3pt hitch mulcher

[musselmark]

I want to get most of it replanted with trees from dept of forestry. It is a mess now with up rooted stumps, brush/branches and hundreds of intact stumps. I have a grapple for the brush/branches but there's too many stumps in the way .

 

[mikester]

I highly recommend renting a 100HP CTL with a mulcher before you buy one for your tractor. Unless you really hate your tractor then buy one. Top up you life insurance if you go the tractor route.

I've been renting these machines in spring the past few years and they see a LOT of abuse. They will pick up a log on the ground and fire it like out of a cannon. Sometimes it will go 300 feet forward, sometimes it gets fired into your undercarriage. The CTL's I rent all have armoured steel underplating and a 1" thick bullet proof lexan windshields. Your tractor has nothing for undercarriage protection.

The other secret is to grind standing trees in place - easier than grinding them on the ground. You can't do that with your 3PH tractor. On the ground the trees can become projectiles and will easily wedge themselves into the grinding head stopping everything in a heart beat.

After renting and seeing how they operate I would never buy one of these heads for any machine I owned.

 

[mikester]

I could hire someone to mulch it but they charge 500+ an hour. 2 days would pay to buy the mulcher. Yes most stumps are bigger than 7", more like 12-15. I can rent a D4 for 2 grand per week or a wheeled loader with root rake.

I'm renting a 100HP CTL with Fecon head by the week, works out to CDN$120/hr not including fuel and operator time. I seem to average about 5 gallons per hour of fuel.

They are rated to grind up to 8". I would not recommend trying to grind larger. Get a 25-30 ton excavator and root rake.

 

[rScotty]

I want to get most of it replanted with trees from dept of forestry. It is a mess now with up rooted stumps, brush/branches and hundreds of intact stumps. I have a grapple for the brush/branches but there's too many stumps in the way .

Replanting sounds good. I'm guessing you are not going with conifers again (else why remove existing?) so if you amend the soil around the rootball of each replanted tree they should get enough of a start to not mind the chips. At least I've had success doing that in our sandy Rocky Mountain soil. I've also experimented with mixing dirt and/or sand to the chips to get surface plants to grow. Wild rasberries like a mixture of sand and chips, not much else does....

Conifer/needle chips are handy for covering areas where you don't want grass to grow, and they do keep the moisture in. They are often used by landscapers for both purposes.
rScotty

 

[rScotty]

I'm renting a 100HP CTL with Fecon head by the week, works out to CDN$120/hr not including fuel and operator time. I seem to average about 5 gallons per hour of fuel.

They are rated to grind up to 8". I would not recommend trying to grind larger. Get a 25-30 ton excavator and root rake.

After spending way too many hours digging out stumps with a backhoe, I don't think a backhoe is the right way to go. JD 310 at more hp and twice the weight of the M59 is no any faster at digging up stumps. My conclusion is a hoe OK for individual stumps in a backyard, not for a whole lot of stumps in a field. Have not tried an excavator. When I do, it will be one large enough to remove the stump, not just dig around it.

A local guy who cleared some pine/fir forested acres used his Case 580 hoe to dig behind each tree and then pushed the tree over - causing the root ball to pop out of the ground. When it works, it's awesome.