Summer is about over and what I have learnt from my fight with the buckthorn is that buckthorn is a tough opponent. Many of the stumps sprouted vigorous growth so that by late summer it was a significant bush. I removed the suckers from many of the stumps but today at the end of September when I revisited locations where I know I removed the suckers, the buckthorn is regrowing once again. I'll have to go around again removing suckers. Perhaps eventually the roots will expend all their energy and have a hard time coming back in the spring. In the picture below you can see a couple of the buckthorn stumps regrowing as small bushes. They are surrounded by the branches and small trunks of the bushes that were cut down in the spring. While a lot more light is getting through the understory canopy, not much has started growing among the brush piles other than the stumps.
My little experiment this spring with buckthorn cuttings piled on grass demonstrated that the buckthorn cuttings did effectively supress the grass. When I moved it, I found the earth was mostly bare under the loose branch pile (see below). I'm not sure if it was simply because of the lack of sunlight or if there is a chemical component to the grass supression.
