Brush clearing

What it is

In this service area, brush means the woody plants that close the ground: Ashe juniper (cedar), yaupon, honey mesquite, and, on South Texas sites, huisache. Prickly pear grows with that brush in the South Texas Plains. It is a cactus, so the woody-stem work and the cactus are looked at separately on the walk. Brush clearing is the scope for taking the woody stems.

When a landowner needs it

Call it brush clearing when the problem is the thicket itself: a cedar brake, yaupon under oaks, mesquite in old pasture, or huisache on disturbed South Texas ground. A lane, a fence corridor, or a house site is a narrower scope, described on those pages. A mixed tract gets split into pieces on the walkthrough.

Process and machines

Walk the tract, name the brush, and mark trees that stay. Then match the carrier to the density and the slope. A skid steer or compact track loader with a forestry mulching head is the common machine for woody brush that can be ground in place. A purpose-built forestry mulcher is the other common class. Rock, access, and stem size can rule a machine out.

What changes the price

Acreage is only one factor. A cedar thicket on a steep Bandera slope, in the 15 to 60 percent map units, is not the same hours as mesquite on a flatter Medina field. Haul-off, retained oaks, and a long access lane add time.

Season

Cedar clearing is one of the activities Texas A&M Forest Service names as a source of fresh oak wounds. Brush work next to oaks follows the same February through June limit.

Do not wound oaks from February through June. Sap beetles that spread oak wilt are most active then, and a fresh cut is how the fungus gets in. Paint every oak wound immediately, in any month. Texas A&M Forest Service counts land clearing and cedar clearing as wound sources, the same as pruning. Texas Oak Wilt sets the window as February 1 through June 30 and includes fresh stumps and damaged roots.

Mulching leaves chips on the ground. If that material is piled to burn later, a county burn ban can stop the burn. A county judge or the commissioners court sets the ban, and Texas A&M Forest Service posts a statewide map of which counties are under one.

On the Edwards Plateau, golden-cheeked warblers nest in juniper-oak woodland. They return in early to mid-March, lay eggs in April, and leave from late June to mid-August. If the tract is that woodland, look at the calendar before opening it in spring.

Hill Country and South Texas ground

Yaupon and Ashe juniper are Edwards Plateau plants. Yaupon fills shade under live oak. Ashe juniper fills sunnier rocky ground. Huisache is a South Texas tree with paired spines. Identify it on the tract, from the spines, before you plan the day around it.

Kendall, Bandera, and Comal counties sit on the Eastern Edwards Plateau: shallow soil over limestone, with Ashe juniper, honey mesquite, Texas red oak, and yaupon. Ashe juniper is the tree people call cedar. Guadalupe and Wilson counties are Post Oak Savannah, oak woodland and grassland on sand and clay. Medina County is South Texas Plains, where the brush is mesquite, acacia, and prickly pear. Huisache (Acacia farnesiana) is on the South Texas browse list, and it sprouts again on disturbed ground. The town pages describe the soils in each place.

What the land looks like afterward

Texas Parks and Wildlife says practices that only remove mesquite top growth, and do not take the crown, can lead to further sprouting. Brush mulching is a top-growth pass. Huisache sprouts readily where the ground is disturbed, so a cleared South Texas thicket can return. Woody brush that was mulched is on the ground as chips. The soil surface is still there, covered. Mesquite sprouts from a buried crown if only the top is cut, so a mulched stem can grow back. Follow-up is part of keeping a field open.