Your fruit trees will be spaced apart and you will mow between them, no?

rent the biggest stump grinder you can find (or better, hire someone to do it-- it's a lot of work) The dead roots aren't going to "suck up" nutrients, they will rot and provide them over time.

cut them flush to the ground.. use a stump killer.. and forget about the rest of it ... unless you just enjoy mind bending intense physical manual labor.. or spending money to rent things to do that which need not be done ..

once killed.. they will all rot and improve the soil ... though you might have great mushroom shows over the years ... rotting will take many years ...

johhny appleseed didnt bother with all this.. he just inserted seed and walked away .. and hot spit.. the darn trees grew.. go figure ...

ken

Your fruit trees will be spaced apart and you will mow between them, no?

@cecily 7A, yes, I figure about 20' apart. But I don't know if I'll need to mow in between. There's no grass in this area right now, so it seems easier to chop up leaves for mulch and then intersperse with bulb flowers, maybe a raised garden in front of them for peppers and tomatoes. Then I won't have to worry about hitting a stump with my mower, either.

The dead roots aren't going to "suck up" nutrients, they will rot and provide them over time.

@rwiegand, I have several that I cut down a few years ago, and they all have new growth coming up. That was my concern, that they wouldn't actually "die".

use a stump killer.. rotting will take many years ...

@ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5, you mean a chemical stump killer, right? Can you recommend one that wouldn't negatively affect the new saplings?

I bought this house about 20 years ago, and there were 5 or 6 stumps then that are STILL here! Worse, instead of rotting away they've petrified, so they're as hard as a rock!! I tried to dig one up last year, ended up breaking my $50 "unbreakable" steel shovel! LOL

you apply a stump killer to the fresh cut.. so whats left of the cambium layer.. sucks it down into the roots and kills the tree .. ibso presto... no resprouting ... noneed to waste it on all the heart wood ...

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=cambium+layer&iax=images&ia=images

it has no effect on anything else .. period ... especially because it isnt a spray thing ... and it can not drift ...

killers must be applied to the living vascular system of the tree.. the cambium ... it is useless applied anywhere else ...

if any sprouts do reappear.. snip them back. and apply more killer to the new cut ...

i use this handy applicator: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=plochman+yellow+mustard&t=ffsb&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

its yellow.. you cant lose it ... it barely spills if you knock it over ... and you can store killer for years in the garage .. but not by the hot dogs.. which shouldnt be in the garage anyway ... i have dozens of them around the house .. they were great for diluted dog shampoo ... baby shampoo... lol ... anything i wanted precise application with little waste ... i even used one to kill dandelions in the lawn ... just a few drops on the crown of the plant ...

roundup undiluted used to be rated as a stump killer ... i presume it still is... regardless.. use all products per label instructions ... but understand.. all do not need to be applied aerosolly ... its a drip thing not air pressure ... go figure thats not a word .. lol ..

btw .. when removing roots from the planting hole.. i found a sawzall with a tree blade works great.. if you clear all the soil and rocks away first ... you need not worry about any old roots.. except in the planting hole ... even better if you have 2 batteries ...

work smart.. not hard ..

ken

ps: since fruit trees can be relatively short lived.. and relatively short .... plan placement of the nut trees so they can be where they are for a century .. without eventually shading the fruit trees ...

i broke a shovel once.. and then went all craftsman on the replacement ... so thereafter.. free tool replacement if it broke ... unfortunately.. sears broke.. and now i cant get a free replacement ...

plant where you can dig holes.. your orchard doesnt need to be on some engineers dream of a grid garden perfection ... luckily i have pure sand .. but there were spots.. where i insisted there must be a tree ... and i had to dig 2 or 3 holes.. before i found the spot ... i was pissed.. in in the greater realm of things.. and 20 years later ... it didnt really matter the tree ended up 3 feet over ... [this was when i learned that replacing a 100 year old tree didnt mean in the exact same spot ... and a few feet either way didnt really matter ...] ....

in your zone.. you have all winter to dig holes ... no reason a hole cant be dug months in advance.. and the hard work done ... so when they are delivered.. the only work left is planting ...

i learned this lesson when on spring i had 100 hosta delivered with the idea that i would build the bed after the ground thawed in my MI ... only made that mistake once.. lol ... thereafter.. i made next years bed the prior year .. and limited myself to ordering only enough to fill it .. give or take 20 extra.. lol ... addiction is cruel .. lol....

my overall point is.. weve all been there ... and we all didnt break the bank or the checkbook to deal with it.. its good you finally asked after 20 years ...

ken

ps: it might also help to saturate the soil in advance ... it loosens things... and a hard spray can help with the digging ... i called it my firemans nozzle writ small ... made a big freakin mess ... and i would bring in native soil for elsewhere to refill the hole if need be ...

like this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/292945150767237593/

You're mowing it. Otherwise, it will look like it does now again in a few years. Unless you plan to go out there and hand pull all the little baby trees that sprout up.

After you remove all the trees measure out your planting spots. When you find a root that interferes with your planting; spray it with some red paint. Then when you grind the stumps be sure to grind up the roots you marked. I'd also grind any high enough to make it hard to mow.

There's stump grinders big enough to ride on. Might be worth it???

I know you all are going to enjoy this...

There are 4 stumps in my front yard that I'd really like to disappear. They were here when I bought the place, so at LEAST 20 years old. But the house was built in 93 and I'd bet that they were really taken down then.

When I bought the place I drilled holes and added some kind of stump killer, and every year I put mulch around them to (a) help me not hit them, and (b) theoretically make them rot away faster.

So I started to dig them up last week.

The first one, after I've dug down about 3 feet:

You can see that the base of it extends outward. But worse, what's left is AS HARD AS A DANG ROCK!! I could shave off about 2" of rotted wood around the outside, but after that it's petrified.

I tried to shear it off at ground level using my electric chain saw, thinking I'd just cover up the rest. I'm not sure if you can tell from the second pic, but I made it about 3" before the 3 fully charged batteries all died. That was 20 minutes of cutting!!

Next day, I decided to tackle a smaller stump; thinking that if I get it out and there's a hole, I could use the excess decomposed mulch from the other one to fill it in. I dug it out about 18":

Same thing, the exterior was soft but after a few inches it's just petrified. I bent my steel shovel trying to dig it out, so I gave up and thought I'd try to shear it off, too.

With this one, I could make it about 2" in before the wood would swell around the blade and it wouldn't cut anymore. So I'd have to cut 2" parallel to the ground, then cut downward to take out a small chunk... rinse and repeat until the batteries died.

This is where I am after 4 days:

It rained today, and I'm glad because my back needed a break!! At this rate, I'm going to be hacking on the SMALLER stump every day for about 2 more weeks :-O :-O

Lol. How do you get wood to last soo long? What type of trees were they?

I have silver maple and white ash stumps I WISH would of lasted longer. For real, I get about a decade out of a 2 ft by 4 ft ish white ash stump from a Y shaped tree left at 6 inches tall

It's hard to tell now, but all of the other trees in my yard have been white oak, beech, maple, field pine, American holly, and a FEW birch.

These are way too big to be maple or holly, and pine isn't usually this hard. Beech and pine have shallow roots, too, and these are pretty deep. So based on the size, hardness, and depth of the roots, I'm guessing that they're white oak.

I took down a white oak last year with my little 10" chain saw. It took WEEKS, and destroyed the chain! I might as well have been using sand paper! LOL

Did you try burning it out with charcoal?

perhaps one of these:

I have not, @cecily 7A, but I might try it next. Wednesday through Sunday have clear skies in the forecast, so it's a good time for it. The only concern is that I won't be here the whole time to keep an eye on it.

There was a stump in the back yard when I moved here that looked burned and I suspect they either tried that, or maybe they just poured gas on it? Either way, it was petrified, too, and I finally got it dug up a year or two ago. But it can't possibly make it worse! LOL

@rwiegand, I'm thinking about it, buddy! LOL I have a ton of new stumps that I'm creating (the purpose of this thread), and I'm quickly realizing that it's not physically possible to dig them all up. I really don't want to destroy the top soil, though, so I guess a dozer is a last resort.

Here’s a related personal story: at our past home, there was a big stump left from an old elm, smack dab in the middle of the front yard. Upon purchasing the home, I employed a local tree service to grind out the stump. There was a LOT of sawdust piled up and so I asked the tree guy about it. ”It will decompose,” he said. ”It will nourish your grass,” he said. 🤣😂

After year 3 of no grass anywhere in the vicinity, I started digging and raking the sawdust out. When we sold the house after year 8, there was a feeble stand of grass in that spot.

It’s now 12 years later and I saw there is a passable stand of grass there.

If you have the bigger stumps ground up, remove the sawdust.

I use a slower but reliable method to get rid of my stumps. Using a sharp axe once a day I'll chip away at the stump with about 30 whacks (at my age any more will whack me). After a few days this process whittles the stump down to below ground level, then cover with soil.

I don't have an axe, but I should probably get one. When I was a teenager my dad had an 8lb maul, and one summer my best friend and I spent ALL DAY whacking at this fallen oak with it, just for fun. It was a challenge to see if we could ever actually split it.

By the end of the summer, we were JACKED!!! LOL I guess that a few 1,000 reps of 8, 5-6 days a week, will do that to you :-)

stump grinder or bulldozer. stump grinder will create a lot of wood chips that will be good for the soil. A big stump grinder (self propelled) makes short work of a stump. if you bulldoze then you also have to get rid of the stumps and somehow grade the site to fill the stump holes. Either way do it right the 1st time so you are not dealing with new growth year after year. Also, get a soil test so you know what remediation, if any, is warranted before you get the trees planted. good luck.