When a tree is felled, it often leaves behind a stump. Tree stump removal can be a difficult process, so the question arises: should you even remove a tree stump in your garden? Read on to find out.
Tree Stump Removal
In short: yes, you should remove any tree stumps from your garden. Not only can stumps ruin the aesthetic of a garden and present a trip hazard for children, but they also present a health hazard to the rest of your garden.
There are three main reasons to remove tree stumps:
- Avoid suckering
- Prevent disease
- Deter insects
Suckering
If left in the ground, tree stumps and roots can lead to the growth of ‘suckers.’ These are new growths of a tree or shrub that can appear from the root systems. Although suckers are a natural part of a plant’s life cycle, they can present a nuisance by dint of being new growth of a plant you had originally decided to eradicate! Being numerous and spreading quickly, suckers can also have an adverse impact on the rest of your garden.
Plant disease prevention
Dead matter decays, which can lead to the spread of disease. In plants, this disease can often take the form of a fungus like honey fungus, which can easily spread to other plants. Plant diseases may not affect humans, but they can devastate a garden or a vegetable crop. Removing a tree stump stops this problem before it has even begun, so if you want to have an unblemished garden, get rid of any tree stumps!
Insect Removal
All sorts of insects can make their home in a rotten log in the woods, and it’s the same for the tree stump in your garden. Even if creepy-crawlies don’t give you the creeps, wasps can make nests in old tree stumps, which could be dangerous for you and your family.
Getting rid of the tree stump will remove a potential habitat for garden insects like wasps.
Best Ways to Remove Tree Stumps
There are several ways of removing tree stumps:
- Apply Epsom salts
- Dig it out
- Apply stump killer chemicals
- Burn the stump
- Use a stump grinder
Using stump killer chemicals to kill a stump takes several months. They need to be applied to a stump from a recently-felled tree, and are also potentially toxic to other plant life as well as humans and pets. Epsom salts are not toxic, but can still take several months to kill the stump.
Both burning and digging out the stump present significant difficulties. Tree stumps are often too moist to be burned easily, and drying them out sufficiently can take as long as waiting for stump killer chemicals to work. Digging them out is quite a physically-taxing task, even if you use machines like winches to help pull the stump out of the ground.
Here at Taylor Total Weed Control, we use a stump grinder. This is a specific machine that literally grinds a stump into sawdust and wood chippings. It’s the quickest solution to removing tree stumps, taking only a couple of hours to do what other methods take months or more to complete.
Tree Stump Removal Service
If you have a tree stump in your garden, don’t delay. Contact us today and we’ll organise getting rid of it for you.
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