Move Honey Locust or start from seed?

We purchased our tiny bit of land from a young couple who did no upkeep, at least for the 2 years it sat on the market. At some point in recent years someone had some large and apparently productive raised beds installed wrapping the  home on all but the West side. Because of years of no attention many small Honey Locust trees have sprang up in those beds, now ranging from 2-5 feet tall. I'd love to try some pollarding and natural fence creation with Honey Locust. We also have thousands of seed pods from the neighbors trees all over our soon to be food forest area as well. I understand to start from seed they each need to be clipped and soaked to imitate an animals digestion. Not too difficult but at the same time these little trees everywhere cannot stay where they are, it's not good use of the beds and they are too close to foundation.

Has anyone experience with moving Honey Locust or Black Locust, or other similar species? How deep are the root systems? Can we soak and then pull them straight out with a post or weed puller?
Or is digging up entire root ball best option?
Or cutting them back and continuing to do so until they give up, planting seeds to start new trees?
Any suggestions welcome.

I have moved a handful of Black Locust trees. They were runners off of a much larger tree, though they themselves were probably about six feet tall. They were on a friend's property and in his way, so if we didn't move them, they'd have been firewood. So it seemed worth a shot. We just excavated enough to tell what was going on and then pulled up as much root mass as possible. They didn't have much by way of roots, but that may have been because they were runners and still mostly getting their energy from the mother tree. What roots they had were fairly shallow. This may be different for saplings though.

I really didn't know if they'd make it, since they didn't have many roots and were so big. They fell over a few times. Then got partially buried by a wood chip drop. But now they're healthy trees that are growing impressively fast. I guess my point is, they're pretty hardy beings and it seems worth a shot to try to dig and move the ones in your raised beds. I bet they'll be fine.

They make a taproot, and have a mass of roots mid-level. When I've cut young ones down to ground level, they reliably come back later that season or early the next year. When I've dug down a ways they haven't. I haven't tried transplanting.

That said, yours are inside a raised bed. Some raised beds have a mat or mesh underneath to keep root eaters out of the carrots. If yours do, it's entirely possible that tap root is curled up and wouldn't be too hard to scoop out.

In starting my own honey locust trees, I've found them to be fairly resilient.  I've had small ones that I've cut off grown new plants.  It sounds like you have a large number of them, so if you transplant extras you will probably have enough survivors to suit your purposes.

K Kaba wrote:
That said, yours are inside a raised bed. Some raised beds have a mat or mesh underneath to keep root eaters out of the carrots. If yours do, it's entirely possible that tap root is curled up and wouldn't be too hard to scoop out.

I hadn't even thought of that! I think we'll attempt to dig them up come thaw. Until then I'm going to start trying to sprout some seeds, maybe twenty, and see what happens.

Thank you for sharing your experiences!

Some recommend soaking the seeds.  When I propagate them I use a file or sandpaper to grind through the outer layer.