"elalamein" wrote in message
...

Please dont get moralistic over this; believe me this job isn't
something I will relish. However it has to be done. A neighbour has
planted four Poplar trees on his/my boundary fence.

He is an idiot. Poplar trees have only one real use, that is on a farm
out in Kansas to use as a windbreak, planted hundreds of feet from the
house. You really have to get on with killing these things as quick as
you can. These are weeds! My parents had a row of them in their
backyard that the prior homeowner planted - they looked great when
they bought the house and moved in and they were small - but they
absolutely destroyed the lawn and it took years to get rid of them.

They will, in time
destroy the garden I have worked so hard to build up and maintain (on
some of the poorest solis in the UK) by overshading the garden from the
sun.

As well as rot and fall over, caving in your home roof in a storm, etc.

We dont communicate following him shooting our cat with his air rifle.

While that is a bit over the top, you should also understand that free
roaming housecats are responsible for killing songbirds. He does have
a right to not have your cat in his yard.

The trees have just been planted and it seems to me that the correct
application of the correct substance, under the lifted root (during the
early hours of the morning) might cause the trees not to come into leaf
this spring. I hope then he will abandon his willful horticultural
terrorism.


This absolutely IS horticultural terrorism, more than you know. Poplars
are prohibited in a LOT of places for good reason.

I wonder what that substance might be? Any ideas?


Your best bet, IMHO, is to wait until the trees leaf out, then give them a
good spraying of Roundup. Do NOT wait
until high summer. The trees use their stored energy to leaf out, then
start absorbing energy the rest of the summer. You want to get them
right after they finish leafing out and before they start storing energy.
Naturally any overspray will kill your garden. But I think this is going
to have to be collateral damage your going to have to live with. Your
neighbor has obviously planted the trees hoping to pick a fight with
you. If the trees die and your garden remains perfect, he's going to
retaliate
against your garden probably with Roundup as well. If his trees die and
your garden also dies (espically the part next to the trees) you can go
over to him and bitch at him for planting trees that introduced some sort
of plant disease. Fortunately, there's a large number of diseases that
kill Poplars so when his die on him as a result of your spraying, and he
starts going around to the various garden places asking what killed them,
he will get a plentiful number of differing answers. If your garden also
dies, he will be unlikely to think that you deliberately killed his trees,
and even if he does and calls the police on you, or files a court case
against you, the fact that your own garden was damaged as well will
likely convince the cops or a judge that you had nothing to do with it.

I would definitely wait until he has left the house for work before
spraying, though.

Here's some more info on these:

http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/hor...ree/poplar.htm

Ted