Stump Grinding in Axedale That Gives You the Ground Back

Start with what you want the ground to do afterwards, because that decides how a stump should be dealt with. Around Axedale that usually means one of three things: a paddock you can slash straight across again, a spot where a new tree is going in, or a river bank that needs to stay exactly where it is. The right answer for each is different, and for the third it is sometimes not to grind at all.

What the ground looks like after stump grinding in Axedale

Paddock back to slashing. A paddock stump only needs to be taken far enough below grade that a slasher or ride-on clears it with the ground settled. We grind the crown and the top of the main roots, rake the grindings back into the hole and mound it slightly, because the mix of chip and soil sinks over the first year. Once it has settled you can drive over it. The buttress roots that run out from a big box or red gum stay in the ground and rot down over several years.

Replanting where the old tree stood. A new tree does not want to go into a hole full of wood chip and old roots. For a replant we grind deeper, remove the bulk of the grindings rather than backfilling with them, and advise planting a metre or two off the original spot where the soil has not been robbed of nitrogen by rotting timber. On sandy ground near the quarry side of Axedale the grindings drain fast and the hole is easy to refill with clean soil; on the heavier river flat clay it pays to break up the base of the hole first.

River bank stability. Red gum roots are what hold the Campaspe bank together, and the October 2022 flood showed how much bank moves once it is bare. Where a tree has been removed close to the water we normally recommend cutting the stump low and leaving the root plate intact rather than grinding, or grinding only the crown so the roots keep doing their job while the bank revegetates.

How the grinding is done

The grinder is a compact tracked or wheeled machine that fits through a standard farm gate and along the side of a township house. A carbide cutting wheel chews the stump into chip in passes, working from the outside in. Standard depth is well below the surface for lawn and paddock use, and deeper again if you are replanting or putting in a fence post, driveway or footing where the stump was.

A stump makes far more grindings than people expect, roughly two to three times the volume of the stump above ground, because the wood is fluffed up and mixed with soil. The grindings can be raked back into the hole, spread as rough mulch under a shelterbelt, or loaded out with the mini loader and taken away. Red gum and box stumps are dense and take longer per stump than a cypress or pine of the same size, which is reflected in the price. A stump that is still fresh from a recent tree removal in Axedale grinds much the same as one that has stood for years, so there is no benefit in waiting.

Before the machine starts we need to know what is underground. Rural blocks around Axedale often have septic lines, poly irrigation, old fence wire grown into the base of the tree and the odd bluestone footing from an earlier building. We check with the Dial Before You Dig service where mains are involved and walk the site with you for the rest.

Axedale conditions that matter for stump work

Red gum stumps are the local specialty. A red gum cut off at ground level will coppice, sending up a ring of shoots from the stump within a season, so grinding out the crown is the only way to finish the job. Yellow box and grey box stumps do not reshoot as readily but the timber is close to the hardest we deal with, and a big old box stump can take longer than the tree did to fell. Cypress and pine stumps from old windbreaks along the highway paddocks are soft by comparison but often come in rows of twenty, which changes the day.

Soil varies a surprising amount across the district. The sandy country around the quarry is quick and clean to grind in; the river flats hold moisture through winter and the machine can rut wet ground, so we sometimes hold flat-country stumps until the paddock dries. Flood silt around the base of a stump hides stones that blunt teeth, and there is bluestone in the ground through the older parts of the township.

We grind the same way for stump grinding in Heathcote and stump grinding in Junortoun, and if the stump came from a hedge or windbreak that is being replaced, our hedge trimming page for Axedale covers what to plant instead. The Axedale suburb page lists everything else we do around home and the main stump grinding service page for Bendigo goes into the machinery.

Stump questions from Axedale blocks