Backhoe Dealing with pine trees

[SirMaxwell]

Anyone here ever had to deal with their removal? Ive got a lot to remove. Ive already played around with them enough to know they arent very cooperative.

Sandy soil, tap roots go straight down and the trunk only gets larger underground.

Ive just ordered a Kubota tractor/backhoe and I plan to see what I can do, surely I can remove the 4 inchers and under but that still leaves alot of larger.

Im thinking of digging down one side ( once the tree is felled ) and just cutting off the stump underground with a battery powered sawzall but its worth asking here others experiences.

No Im not interested in hiring someone to come in and do it for me nor rent a piece of equipment at this point but thanks.

I cut down a couple thousand, from little scrubs, up to 8+ inchers. If it was three or under, I bush hogged as close as possible. I then went pack with a sharp hatchet and just cross hatched all the little stumpys I could find. Sent my youngest out once or twice as well to smack with hatchet. Now a season later, and most are gone, or dissolved enough not to care. The few bigger ones, I smack 'em now and again with the hatchet. I did dig out a couple of 12's, but the rest I call soil. Same went for some small hardwoods as well.

 

[Looking4new]

On my 5 acres, I have mostly pine and larch/tamarack with a few white birch. I want rid of the tamarack. They loose their needles in the fall just like the hardwoods do and I hate them with a passion. I WILL get to it, eventually.
As for what to do with the pine stumps, rot them out. It is a pity you don't live there, as I would suggest you keep chickens. They have two positives, three if you count the eating part. They give you eggs and natural fertilizer (high in nitrogen).

 

[ruffdog]

I have 2 dozen more blue spruce that I knew I was going remove. If you take a chainsaw and cut a ring around the trunk (1/2"DP), it will kill the tree. Two rings about 2" apart is even better. A year later, the tree dies, dries, and gets lighter. I then can cut it and it gets fed into the burn pile.

 

[bigtiller]

I have 2 dozen more blue spruce that I knew I was going remove. If you take a chainsaw and cut a ring around the trunk (1/2"DP), it will kill the tree. Two rings about 2" apart is even better. A year later, the tree dies, dries, and gets lighter. I then can cut it and it gets fed into the burn pile.

Did the spruce stumps rot away as fast as the pine stumps others have talked about?

 

[ruffdog]

No, the pine stumps seem to rot quicker.

 

[marcusmerritt]

When I was a kid in the piney woods of South Georgia, trains pulling gondola cars filled with pine stumps rumbled thru town frequently. I was told the stumps were headed for place that cooked the stumps down to charcoal and then used the charcoal to manufacture gunpowder.

 

[hunt4570]

When I was a kid in the piney woods of South Georgia, trains pulling gondola cars filled with pine stumps rumbled thru town frequently. I was told the stumps were headed for place that cooked the stumps down to charcoal and then used the charcoal to manufacture gunpowder.

Well at least they had a good use for them..

 

[Green Acres Homestead]

Anyone here ever had to deal with their removal? Ive got a lot to remove. Ive already played around with them enough to know they arent very cooperative.

Sandy soil, tap roots go straight down and the trunk only gets larger underground.

Ive just ordered a Kubota tractor/backhoe and I plan to see what I can do, surely I can remove the 4 inchers and under but that still leaves alot of larger.

Im thinking of digging down one side ( once the tree is felled ) and just cutting off the stump underground with a battery powered sawzall but its worth asking here others experiences.

No Im not interested in hiring someone to come in and do it for me nor rent a piece of equipment at this point but thanks.

I have an l series kubota with a backhoe and removed all kinds of stumps. Here is a video of my technique. A hack for the removal and disposing of stumps using a tractor backhoe implement
A hack for the removal and disposing of stumps using a tractor backhoe implement - YouTube

 

[mikester]

4 to 6 inch trees will come out easy with just the loader. Just push it over from higher up with the loader, then grab the roots and give it a lift and push. A root fork bucket does a great job for these and takes less soil out with the roots.

Do the job in early spring when the ground is still soft and moist. Once it goes hard pack and dry dont bother.

 

[keljan11]

Hey there, we used to have a couple of acres of Christmas trees that were way too big, and decided to change the use of the land. We had a friend in town who had a mini track-hoe with a thumb for the bucket. It took him about a day and a half to pull the 2 1/2 acres of trees that had been planted 5 ft apart. Most of these trees had 6"-7" butts. It took us about a week to burn them, and another week to level all the divots left over enough to seed the field for hay.