DIY removing large conifer trees

Steve · 2007-01-02T13:58:19+00:00

We are moving into a new house soon. The back garden has a "hedge" of overgrown conifer leylandi which are over 30' high.One of our first jobs will be to cut them all back to 6-7 feet to make them manageable ( we don't care what they look like) then in the summer remove them completely.I don't want to pay a company to do this because, naturally, money is a bit tight when moving house and also I like to have a stab at things myself.Commercial companies will grind the roots away and dispose of the trees which is nice but I am wondering whether that is necessary as a removed conifer will not re sprout and, hopefully, using the method below, will not leave a large root in the soil to get in the way of gardening.My idea is to lop them as above, and then, when their time comes, to dig/cut vertically through the radial roots as deep as possible and using a tow-rope with a slip knot around the trunk of the tree to use the car pull them out of the ground.Has anyone tried this? Or should I bite the bullet and get a firm in?Also, any suggestions for the disposal of the trees apart from repeated trips to the dump as conifers do not, even when shredded, seem to be the best ingredient for rotting down naturally. As much as we love bonfires, we don't really want a big one (actually we do!) until we have met our new neighbours and got to know them.Thanks for ideas/experiences...Steve

Jan 02, 2007 45 Replies

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Steve 19 years ago

Thanks to everyone for ideas, warnings and experiences. Lots of good sensible and interesting advice given.

I think that I might have underestimated the strength of the roots and overestimated the power of the car before making the original post!

Coupled with the dangers of ropes snapping and the potential energy contained by them being released suddenly with a danger to life and property (sorry to hear about the window Dave :-) ) and the possibility of damage to drains etc., I have decided that they will just be reduced to stumps and left for a couple of years to weaken the roots before any extraction is undertaken. Thanks Phil. L for the suggestion.

I presume that these stumps will not need chemical treatment to kill them off as I believe that conifer stumps will just die anyway. I wonder whether chemical killing would hasten the weakening of the roots?

Once again, this group has come to my rescue and brought me down to earth!

Cheers

Steve

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The Natural Philosopher 19 years ago

Light fires on them. Thats what I did. They smouldered down a long way.

That was after a year or so,

I actually took mine down with a hand saw..big two handed thing. It was about 2 ft diameter.

Cut it flush with the ground, left it, burnt it, and covered it.

Ive removed loads of stumps with a mini digger tho. Trench round while snapping any lateral roots, then dig under and pull. Usually it comes before the digger tips over. Great fun. I love mindiggers, For a 100 quid a weekend, they are great toys to play with in the garden.

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Steve 19 years ago

That would be the easiest way and we love a good bonfire!

We will have to see whether our neighbours have bonfires first though. At the present place, we have had a good few with no complaints. I can understand people's objections to bonfires though, especially long lasting ones as would be needed to burn away the roots.

Thanks, another good suggestion. Sounds like fun too!

Steve

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soup 19 years ago

I had three (smallish, say a foot in diameter) trees in the back garden once I had cut down the trees I left the stumps protruding eight inches or so but drilled them (22-35mm holes) and filled these with a propriety stump killer used the stumps in the mean time as little stools (obviously not while the stump killer was still in evidence) for my children . Once the kids were too big /stumps too small, removed them by cutting out any roots that were accessible (say twenty minutes each). Have found one of the (very cheap) alligator type saws {

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} and a pack of wood blades come in very handy cutting the roots, , can be bought for this particular job and dumped after.

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Aidan Karley 19 years ago

Ammonium Sulphamate. If you've got a friend in the chemical trade, you should be able to pick this up for a lot, lot less than the proprietary killers. Drill the holes to the size of some doweling (e.g., an old broom handle), pack the sulphamate into the hole drilled into the stump, glue or nail a section of dowel into the top of the hole, to keep interfering fingers out.

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