Caring for Trees in Your Backyard

If you had to remove a mature tree from your back garden because it had developed an issue and was potentially dangerous, you might be left with just the stump. You need to decide what to do with this and may want to get rid of it so you can apply some other form of landscaping or even plant a new tree in its place. Yet this part of the procedure can be quite complicated, and you may have to do some additional planning at this stage before you can move forward. What factors do you need to take into consideration?

A Careful Plan

To begin with, don't underestimate how hard it can be to get rid of that stump using some tools that you may have in your garage. To make this as easy as possible, you should always engage the services of a professional stump grinder, and they will bring tools that have been purpose made for the job.

These machines have rotary saws that will pulverise the stump, creating a big pile of dense and heavy wood fibres in its place. These fibres will be mixed in with soil, stones and anything else that may have been around the stump, and you will need to arrange for this mess to be removed from your property. Don't think you can use these fibres for mulch, as they are not suitable.

Surface Roots

You may need to take further action depending on the type of tree in question. Some species have a root structure that is relatively close to the surface of your lawn, and that may extend out for quite a distance. Your stump grinding expert should be able to advise you whether this is the case or not and can remove most or all of that root network at the same time. As they will probably have a skip bin or other form of transportation on hand to deal with the stump grinding, they can also remove this debris.

Continued Growth

Other tree species may have a much deeper root network and one that is far more sophisticated. It's not unusual for these roots to continue growing even though they are no longer attached to the tree's trunk. In this case, they may have accumulated enough moisture and nutrients before the tree was chopped down to keep them going for a long period of time. Furthermore, it's not unheard of for these roots to start sprouting again, which could certainly cause a major issue for your lawn above.

Swift action is required, and you may need to bring in someone to apply a herbicide to the remaining roots. Ideally, this should be done as soon as the stump has been ground away and the herbicide will penetrate the root system and kill everything off.

Getting Underway

If you're ready to get started, contact a stump grinding service in your area.