Popping out bushes?

[Bobrown14]

One tip for using a chain attached to hooks on your bucket. Wrap the chain around the trunk 2x that reduces the slip it will tighten as soon as you start pulling or lifting.

Boxwoods I'd probably hook the chain a 30K or higher clevis attached to my draw bar. Pulling like that can get sketchy af tho. Pulling up with a loader is safer but that might not work well on older boxwoods. Man I hate boxwoods. We have 1 its up past the 2nd floor window.

 

[EddieWalker]

Good job. Sounds like you and your wife are a good team!!!!!

 

[2manyrocks]

Your tractor looks to have been exactly the right size to get the job done in the available space without totally wrecking the yard.

 

[Doz]

New development... I checked with her again on which bushes she wants out. Half of them are in an area of the yard that I cannot access with a machine due to a handicap walkway that was built between the house and detached garage and a lilac tree. I guess that makes the decision simple. So, I will have no choice but to use a long chain and pull them out using the drawbar of the tractor from a distance of about 30 feet.

The other half of them are accessible and are around her deck behind the house so I'm thinking on those I'll just use the loader and try to pull up vertically. Should be interesting.

My only concern as somebody mentioned is possibly leaving small ruts in the lawn. This tractor is about 5k with the FEL and box blade both attached and the small little R4 tires put a lot of contact pressure on the soil. But, she wants to replant in the same areas so I can't just saw them off and leave the stumps. Need to get them out of the ground. So it is what it is.

Make sure you know if there’s a septic tank and drain Feild and you don’t drive on them could be a mess

 

[OldPaint]

So just to update, the job went better than expected. Wife ended up claiming the seat of the tractor, so actually all I had to do was handle rigging the chain to the bushes. That sped things up. Ended up pulling 15 to 20 bushes total. Some smaller and some larger but all of them had been in the ground for a couple of decades. I wrapped one end of the chain around the base and cinched on a link as tight as I could to "choke" it. Then hooked the clevis of the other end of the chain onto a link near the base also. This gave me a large loop of open chain that I then could connect to the two bolt on hooks I put on the tractor bucket as needed, which made the force even across the frame of the loader (imagine the chain making a "V" shape coming from two points on the loader to one point at the bush). The Workmaster 40 at idle had enough power and flow to pull up all the bushes without much fight. There was only one bush that fought us a bit, and on that one we just rocked the bush back and forth (hydro trans is awesome for work like this) until the roots let go and up it came.

For about half of the bushes there were access issues, so I connected the tractor end of the chain to the draw bar, ran the full length of chain plus a fabric tow strap to the bushes, had the wife drop her down into low range, and pulled horizontally. To my surprise the tractor ripped even the largest bushes in the yard right out like that. One in particular was such a large bush that it alone filled up the entire bed of my F-250 pickup. On that one I had to rig the strap up about half way on the trunk of the bush for leverage, then the Workmaster pulled it out.

These larger compact tractors are beasts. I figure with the FEL, box blade on the rear for ballast, fluid in the tires, etc. it probably sits at around 5,000 lbs. curb weight and in 4WD low range it seemed like it would pull anything I hooked to it. What a back saver!!

If there was any issue at all with the job, and I expected this, it was that the tractor left depressions in the lawn. So next trip to her house I'll take my lawn roller and smooth it all back out for her.

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For future reference, since you already have hooks on the top of your bucket, you can do something very similar to the 'tire/wheel' method. Just roll the bucket forward with the edge on the ground and choker chain/strap the bushes as close as possible, then roll the bucket back. It gives the same mechanical advantage with no risk of rolling the tractor or harming the FEL boom by using the bucket curl cylinders for the force and the bucket for a lever. Another method is with forks if you have them. Curl them down so that they're pointed back toward the tractor, chain the shrub to the back stop, then curl up while applying a little reverse with they hydrostatic trans. The longer the lever, the easier to get 'em out, but the levers start getting heavy when they're built to handle the forces.

I made a pulling Tee with a 4x4 and some scrap 2 x 4's for gussets/braces. I used some 1/2 x 1 bar stock to put a crown on the 'bottom' end (which is actually the top when in use) and notched the end of the post to keep the chain from splitting it. I pull a lot of small scrub and underbrush out with it. I cut most of it off just below knee high and chip the tops, then pile the stumps to rot. For the more stubborn stuff, I've got a relatively cheap stump bucket to dig around them and loosen them up. Not quite as fast as an excavator, but still a lot faster than a shovel. I've seen a lotta bad reviews about the particular stump bucket I have, but most of them have been from folks with monster tractors that can easily rip the stump bucket to shreds.

 

[oosik]

Two days ago I was down my mile long driveway - troweling out my one mud hole with my LPGS. It gently rolling and smooth as a pool table now.

Anyhow - on the way back home - I use the grapple to pull/rip out a few of the Buck brush clumps that insists on encroaching on the driveway shoulders.

The stuff grows in clumps and that's how I remove it. One clump at a time. I don't like poisons and the chainsaw doesn't kill the brush either.