Removing Mesquite Trees
11/11/2023
When most people think of a Texas ranch, they probably think of horses, cattle, and big blue skies. What they probably don't think of is fighting Mesquite trees. After having worked on our ranch for more than a year, it's one of the things I think of most. Unlike other trees or plants, you can't just cut them down or burn them. No, no, no. It's not that simple, unfortunately. In fact, if you cut a mesquite tree down, 2 will grow back in its place! If you cut those 2 down, 4 will grow back! Do you see the madness?
In order to successfully remove a mesquite tree so that it will not come back, you must kill or remove the tap (main) root which is below ground. To do this you must either spray the tree with herbicide or remove the whole tree with its tap root. This sounds simple enough, but unfortunately I have more bad news. Spraying the tree with herbicide is actually a tricky task. I'll spare you the details for now but let's just say a lot of timing goes into it. The soil temperature has to be sufficiently warm and the tree itself has to have the right amount of maturity in its stems or leaves to actually take the spray. And as for removing the tree from the ground, it's quite hard. The Mesquite tree has lots of horizontal roots that hold it tightly in the ground, and it's hard to remove the tree, and it's taproot. If you don't get the taproot out, the tree can and probably will come back.
So in summary, Texas ranching and fighting mesquite trees go hand in hand. Mesquite trees are incredible things honestly. They are here to stay, and we will be fighting them back for the rest of our lives. But all is not lost. I can honestly say I'm winning the war on my property. This year I sprayed or pulled hundreds of Mesquite trees, maybe over a thousand. Next year I will have a smaller battle to fight because of the work that was done this year. And the next year will be even smaller. But the point is we have to keep it up.