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A good dose of broadleaf weed killer containing triclopyr will finish off most trees. Apply it to the cambium of the stump after cutting the tree down. It won't even make your lawn nervous, either, so you can also treat the sprouts coming up anywhere in your yard. This is good stuff to treat those weed trees coming up in the fence in the back yard, too.

Do it right after you cut the tree down. Don't wait even a half hour. The tree shuts down transferring nutrients to the roots pretty quick.

I find that a concentration of Triclopyr stronger than the usual 1-1.5% used for spraying foliage works a lot better for this. Your garden store stuff will likely be 1-1.5%. That works great on leaves though, when the plants are growing. Triclopyr is a growth disrupter so it needs the plants to be growing.
 
Well no need to place chemicals he said. He grinded the trunk down close to a foot or so it seemed and went outside the trunk circumference and destroyed nearby roots. They removed most of the shavings and here is whats left.
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Well no need to place chemicals he said. He grinded the trunk down close to a foot or so it seemed and went outside the trunk circumference and destroyed nearby roots. They removed most of the shavings and here is whats left. View attachment 1115729
Rent an Eliet shredder for the branches. They are awesome and the company did invent the self propelled shredder.
Screenshot 2023-09-09 153304.png
 
Rent an Eliet shredder for the branches. They are awesome and the company did invent the self propelled shredder.
View attachment 1115742

No, no, no. That's just a toy for letting homeowners think they are being efficient.

That's a hammer mill style of yard waste mulcher, but it will fail quickly on the size of wood he has in that tree. For the money, just throw the branches in your truck and haul them away. Or let the city haul it off. Chippers reduce the amount of volume you remove in a truck and the hammer mill style makes very good mulch. Since our homeowner is a do-it-yourself kind of guy, I'd suggest chopping it up with that saw he may have acquired and toss it into somebody's truck.
That being said, a whole crew of guys cannot cut & feed as much as a commercial chipper. For the money, it's a better investment to get a good chipper. It's just that the rental will cost more than a few pickup loads of disposal.

If you got lots of time an patience, these are fun:

1695777759572.png

https://www.solostove.com/en-us/p/solo-stove-bonfire
And they will burn a LOT of wood each evening you use it, sitting around the autumn evening relaxing. They don't care too much whether it is green wood or not, either. Green wood is obviously harder to ignite and get burning, but the vented fire-pits are really good at incinerating trees parts you don't want to keep and hate paying for disposal of.
 
Well no need to place chemicals he said. He grinded the trunk down close to a foot or so it seemed and went outside the trunk circumference and destroyed nearby roots. They removed most of the shavings and here is whats left.
Good job, wasn't that a lot easier than renting a saw and waiting on chemicals to rot a root.

What kind of grass do you have, from the runners. it looks kind of like St. Augustine. Regardless, the way it is putting out runners, it will spread into that area pretty rapidly next season. No need to put down new sod, unless you want instant gratification. (That's a whole different topic)

Here's what I did. rake the chips off the area where the grass is growing good into a pile where the stump was. If you can expose the roots, dig around the end near the base, wrap a tow chain several times and hook to a truck, do a preliminary pull to see if it will break loose. If not, back off some on the pressure and dig around the root to cut the feeders then pull again. You don't have to get the whole thing, just the bigger portion.
I don't know what the rest of your yard looks like, but if you have any low areas, mix the chips with some top soil and fill them in. It's near the end of the growing season, so if you have any bare areas, put it there until late winter, then spread it out. As the chip rot, they will produce nitrogen so don't over fertilize those areas.

If you don't need the chips, rake them up put them in a bag and put in your household garbage can, it will help the landfill.

Get some topsoil and mix in with the remaining chips where the base of the tree used to be.
 
Good job, wasn't that a lot easier than renting a saw and waiting on chemicals to rot a root.

What kind of grass do you have, from the runners. it looks kind of like St. Augustine. Regardless, the way it is putting out runners, it will spread into that area pretty rapidly next season. No need to put down new sod, unless you want instant gratification. (That's a whole different topic)

Here's what I did. rake the chips off the area where the grass is growing good into a pile where the stump was. If you can expose the roots, dig around the end near the base, wrap a tow chain several times and hook to a truck, do a preliminary pull to see if it will break loose. If not, back off some on the pressure and dig around the root to cut the feeders then pull again. You don't have to get the whole thing, just the bigger portion.
I don't know what the rest of your yard looks like, but if you have any low areas, mix the chips with some top soil and fill them in. It's near the end of the growing season, so if you have any bare areas, put it there until late winter, then spread it out. As the chip rot, they will produce nitrogen so don't over fertilize those areas.

If you don't need the chips, rake them up put them in a bag and put in your household garbage can, it will help the landfill.

Get some topsoil and mix in with the remaining chips where the base of the tree used to be.
Yes, much easier. I'm glad I used a contractor.
Yes I had St Augustine but as you can see it went bare and now it's a competition between Bermuda and St Augustine.
If Bermuda wins I don't mind it since it is easier to care for.

I was planning on letting it settle and add top soil and fertilize with organics like I normally do.
Or I could already fertilize over the chips too and once it settles more add top soil. Either way it will get to the soil as the chips decompose.
Is this a good approach?
 
No, no, no. That's just a toy for letting homeowners think they are being efficient.

That's a hammer mill style of yard waste mulcher, but it will fail quickly on the size of wood he has in that tree. For the money, just throw the branches in your truck and haul them away. Or let the city haul it off. Chippers reduce the amount of volume you remove in a truck and the hammer mill style makes very good mulch. Since our homeowner is a do-it-yourself kind of guy, I'd suggest chopping it up with that saw he may have acquired and toss it into somebody's truck.
That being said, a whole crew of guys cannot cut & feed as much as a commercial chipper. For the money, it's a better investment to get a good chipper. It's just that the rental will cost more than a few pickup loads of disposal.

If you got lots of time an patience, these are fun:

View attachment 1115746
https://www.solostove.com/en-us/p/solo-stove-bonfire
And they will burn a LOT of wood each evening you use it, sitting around the autumn evening relaxing. They don't care too much whether it is green wood or not, either. Green wood is obviously harder to ignite and get burning, but the vented fire-pits are really good at incinerating trees parts you don't want to keep and hate paying for disposal of.
No no no. I have used Eliet shredders before and swear by them I would totally buy one if I had the funds to do so. I also love solo stoves because everyone has got one and it means people. buy more of my wood.
20230304_151421.jpg
 
Neo- 1.4 inches
Mastero- 1.8 inches
Minor-1.9 Inches
Major-2.4 inches
Vector-3.15 inches
Prof 6- 4 inches
Super Prof- 5.1 inches
Mega Prof- 6 inches
 
1695866539555.png

This little dandy is made in Crete. Earlier versions were made in 2016 and were self propelled.

I think you can see that "self propelled" isn't exactly a new concept. The little ELIET SUPER PROF 2000 looks like a decent little machine for a 5" to 6" capacity chipper. I'm not knocking the machine, but ALL 6" chippers come with some serious shortfalls for commercial use.
 
View attachment 1116031
This little dandy is made in Crete. Earlier versions were made in 2016 and were self propelled.

I think you can see that "self propelled" isn't exactly a new concept. The little ELIET SUPER PROF 2000 looks like a decent little machine for a 5" to 6" capacity chipper. I'm not knocking the machine, but ALL 6" chippers come with some serious shortfalls for commercial use.
SHREDDER! NOT CHIPPER
 
I knew you would bring that up.
You probably ought to learn a bit more about machines. The marketing of that machine tells you it is a "shredder". What that really means is that it cannot claim to be a chipper, which in fact is a superior design for reducing large wood down to small bits. Remember this comment?

That's a hammer mill style of yard waste mulcher, but...

Those triangular knife blades are a very old fashioned tool, common as dirt (almost) in the agricultural business. Sickle mowers, hay mowers, combines... They all use the same exact teeth to chop up vegetation. My BCS sickle mower from Italy uses the same exact knives as a 1960 Farmall Cub with a side-mounted sickle bar.

Your Eliot "shredder" incorporates a rounded screen assembly around the knife assembly, along with some other metal element that flail and beat up the wood into shreds of vegetation that pass through the holes in the screen. A more traditional hammer mill would give you different screen sizes so that you could create the particle size you prefer.

While a hammer mill mulching machine is a great way to process yard waste into smaller bits than most chippers achieve, it isn't an efficient design for reducing heavy wood branches into small bits. The concept of pulverizing the wood until it fits though a screen is the basic problem: it takes a whole lot more horsepower to "shred" wood into small pieces, and a whole lot more fuel, noise, and worn out steel parts. The Eliot shredders partly overcome that inefficiency by putting an infeed roller on it to control how quickly the small branches get stuffed into the machine. The idea is to slow down the infeed until the feed rate can match the inefficient hammer mills production rate.

Don't get me wrong, here, either. I'm not suggesting it is a bad machine. It's just that I find it's usefulness extremely limiting, because I know how slow it disposes of brush, and how limited is the size of wood that it can dispose of.
 
I knew you would bring that up.
You probably ought to learn a bit more about machines. The marketing of that machine tells you it is a "shredder". What that really means is that it cannot claim to be a chipper, which in fact is a superior design for reducing large wood down to small bits. Remember this comment?



Those triangular knife blades are a very old fashioned tool, common as dirt (almost) in the agricultural business. Sickle mowers, hay mowers, combines... They all use the same exact teeth to chop up vegetation. My BCS sickle mower from Italy uses the same exact knives as a 1960 Farmall Cub with a side-mounted sickle bar.

Your Eliot "shredder" incorporates a rounded screen assembly around the knife assembly, along with some other metal element that flail and beat up the wood into shreds of vegetation that pass through the holes in the screen. A more traditional hammer mill would give you different screen sizes so that you could create the particle size you prefer.

While a hammer mill mulching machine is a great way to process yard waste into smaller bits than most chippers achieve, it isn't an efficient design for reducing heavy wood branches into small bits. The concept of pulverizing the wood until it fits though a screen is the basic problem: it takes a whole lot more horsepower to "shred" wood into small pieces, and a whole lot more fuel, noise, and worn out steel parts. The Eliot shredders partly overcome that inefficiency by putting an infeed roller on it to control how quickly the small branches get stuffed into the machine. The idea is to slow down the infeed until the feed rate can match the inefficient hammer mills production rate.

Don't get me wrong, here, either. I'm not suggesting it is a bad machine. It's just that I find it's usefulness extremely limiting, because I know how slow it disposes of brush, and how limited is the size of wood that it can dispose of.

BCS machines are AWESOME! I really like Eliet shredders because they are robust machines. As the saying goes, If you wanna know what to buy, go to the rental yard and see what they got and then buy that. I like the Eliet machines because I like the way the chips are perfect for mulch or compost. Although the Caravaggi chipper/shredders I have seen look good too.

 
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