood in the lumber industry. The small trees could be good for fence posts.
 
I spent a lot of time ridding a farm in Indiana of that pestilence,it is a plague in some areas. Hire a dozer to
takeout the big ones, then mow off the little ones as low as you can cut them, disc the field deeply to tear up the
little stumps, plant your crop and mow, mow, mow. After your grass is established, spray it annually with an
appropriate herbicide. If there is a large established number of the darned things in your area, the birds will reseed
them so Annual or semiannual mowing is critical. Sorry for the negative post...It is a long battle.

www.noble.org/news/publications/ag-news-and-views/2009/february/controlling-eastern-red-cedar-a-common-noxious-weed/
 
The other good news with red cedar is after you cut them the stumps rot in just a few years. I was not expecting that as the red wood does make long lasting fence posts. We stack them up and let the white wood rot off before use.

These cedars are a soft wood but there is a good market for the larger trees.
 
One of the biggest hardwood lumber companies in the country is Frank Paxton Lumber. It is listed as a hardwood in their catalog and website.
 
Make cedar posts they are about 12$ each here they are a
little more work because you gotta dig em in buy hand but
your great grandkids will still be putting new staples in em long
after your gone
 
(quoted from post at 20:01:44 05/18/18) One of the biggest hardwood lumber companies in the country is Frank Paxton Lumber. It is listed as a hardwood in their catalog and website.
Click to expand...

From that website, look near the bottom and they only list one cedar; Spanish Cedar. Click on that and it takes you to woodfinder.com. On that site, look down the list and find Aromatic Red Cedar. When you click on that, it states, "[i:01fab4d3b2]DESCRIPTION: Very fine textured and moderately hard for a softwood species[/i:01fab4d3b2]."

While Paxton Lumber "names" it as a hardwood, they do not "mean" that it is a hardwood -- only that the wood is relatively hard. They also list multiple pines as hardwoods. If you look at Balsa and Basswood, for example, they are classified as hardwoods, but are two of the softest woods known to man.

There are many other hardwoods that are softer than the hardest softwoods.

Here's a website that gives a nice, detailed explanation on the differences between the two, and what the criteria is for each:
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Hardwood_vs_Softwood
 
(reply to post at 00:06:21 05/19/18)
Click to expand...
Eastern Red Cedar is no hardwood. Posts will not only not be around for grandkids, they won't even be around for a middle aged man. Trash wood would be a better term. A person needs to understand the differences in cedars!
 
Around here we have Western Red Cedar. Got lots on my property and the surrounding area. A 4' butt in not uncommon and yes, they do make good fence posts, decking, shingles, siding, salmon BBQ planks and other stuff, So, different from what you have, ;^)
 
(quoted from post at 21:06:21 05/18/18) From that website, look near the bottom and they only list one cedar; Spanish Cedar.
Click to expand...

Sorry folks, I erred.....again! The link I went to wasn't on paxtonwood.com, but rather was already on the woodfinder.com website.

And yes, for Frank Paxton Lumber to refer to cedar as hardwood is absolutely wrong. They should update their website to be more clear that they are referring to the wood's hardness rather than to it's hardwood-or-softwood classification. Makes it sound like they don't know what they're talking about.

But as I mentioned, they also list a couple of pine woods as hardwoods, which is also incorrect.
 
A lot depends on the individual tree those with a lot of white sap wood are soft and won't last in the ground,but trees with 90% or so red heart centers will usually last 20 years or so
as a fence post and the wood is harder than pine but not hard like Sugar Maple or Oak.Usually the Cedars that grow slowly on poorer land make the best and hardest wood great for furniture things like Ceder chests and wardrobes to store clothes.I have a couple on the farm here that are close to 30" at the butt been around a long time.
 
By definition, cedar is a softwood....Paxton's hasn't been "Paxton's" for several years. They've been sold several times over the years.
 
Size of the trees would determine what to use. As the others stated, the ones around here don't come back if you trim below the lowest branch. But, new ones sprout up everywhere (not related to the cut one). I've got 170 acres fairly thick with them now, plus a ~couple miles of fence they've grown into (like a wall of trees in the fence), plus a couple other spots with them on. I didn't have that many in my south 320, 1000+ guessing, all smaller because I hay it most years, but years I don't I end up with trees I have to mow around. I went out with a DR string trimmer with a Beaver blade, impressed with that setup for smaller trees (can do a bit more than up to 3", at ground level, but dulls very quickly, considering getting a carbide chain), handier than loppers, got most of them. The 170, about 18 years ago I went out there with an axe, loppers, chainsaw, made a dent in them, but can't tell that now. Shortly after hired a guy, paid him $1000, also made a dent, I'd guess he got 20 acres of thick trees.

Around here, tree shear is the most common tool, they can get very large trees and work well, like scissors. I'm probably buying one, would pay for itself while I use it to catch up, then I could sell it. Haven't researched enough to see what type, I see the other ones that are more saw like. Some guys have tried atv mounted shears, with mixed results. Neighbor cracked a Suzuki frame with one of those. Clearing them is just another project I don't get around to doing.

What I really want is one of these though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYKg0gbRFns[/url]
 
Paxton is still there, they just have sold their outlet to smaller companies. In Dallas the facility that used to be Paxton is now Brazos Forest Products but the wood comes from Paxton.
 
Nice, but..........with stumps still remaining, it would depend on what you want to do with the land.
 
Must be a different area, different species of tree when folks say they will grow right back.

The Eastern Red Cedar here in Mo. are 100% dead when you saw them off. They will not grow back. We do not treat the stumps with Tordon like we do thorn trees for that reason.

Now, more trees will come back in other places, but the tree you cut is dead. DRT. Dead Right There.

Gene
 
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