Deciding Whether To Remove A Stump

Cutting down a tree is the easy part. Deciding what to do about the stump is tricky. Trying to cut a stump with a chainsaw can damage the saw, and trying to pull your stump out with your truck can damage the truck. In light of how tricky it can be to remove a stump, you might be tempted to leave any stump you find in the ground. However, there are at least three reasons to remove the stump. 

An Advance Base for Insects

There are all sorts of insects that would love nothing more than to set up camp in a stump in your yard. The stump provides them with food and shelter. However, as insect colonies grow, they try to expand. This can lead insects to use a stump in your yard as a base of operations from which they can launch attacks on your house. Furthermore, if you have stinging insects in the stump, they can pose a threat to children and animals playing in your yard. 

A Foundation for New Growth

Just because you cut a tree down does not necessarily mean that it is dead. As long as you have an intact stump in your yard, you have the risk of new shoots of tree growth starting to grow from the stump. You can use chemical agents to kill the stump, but these agents might also kill surrounding vegetation. Thus, it is usually better to remove the stump altogether. 

A Nutrient Thief

As a tree stump tries to revive and start new life, it will leech away nutrients from surrounding plant growth. For example, if you have a rose bush growing next to the stump, you might notice that the rose bush starts to look sickly and that there is no sign of insect activity, fungus, or disease. The problem might simply be that the old stump is starving the rose for nutrients. 

As you can see, there are many good reasons to go through the trouble of removing a stump. However, if you want to make the job easy on yourself, you need not use a chainsaw or truck. Instead, you should look into renting a stump grinder, which will allow you to grind down the stump until there is so little left that any remaining roots will simply die. If you doubt your ability to operate a stump grinder, then you can hire a tree or stump removal service to do the work for you.

Talk to a service like Robert Jefferies Logging & Tree Service to learn more.

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