Cherry tree babies

We have an old established cherry tree that is close to our parking area in the front garden.
During the winter, we decided to widen the car park by a couple of feet, but when I started digging, :confused: I found a lot of big chunky roots just under the surface.
I abandoned the digging temporarily until I could get my hands on a big axe.
There are now about 30 baby cherries popping up all over the exposed roots.
A couple of questions.
1.... If I hack off the big roots to within 2 feet of the tree for a length of 6 ft, will it harm the tree?
2.....If I use Glyphosate on the babies, will it get back to mummy and hurt her too?

Thank you.

Laury

 

The fast answer is 1. Yes and 2. Yes

You probably wont kill it immediately but it aint gonna be happy.

 

OK thanks, but working on the premise that a lot of trees can be root-pruned, would it really do too much harm to remove about 20% of the root system fairly close to the base? I understood that the chunky roots were stabilisers rather than feed roots.
I also have to do something with all the young ones. I don't want 30 cherry trees in the front garden. What about using a gas weed gun on the youngsters?

Cheers

Laury

 

Hi Laury

Im not a tree expert and it might be worth getting some expert advice if you can. It sounds like you need the space for your carpark so all that is left is to minimise the damage. If you really need to spray use a contact herbicide like paraquat not a systemic like glyphosate as it is less likely to effect the rest of the tree. I would normally think that it would be best to do any pruning in winter when water stress would be less of a problem but i know that you dont usually prune cherries when they are dormant to minimize the risk of canker getting in so im not sure. Sorry i cant be more help.