Clearing overgrown forest

[tonyoz]

The best machine for clearing trees is an excavator with a thumb on it. Nothing else even comes close if you want to get the entire tree out with it's root ball. Cutting them down and grinding them down leaves the root ball, which means it might grow back, or be something that you have to take out. Grinding/mulching the underbrush works fine for just doing small stuff. If that's all you want to have removed, hiring it out would be the fastest, easiest, and probably cheapest way to go. If you are wanting to create roads and open areas, I would get an excavator.


Eddie

Eddie, the biggest misconception with landclearing is that you HAVE to get the stumps out. Stumps can be ground below grade with a stumpgrinder then leave the rest of to rot away in it's own good time. In my experience stumps ground below groundlevel very seldom reshoot if they are buried. My stumpgrinder on a C140 will piss all over any excavator up to 30 tons(up to 100 stumps per hour) with nothing left to do but sow some seed. Where earthworks are going to take place after the clearing is done, a small excavator is more than capable of removing the remains which saves the costumer heaps. I have this discussion all the time with clients then I prove them wrong.

 

[yellowdogsvc]

We grind a lot of stumps as well and don't get regrowth. Stumps need energy (food) stored up to regenerate. If the stump is obliterated, it loses it's nutrition and usually doesn't have the ability to grow again.
Most root balls are dirt. You can have a lot of stump that's wood but a good grinder can generally chew up enough to where the ground is ready to tear up or turn over. You might have to rake some roots that get turned up but most of the stump will be chewed into good, organic additives for the soil. For invasive or toxic trees, I'd get them out by the root ball but in a forest of native growth, anything you add back to the soil will not only be beneficial for future nutrition, you will add volume (as organic material breaks down you have more dirt) and slow erosion and help with aeration (material mixed into dirt helps keep it from complete compaction which starves the soil).

I see a lot of guys doze and burn in Texas and that strips good stuff from the ground. Sure it's necessary in some circumstances but soil health is affected and soils in a burn area can be sterilized for years. Sure, ash can be a good additive to soil but the footprint of the burn ruins the dirt for a long time plus all of that extra organic material is turned into gas which escapes. Just my .02 but with the right machine like a big stump grinder, I bet you will actually save time dealing with stumps.