Kitchen Garden Forum

Coming back from holiday to a very long lawn I found lots of sprigs of beech hedge about 5" high poking through the grass a few yards away from the hedge at the bottom of the garden. They cut off OK with the Hayter but there seems to be a network formed under the turf, which I can't dig up without destroying the lawn. Should I just leave it, or perhaps take a small paintbrush and spend a couple of hours painting the leaves with glysophosphate (strong enough?) or maybe brushwood killer?
Thanks for any advice. John N

Hi John.
Ths is most unususal because I have been involved with Beech hedging for a very long time and I have not come across this phenomena ever before.
All Beech hedges are gown from seed and I doubt that your existing hedge would produce any flowers let alone seed so that can be ruled out.
Is there a mature Beech Tree in the vacinity
Beech are not really known to sucker so are you absolutely sure that they are Beech growth.
This simply intrigues me so please tell us more if possible.
JB.

Like Johnboy, i have never heard, or seen Beech, doing this before.

Could you try pulling a couple up, to see if they are seedlings or even more unlikely, suckers.

Just in case they're suckers avoid glyphosate as it is systemic and will try to kill the entire plant.
i.e. sucker, root system and parent plant.

Thanks for info. May not be beech so I'll try and get a photo and post it. May be a while though, unless I can find one with leaves not cut short.

Hi John,
There are several suckering plants that can be confused as Beech in their juvenile stage and any of the plum family and the flowering Cherry.
Flowering Cherry trees are on mainly grafted stock and these very frequently send out masses of suckers and if allowed to grow the suckers will sucker and keep on suckering. As an example I have suckers appearing in the field the other side of a 4ft wide hedge and the Flowering Cherry is 50ft away from the hedge it has done this in four hops. I am in the process of sorting this out at the present moment.
I have severed the first sucker from the Amanagowa Cherry and cut the rather large sucker down an have invested in some "eco plugs" which are plastic plugs that are filled with Glyphosate crystals and you drill into the stump a quaterter of an inch shorter than the oveall length of the plastic plug and as you hammer the last quarter of and inch into the stump it breaks the seal on the crystals and they become active. I have done this on three of the hops.
This means that they are very safe and you target only what you are trying to target. They are bird and pet safe and safe for us to handle.
Rather pricey at £70. per hundred but are really meant for commercial work where the customer would be paying the cost.
JB.

Have managed to dig up one of the "beech" shoots, together with a length of the roots they are coming from! There is only one full-size tree anywhere near the area, (in next door's garden) but I don't know what it is. The green leaves on the left are a cutting from it, but the shoots don't look very similar. Over to you (expert) lot!
John N
Hope the pic doesn't come out giant size!

Dear John,
these are plum or cherry suckers and are nothing to do with your beech hedge. There must be a tree of some kind nearby. It is probably one of the non-fruiting kind and so you may not initially think of it as the culprit. The bronzing of the sucker shoots is normal for plums and cherries.
Regards Sally Wright.

Well done Johnboy, your second reply hit the nail right on the heaad.

Thank you all - I think the nearest tree, in next doors garden, is a plum. Don't want to harm it, so I'll just continue to mow off shoots.
Sorry about picture size - perhaps Admin can now delete it?
John N

If you can and edit your post you can delete it yourself - I can't change the original.

Hi John,
The reason why the sucker leaves that are appearing on your lawn are not the same as the leaves on the tree next door is because they are from the rootstock and you are looking at the scion (however big it is) that was grafted onto the rootstock originally.
JB.