Our wooded property is infested with variants of the Smilax family. Thorny stems that grow into trees and kill the trees by bending them over. I spent days cutting them down, hooking a rope to a bunch and pulling them out of the trees with the SideBySide. Then burning them. Only to have them re-grow. Some of these grow to 30' or more and over 1" in diameter.







I finally found a mix that will kill them. A 2:1 Diesel fuel and Remedy herbicide. I mix the ratio in a hand sprayer and walk around hunting the rogue Smilax, then spray the stem up as high as possible and down low saturating the root area.

This will also kill poison ivy and oak. You have to be careful to not spray any woody plants or trees with it.

Texas A&M did some studies and recommend a 3:1 fuel or surfactant and 1 part of Remedy, but I made it stronger with a 2:1 ratio

Anyway, just putting this out there in case anyone else wants to kill these briars.

Smilax is a very sought after wedding venue greenery. You may want to embrace and start selling it. I hear it goes for $80-100 a box. You could be sitting on a gold mine.

That may be and they say that Deer love it. But it is a hideous, invasive vine that will rip your flesh to shreds if you walk through it and it will form a web over trees eventually killing them. It also burns like flash paper. So it will fuel a fire like a firecracker fuse.

I only cleared out about an acre of woods near the house and down a short trail. There are still 3 acres of it if anyone wants to come pick it. It is edible they say and great in salads if you harvest it before it grows the thorns.

You might try Crossbow on it. I have yet to find any vine, brush, bramble type plant that it won't kill.

Crossbow has the same active ingredient as Remedy but Crossbow has 24D added. I use Crossbow too and love it. Also like it comes in a quart. I'll never use up the whole quart for as little as I use of it.

Yes, but just not as much of the active ingredient. I'm sticking with Remedy right now because it is systemic and killing them. You can find Remedy for $85-100 a gallon. A&M recommends 3 quarts of Diesel to 1 quart of Remedy. I use a 2:1. I'm going scorched earth on smilax presently. I have a ton of them to kill.

Remedy is good stuff. It's what most farmers here use to kill unwanted trees to make more grazing land. They have been doing helicopter sprays here with Remedy and one other mixed that I don't remember. For large areas. Works really good.

Since we moved here in November of last year, my wife and I have spent days clearing and pulling down the masses of vines from trees. I was cutting them at the base and hooking a nylon rope around a clump of them and pulling them out with the hitch on a SidebySide ATV. We would roll them up into a huge ball of vines and set them on fire. They burn rapidly with a roar of flames and does not take long to reduce them to ash. I am actually surprised at how fast they burn. Seems to me like they would fuel a forest fire. Some of the vines were so thick and strong they were bending the trees in a U shape to the ground. We saved several cedar trees by pulling the vines off them. There are still some new ones that pop up every week so I have a routine of walking and spraying them. I call them bad names as I spray them.

Burning knocks it back and yes it is preferred deer browse.
Spouse's family burns parts of their ranch every year and it really helps with the greenbrier.

Our labs used to follow us through thick areas when we would take them down to hunt quail, they did not like it at all.

Here it grows from tubers. I've ripped huge masses of it out of the ground with the FEL on the tractor with some clumps all grown together big enough to fill a bushel basket.

I'd think to kill it you'd have to kill the root/tuber.