Using tractors and chains to control lantana
Submitted By: sgraham
Location: Shoalhaven, NSW
Land Type: Rural Retreat
Affected by Severe Weather?: No
What weed/s are you managing?
Lantana
What is your weed management strategy?
High-volume spraying, ‘cut and paint’ method, chains on tractors, pushing with tractors, and burning the uprooted plants. On soft soils that we have large plants can often be removed by hand.
What have you learnt about managing weeds this way?
The main thing I’ve learned about lantana is that dealing with it just requires a lot of persistence and using multiple methods. It’s really a question of how much patience you’ve got and how much time you’re going to put into it. A contractor showed us that you can push lantana with a tractor and because it’s not very deep-rooted, the whole plant can come up, roots and all. It doesn’t just snap off at the level of the ground. So it can be easy to clear large areas, but then you’re left with a lot of bare earth that could turn into large weed beds and that means you’ve got a large amount of maintenance to do in the following year. If you clear a smaller area, then maintenance is more manageable. You’ve got to do it sensibly to avoid that, and there’s a lot of people saying that you can’t clear large areas of land. It’s a matter of doing a little bit at a time and seeing what comes up and what you can actually replace before the weeds move in. We started using a big bucket on the front of a tractor, and a four-wheel drive vehicle, putting some chain around lantana plants and pulling them out. It’s great that you can pull out a big plant, but then you realise that you have to do the same thing for 100, 200 plants and putting a chain around each one is going to beat you. But pushing a bucket through and pushing things into a heap to burn them up will give you a faster start. We’ve also used the ‘cut and paint’ method, where you cut the stalk and paint it with neat Roundup. The roots die underground. We’re also careful to use a cheap, but selective, chemical for high-volume spraying. We use low cost, zero toxicity, Brush-Off (metsulfuron 600) because it kills the brush but leaves the grass underneath the lantana, whereas Roundup kills everything with the regrowth dominated by weeds.
What have been the benefits and drawbacks?
One benefit of dealing with lantana on a smaller scale is that the areas that you do clear are easier to manage and maintain over time. We’re seeing less lantana on our property, and after putting in a lot of effort to control it, seeing that the land we’ve cleared is recovering from its presence is really satisfying. Lantana thrives in open spaces with sunlight, whereas the shade under trees inhibits the growth to an extent. A drawback is that without revisiting the sites to remove regrowth lantana will return by residual seeds or those spread by birds from adjacent properties. The work can be reduced by removing the lantana from adjacent properties. Photo Credit: J Kubale
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