Every clearing crew in the Upstate has heard the same call: the lot was cleared two years ago and you cannot see across it again. Nine times in ten the reason is privet, kudzu or both, and the fix was never in the first pass. This is what each plant does and what actually holds a lot once it is open.
Chinese privet
Privet is the shrub that closes Spartanburg County woods. It seeds from the berries birds carry, sprouts from the root collar when cut, and grows in shade under pines and hardwoods where nothing else bothers. A mulcher shreds it in a pass and it looks finished. By the next August the stumps have sent up a knee-high hedge. A cut-stem herbicide treatment in the fall, or mowing every few weeks for two seasons, is what ends it.
Kudzu
Kudzu grows from a root crown that can weigh as much as a person and reaches thirty feet in a summer. Mulching knocks the vines flat and buys a season of open ground; it does not touch the crown. Repeated mowing or grazing exhausts the crown over two to three years, and a late-summer herbicide on regrowth does it faster. A lot with a kudzu edge along a road cut or an old field should be quoted with the follow-up, not without it.
What holds a cleared lot
Use decides it. A lot that gets built on is held by the house and the lawn. Pasture is held by grazing or a bush-hog. A lot that will sit for years is held by a second mulching pass in the second summer and, where privet was thick, a fall treatment of the cut stems. The cheapest option is to plan the follow-up when the first pass is quoted; the most expensive is to clear the same lot twice.
What the crew does about it
On the site visit the crew names what is growing, says which of the three holds it, and quotes the follow-up as its own line so you can take it or leave it. Nobody is sold a herbicide program for a lot that a mower will hold.
Questions on this
Does mulching kill privet?
No. It cuts it. Privet regrows from the root collar; a fall cut-stem treatment or two seasons of mowing kills it.
How long does kudzu take to exhaust?
Two to three seasons of mowing or grazing; faster with a late-summer herbicide on the regrowth.
Is there a season to clear that helps?
Clearing in late summer, then treating the regrowth in early fall, sets both plants back hardest; winter clearing looks clean and regrows in May.