Have any of you cleared land before?
If so, how did you go about it?
The back half of my property is so thick with brush and stick weed, I can’t even walk back there.
The area that’s bad is the final half acre.
I’ve been out with the chain saw for the last few days cutting down everything except trees that are about 8 inches in diameter, and piling all the brush and twigs into a pile.
Actually there’s so much I have several piles 6 feet tall.
My plan is to rent a heavy duty wood chipper when I’m done and turn it all into mulch.
A friend was over today and he told me the brush and stick weed will all grow back eventually. How do I go about getting rid of them forever?
Do I have to get a stump grinder and grind every single stump? We’re talking an easy 500 stumps.
I just want to turn it into a nice park like area, make some walking trails and maybe later put in a small pond.
There isn’t much grass, the soil is very thin to begin with, and what’s underneath is all limestone. There’s so much limestone that a lot of it can be seen right on the surface.
Anyone have any good suggestions for getting rid of the brush once and for all?
The sensible way to clear land on a braod scale is herbicide use. I’m not familiar with the weeds your talking about so I don’t know what will work, but if you contact your local government agriculture service or your local rural supplies outlet they can provide information on what will work and what youy can legally use.
Unfortunately you’ve shot yourself in the foot by cutitng the plants down wihtout poisoning. By far the easiest method for brush is cut stump. Basically cut the thing off and paint or spray the stump with herbicide immediately. Too late now, you will have to wait for it to reshoot and go and do it all over again.
Alternatively you could get some selective arboricide and spray the leaves when it all reshoots. Just make sure you choose somehting that won’t kil the grass, and something that denatures in soil so you don’t kill your big trees.
I am about to deal with the same thing this spring (actually, I have clearing 1 1/2 acres for three years now and I hope to finally get it in shape).
I would suggest leaving the stumps. They will rot eventually although it takes years. There really isn’t a great way to get rid of that many for the benefits.
If you mow it every once in a while, the bad brush will go away and get choked out by grass. Aagain, it might take a year or three of mowing before it looks like a park but it will happen.
When we bought this house, the land was completely overgrown. I got 10% of the burn permits for this town (50 out of 500) for this town of 13,000 the first year alone.
I use a tractor and bush hog cutter to clear that stuff off. You do need to keep after it, but it eventually dies off. My cutter whacks it all of at about 3". I hit it about three times a year.
It won’t grow back if you keep the area maintained.
When my grandparents bought their house, the front acre hadn’t been mowed in at least fifty years-- possibly more. It was incredibly dense-- a veritable forest of brush and small trees. They brought in a tractor-hauled Bush Hog and mowed it all down (excepting of course, the trees that were too large for this. Most of those they kept, or had cut down.) They collected all of the left-over brush clippings and burnt them. It was a slow, laborious process, but the results were worth it.
After that, they just kept it mowed. The brush never grew back, and now the new owners pasture their horses there.
The way the settlers did it. Have lots of kids to help do the heavy stuff. And get some pigs. They eat everything. And by everything, I mean everything.