There are three real options. Grind it, dig it out, or leave it and let it rot. Grinding is the usual answer and takes the stump a few hundred millimetres below ground, which is enough to turf or plant over. Digging out is for paving. Leaving it is only fine if nothing is going there.
- Grinding is not removal. The roots stay in the ground and rot slowly.
- Digging out is a bigger job. It takes machinery and it takes the soil with it.
- Chemicals are slow. Months, not days, and the stump still has to come out.
- Ask before you accept the price. Stump work is the most commonly excluded item.
The tree comes down in a day. The stump is still there the next morning, and almost nobody asks about it before the quote is signed.
How do you get rid of a tree stump?
Three ways, and the right one depends on what you want the space for.
Grinding is the common answer. A machine cuts the stump into chips, working down past ground level so the top of the stump is buried rather than gone. It is quick, it needs the machine to reach the stump, and it leaves the roots where they are.
Digging out removes the stump and the main roots together. It is slower, needs an excavator on most sites, and it disturbs everything around the hole.
Leaving it is a real option and not always the lazy one. If the spot is going back to planting bed and nobody is walking on it, a stump left to rot costs nothing and harms nothing.
Start from the end use and the answer picks itself.
What does stump grinding actually do?
It turns the visible stump into chips and takes the top of the root plate below the surface, usually somewhere around 150mm to 300mm depending on what is going on top.
That is enough for turf and enough for most planting. It is not enough to pave over or build on, because the lateral roots running out into the soil are untouched and will take years to break down.
The hole left behind is full of wood chips mixed with soil. Chips are not planting soil. As they decay they use up the nitrogen around them, which is why a shrub put straight into a fresh grinding hole often sulks for a season. Take the chips out and backfill with soil before planting anything.
For a new tree in the same position, expect the old root plate to be in the way and plan to shift it a little rather than fight it.
Can you just dig the stump out?
You can, and sometimes you have to, but it is the bigger job in every respect.
Digging means cutting the lateral roots all round, breaking the root plate free and lifting the whole thing out. On anything larger than a small garden tree that means a machine, and a machine means access, standing room and a route in and out for the spoil.
It also leaves a real hole. What comes out has to be replaced with imported soil and compacted properly if anything is going on top of it.
Choose it when the ground has to carry something. Paving, a driveway or a wall will settle over a rotting root plate, and a slab laid over a ground stump looks right for a year or two and then tells you it was not.
Do chemical stump removers work?
They work, slowly, and they do a different job from the one most people think they are buying.
The products sold for this are usually a nitrogen salt. You drill holes into the stump, pack them, wet them and wait. What you are doing is feeding the fungi and bacteria already breaking the wood down, so the stump rots faster than it would on its own.
Faster still means months, and often more than one application. At the end you have a soft stump that is easier to break up, not an empty patch of ground.
It suits a stump nobody is in a hurry about. It does not suit a stump in the way of work that is scheduled. And burning one out is not an option here.
What happens if you leave the stump in the ground?
Four things, and how much any of them matters depends on where the stump is.
- It rots, and rot attracts company. Decaying wood in a warm wet climate brings fungus and can bring termites closer to the property than you want them.
- Some trees come back. A cut stump with live roots under it can push shoots, and you end up cutting the same tree repeatedly.
- It is a hazard where people walk. A stump ground flush with the turf is invisible in six weeks and stays hard enough to trip on.
- It blocks what comes next. You cannot plant a tree in the same spot and you cannot pave over it.
In a shrub bed at the back of a garden, none of that is urgent. On a lawn, a walkway or anywhere a mower goes, it is.
Should stump removal be in the tree cutting quote?
It should be stated either way, and a quote that says nothing about the stump is a quote you cannot compare with another one.
Stump work is separate work. It is often a separate visit with a separate machine, so it is reasonable for it to be priced as its own line. What is not reasonable is leaving it unmentioned so the number looks lower than the job it is competing with.
Ask three things before you agree a price. Whether the stump is being ground, dug out or left. If it is ground, how deep, and whether the chips are being taken away. And who fills the hole, and with what.
One more, and it is worth asking early. If the tree needed approval before it came down, ask whether that covers the stump too.
