I had a large Norway maple stump in the middle of my front yard for about a year. I tried to remove it and decided to throw in the towel and pay the hundred bucks to have it ground up. The hole is about 7 feet wide and 2 feet deep. There's a slope there so I'm not overly concerned about any tub effect from planting in this hole. I want to plant some shrubs there in front of a little Dawn Redwood that I planted after I cut the maple down.
So now the hole is full of ground up maple roots and soil. I really don't have any place else to put the fill, so I just pushed it all back in the hole. I figure I can use my compost pile to add to it as it settles, and more soil if need be.
I plan to throw a bunch of nitrogen fertilizer on top and water it in a little. Any ideas on when I could plant some shrubs in this hole? The tree was/is dead, no suckers or anything. The roots were all dry and brittle. Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated, thanks.
I had an old pecan tree cut down in fall of '04 and had the stump grinded. I planted a White oak in the exact same spot in fall of '06 and it has been growing perfectly. You'll know when the roots are decaying because you will see fungi/conks popping up everywhere.
I guess I'm just thinking out loud here... as it is now, I have most of a cubic yard of compost in the back yard, about a yard of soil from around the stump piled up in the side yard, and a pit full of wood chips and soil in the hole in the front yard.
My choices are to remove all the wood chips from the hole and compost them out back, and put my compost pile and soil back in the hole in the front yard. Then I could plant my small collection of shrubs there in front of the Metasequoia - some combination of a holly, Mugo pines, junipers and spruces.
Or I could compost the chips in the front yard over the winter, and plant shrubs in the spring. That way I can use my existing compost pile for the flower beds. This seems like a lot less work but I'll have a big round blob in the front yard all winter. I wonder if I dump a 50# bag of urea on it will it be done by spring.
I was busy describing my indecision-making while you posted. Now that you mention it there have been some really big mushrooms in the lawn, I didn't make the connection.
I have decided not to grind anymore stumps. I had another stump that I poured the "rotting granules" into that was totally decayed in one years time. I kicked it apart with my foot. Sometimes grinding the stump creates a bigger mess than if you had left it alone. It's amazing how much shredded wood can come out of one stump.
Indeed. Here's a pic from last year when I cut it down. I was lucky to have someone cart it off for firewood.
That reminds me, it's trash night again.
I just leave the stumps for a year and then do something about them. I basicly cut down a pine tree a year, an on going program to have something other than tall pines in my yard without losing a lot of shade in one shot. Another 20 years and I'll be almost pine free with a wide mix of shade, fruit and showy trees. LOL. I burned a stump this year and that worked pretty well. I just built a little fire on top of the stump with some of the branches from the tree I cut down. I let it burn for about 24 hours until the wind started kicking up and that was enough to burn the top off the stump and kill off the root system. Others I have just left for a year and came back with an axe. They usually just crumb and are no problem to get rid of.
I wish this tree was a pine, then it probably wouldn't have gotten sick. And I could have axed it up no prob! Maple is real hard. I had to rest for a year before I got around to the stump!
There are lots of nice conifers around here, they all seem to do really well for some reason. That Dawn Redwood was 40 inches tall last November, today it's 89 inches tall.
I've just taken out a crab apple tree in my front yard that had died(yeah!). Finally dug out the rootball acouple of weeks ago. Since this is leaf-naping season, a fresh load of manure, and plenty of grass clippings, putting in a lasagna bed ontop of the hole which is about 8' diameter and 2' deep. Already have a few plants, shrubs and roses to overwinter in the garage and plant in the spring.
