Killing a mulberry tree

Killing a mulberry tree is hard. You can cut it down to a stump, but by next month there will be several new sprouts. It has a deep taproot so digging it out is difficult. It is made even more difficult by its propensity for growing near fences.

I have two of them (black mulberry) in my yard on a fence corner. One is quite tall, 5m, the other was about 2.5m. I cut down the shorter one to a stump a year ago because it was so near to the fence post. Earlier this year, I was surprised to see new growths from the stump. That was before I knew the tree was a mulberry tree.

I don't want to use salt to kill the tree because I feel that the salt will affect the area. After all, the salt has to go somewhere. Even if all of the salt is absorbed by the root, when the root decomposes, the salt will leach out.

So I put a thick (3mil) black plastic bag over the stump and weighted the edges. The bag will cause the sun to bake the stump and also deprive it access to sunlight. I'll open it up in October to see if it does the trick.

The taller one will stay for now because it bears fruit and provides shade. I need to ruminate on its fate.



PS.

I had been trying to identify all the trees on the property ever since I bought it. The basswood out front was quite easy to identify and so was the holly tree (it was so distinctive). I used various online tree identification sites to no avail. It was not until wife remarked on the berry-like fruit that I finally know where to start searching: berry trees.

BTW, I found a post in gardenweb site explaining why they grow alongside fence while searching for a way to kill it.