Stump Grinding Across Junortoun Blocks and Driveways

Stump grinding in Junortoun is a different job from grinding a stump in a Bendigo backyard. The stumps are bigger, there are usually several, and they are spread across a block of a hectare or more with a driveway that would be a street anywhere else. The grinding takes an hour or so per stump; the rest is logistics.

Getting to the stump

The driveway. Long gravel drives are standard here. The grinder comes in behind the ute with the mini loader, and gravel is no problem; soft clay verges after winter rain are, so we keep to the formed track and lay mats where a wheel would rut.

Gates and fences. A standard farm gate takes the grinder easily. Internal paddock fences, electric tape and dog runs are the things to mention when you book, so we plan a route rather than lifting gear over.

What is underground. This is the one that matters. Acreage blocks in the Rural Conservation Zone often have a bore line, a poly pipe from the dam pump, garden irrigation, septic trenches and the power lead to the shed, and none of it is marked. A grinder cuts 200 to 300 mm below the surface and goes straight through poly pipe, so before we start we walk the block with you and ask where the services run; where nobody knows, we go carefully and shallower.

Dams and slopes. Stumps on a dam bank or a steep batter can be ground, but we position the machine with care and sometimes tether it. Stumps in the wet margin of a dam wait until late summer when the ground is firm.

Kangaroos and stock. Mobs move through the blocks on the creek side most evenings, and a few owners run sheep or horses, so we close every gate we open and fence off the work area while the machine runs.

The stumps we grind out here

Box and yellow gum stumps left after a tree removal in Junortoun are dense, and the old remnant ones can be over a metre across with buttress roots running out several metres; they grind slowly but cleanly. Pine and cypress stumps from windbreak rows are softer and faster but come in tens at a time, so a row is a day's work rather than an hour's. Most eucalypts will not regrow once the stump is ground, but some wattles and lignotuber species can, so we take those deeper.

What comes out is a pile of grindings mixed with soil, roughly two to three times the volume of the stump. Most owners have us leave it in the hole to settle or rake it into a mulch pile. If you want to replant in the same spot we grind deeper and take the grindings away, because a new tree does not want to sit in rotting wood.

How a Junortoun stump job runs

1. Tell us what and where. A photo of each stump with something for scale, and a rough idea of how far into the block it is, is enough for a price over the phone on smaller jobs.
2. Walk the services. On the day we go over the block with you first: bore line, dam pipe, irrigation, septic, shed power. We mark anything close to a stump.
3. Bring the machine in. Along the drive, through the gates, across firm ground, with mats where it is soft.
4. Grind. Each stump goes to 200 to 300 mm below ground level, deeper where you are replanting, with the buttress roots chased out until they are below mowing depth.
5. Grindings. Left in the hole to settle, raked into a pile for mulch, or loaded out with the mini loader if you want the spot clean.
6. Close up. Ruts smoothed, gates shut, area raked.

A typical acreage stump day

A block on the Strathfieldsaye side of Junortoun has had an old pine windbreak taken out along the eastern boundary, leaving eighteen stumps in a 60 m line, plus two large grey box stumps near the shed from a removal the year before. We walk the line with the owner, mark the poly pipe that feeds the trough at the end of the row, and bring the grinder in through the paddock gate. The pines go quickly; the box stumps take longer because of the root flare. The grindings are pushed into a windrow with the mini loader for the horse yard, and by mid-afternoon the boundary is a clear line ready for new fencing. We do the same over the boundary, described on stump grinding in Strathfieldsaye, and on the bigger river-flat properties on stump grinding at Axedale. The main stump grinding service page for Bendigo has the machine details, and our Junortoun suburb page covers the rest of what we do here, including tree lopping in Junortoun if the windbreak next to the stumps needs work too.

Stump questions from Junortoun blocks