How the heck do I get rid of these stumps??

I have a raised bed on the side of my house. Unfortunately the previous owners of said bed did not take care of it. As a result, there were five small trees that were rooted in the bed. I would say they were maybe four or five years into growth. I have chopped them down about a year ago when I cleaned out the bed. Well, I didn't get around to planting in the bed or amending the soil this year. So they sprouted sucker branches off the old stumps and grew bushes. I recently decided to tackle the bed and cut off all the sucker branches and commenced to try and dig the stumps out. Well, after an hour on the first one and it still isn't out, I think I may need an alternative. I would like to find a solution without resorting to commercial stump killers. What suggestions does anyone possibly have?? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

that is very hard labor. some options I recommend
1) renting a stump grinder, if you are a do-it-yourselfer or hiring a landscape service to grind it for you

2) hiring somebody to remove w/ shovel, small backhoe, whatever

3)I don't think the commercial stump killer will harm your soil, I have used them successfully for very large stumps. But if you want to stay strictly organic, you can simply drill several holes in the stump and let moisture rot it. Will take a while.

4) I'm not really recommending this because it can be dangerous, but you could burn them is they are not too close to the house.

5) do nothing, hide their ugliness w/ some tall plants and let Mother Nature decompose them at her own pace.

I thought about that but how do I stop them from shooting off the sucker branches and taking over my flower bed all over again??

once the stump is removed or killed w/ the commercial killer you should have no suckers. It's dead.

But should you choose to let nature take its course and should you get a sucker from some remaining root, it should be soooo weak that you can remove it effortlessly. A watchful eye to nip them as soon as they shoot up is your best defense.

The fastest way (and hardest, unfortunately) to go about this is manually digging out the roots...one by one.

Depending on what kind of trees they are, they may just sucker like crazy if you don't...then you'll be constantly battling suckers.

Those chemical stump killers are virtually useless...they take forever to work...if they even do. Then, they may contaminate the soil where you want to grow desirables.

If you go the route of having someone come in with a stump grinder, keep this in mind: 1.) Most of these guys just grind the stump down about 8 to 10 inches...and do nothing about the roots...unless you specifically ask them to. Then depending on the type of tree, they may start generating suckers like crazy. 2.) Have then HAUL AWAY the "grindings" after they've done it. If you leave it on the soil, and then try to work it back into the soil as a mulch or ammendment, you're going to have a lot of YELLOW foliage on your new plantings. The nitrogen in the soil will be spent breaking down all that ground up material at the expense of the plants.

Find some teenage boys who need to vent their frustrations, buy'em some beer when they're done and you've got it made !

edited to say that I've only tried the ONE stump killer available here and it didn't do anything...I used it three times and nothing. Of course, i did try it on Ficus roots...which are full of water, so maybe they work better on different trees.

I think a lot depends on what sort of tree it was. There was an old rotten stump of a sweetgum tree in the backyard at my old house--it had holes drilled in it so it looks like they had used a stump killer on it although I can't be positive, but it still sent up suckers like crazy everywhere within about a 20 foot radius of the stump, I was constantly pulling those things up.

Our kneibor had a giant monkey tree in his backyard.

He cut it down and years latter we had suckers growing all over our backyard.
When they killed the parent plant the suckers kept getting mowed by his lawnmower so they just kept spreading out till they came up in our yard where they didn't get hassled.
Once they grew into trees they really went crazy,spreading all over the place.

We went to Home Depote and got 2 day workers to dig them up.

Some were 6 or 7ft deep-our yard was higher than the kneibors and the roots went under the footing for the wall.
These guys worked their behinds off for about a week to get them up.

You wouldn't believe how those things spread out under the ground.
They started comming up in our kneibors yard next.
We had made it too hard for them to grow in our yard and they kept going down the block.
Our yard looked like a giant gopher dug it up by the time all the suckers were dug up.
At the property line the laborers poured rock salt all around where they cut off the roots going under the wall(4or 5ft. down).
Those guys spent most of the summer going from house to house digging up those roots or roots from trees that had grown from seed that blew in the wind when the original tree was alive.

Eventually there was one guy down the street who found some kind of fungus that you put in holes you drill in the tree and it kills the tree and travels down the roots.
I don't think it's supposed to be able to get to other trees in your yard.

The stuff seemed worked pretty fast-at least on that kind of tree.
It lost it's leaves within a week or so.
It wasn't suposed to eat up the stump,just kill the tree it was put in.
It might have been a parrasite that dies after the tree dies.
I don't know.
It seemed to stop the suckers for good in his yard.
You might want to ask a tree service what the stuff is.
I think it cost the guy $100. back in the early 70's.
The tree guy came out and put the stuff in the biggest tree.(they usually came up in sets of 3or4.)
Then he came back in a couple weeks and chopped them just below the ground.

Might ask about it at a nursery or go through the yellow pages for a tree surgeon.
I don't know if a gardener would know about the right stuff to use on specific trees.
You don't want some guy killing off your good trees or whatever by using the wrong stuff.

A 3' across oak tree stump came with my house I bought 4 years ago - right in the middle of the front yard. I drilled holes in it and stuffed salt peter in the holes and left it open to the elements. Last year I ordered 6 cu. yards of humus and built a raised bed to cover it. It is decomposing nicely and everything I plant on top of it or around it has grown like crazy.