Grind the Stump or Leave It? What East Texas Homeowners Should Know

After a tree comes down, the stump just sits there. It looks harmless, a round lump of wood in the grass. Plenty of people mow around it for a year and tell themselves they'll deal with it later. Sometimes that's fine. More often it turns into a slow headache.

What a stump can bring to your yard

JR Tree Service's own list of stump trouble starts with pests: termites, carpenter ants and pine beetles. That matches what most tree people will tell you. Dead, decaying wood in damp soil is exactly what termites and carpenter ants look for, and a stump is a lot of it, with roots running out in every direction. A freshly cut pine stump can also draw bark beetles, which then go after stressed pines nearby.

Fungus is the second concern. As a stump rots, fungi move in, and some of them can spread through the soil to the roots of healthy trees and shrubs. Not every stump does this, and you can't tell by looking at it.

Then there's the plain nuisance. Stumps get hit by mowers, trip kids and hide in tall grass. Some hardwoods, oaks and elms among them, will also keep sending up shoots from the stump for years. Pines usually won't, but they'll still sit there rotting.

What grinding actually does

A stump grinder is a machine with a spinning wheel of hardened teeth on the end of an arm. The operator sweeps it back and forth across the stump, chewing the wood into chips a few inches at a time, and keeps going until the stump is gone from view. What's left is a mound of wood chips mixed with soil. The larger roots farther out are usually left to rot on their own underground, which is normal.

Grinding is a loud, messy, dirty job. A good crew expects that and cleans up after it. Dan Herrin, who has used JR Tree Service twice, wrote that the stumps were ground down and that the cleanup was "to the point where you could not easily tell the work had taken place."

What "flush" really means

You'll hear "ground flush" or "ground below grade." Flush means the top of the stump is taken down to about the level of the lawn. Below grade means a few inches under it, which leaves room to fill with soil and plant grass on top. If you plan to reseed, ask for below grade. If you just want the stump out of the way of the mower, flush may be plenty.

Dan Herrin put the result of his own job this way: the stumps were ground "in such a way that it was not easy to say a tree had been there at all." That's the standard worth holding any grinder to. Gwen Thompson also wrote that the crew ground an older stump that wasn't part of the original bid, which is the kind of thing worth mentioning to your crew if there's a second stump hiding in the back corner.

After the grinder leaves

You have a few choices with the chips. Leave the mound and let it settle, haul it off, or use some as mulch in a bed. If you want grass back, the usual approach is to remove most of the chips, fill the hole with soil, firm it down and seed in the right season. Keep it watered until it takes. Don't plant a new tree right on top of a fresh grinding. The chips settle and tie up nitrogen as they break down, and a young tree wants better ground than that.

Yard prep is part of the job at JR Tree Service. Taylor Heaton wrote that after the pines and their stumps came out, the crew prepped the yard to plant grass.

When leaving a stump is fine

Not every stump needs to go. A stump at the back of a wooded lot, far from the house and out of the mowing path, will rot down on its own and feed the soil as it goes. Some people like a stump for a planter or a seat. The one worth grinding is the stump 20 feet from your foundation, or the one in the middle of a lawn you want to keep looking right.

Questions to ask when you get an estimate

• How far below the surface will you grind?
• What happens to the chips: left in place, hauled or both?
• Are there sprinkler lines, a septic system or buried utilities near this stump?
• I have more than one stump. Can they all be done in the same visit?

If you've got a stump you're wondering about around Tyler or Chandler, call Jesus at (903) 952-7502. The estimate is free.