Stump Grinding in Dry Creek Farms, Goodlettsville

Wet ground turns an easy stump into a lawn repair

Dry Creek Farms went up between 2004 and 2008 on flat quarter-acre pads in the Dry Creek bottom, and the soil down here is alluvium. It drains slowly, it stays saturated for days after a real rain, and anyone who lived through May of 2010 in this part of Davidson County treats that drainage with respect.

What that means practically is that the stump is rarely the hard part. A twelve to eighteen inch Cleveland pear or a red maple grinds in under an hour. Running a machine across a soft lawn to reach it is what leaves you with two ruts, a torn root mat and a re-sod bill bigger than the grind.

So on Ivy Hill Lane, Trellis Way and Vine Lane we watch the weather harder than we do almost anywhere else in Goodlettsville, and we would rather move you three days than fix your yard.

How we grind a wet-season job here

First choice is simple: wait for the ground. Two to four dry days and these lots firm up enough that a walk-behind leaves nothing but a tire print.

When the calendar will not allow it, and closings and fence installs do not care about the forecast, we mat the route. Boards or ground protection laid end to end from the driveway to the stump, machine walked over the top, boards lifted at the end of the day. It costs an hour of labor on each side of the job and it is quoted as such, but the lawn comes through it.

The third option, and we will suggest it when it applies, is to reach the stump from the driveway or the street rather than crossing turf at all. On several of these lots the tree the builder planted is close enough to the drive that we never touch grass.

Fill the hole, do not crown it

The standard finish on most stump jobs is to rake the grindings back in and mound them slightly, because they settle. In a floodplain that is the wrong answer twice over.

A crown of loose wood in bottomland soaks up water and holds it against the surrounding turf, and when the yard does drain the whole mound slumps into a dish that then ponds. Worse, a heavy rain will float the top of it off and carry it toward the creek.

So down here we take the spoil out and backfill with soil, compacted in layers, finished flush with the surrounding grade rather than above it. Seed and straw on top. It is a bit more work and it is the only version that still looks right a year later. If you want the chips for a bed elsewhere on the property we will set them aside, just not over the hole.

Pear stumps out front, river birch out back

The builder planting through here was Bradford and Cleveland select pear along the street with red maple mixed in, all of it now fifteen to twenty years old, which is the age when the pears start coming apart in summer storms. Those are quick grinds and reasonable money.

The back property lines along the Dry Creek bottom are different. River birch was planted in clumps, which means one stump is actually three or four trunks fused at the base, and it prices closer to a large single tree than a small one. Sycamore and box elder came in on their own along the creek edge and grow fast on wet ground.

River birch and sycamore both hold water in the wood, so the spoil comes off heavy and wet and mats down rather than flying. It does not spread well on a lawn. On this end of the subdivision, hauling is usually the right call regardless of the weather.

Before we schedule a Dry Creek Farms grind

• How the yard has drained in the last week, honestly
• Whether we can reach the stump from the drive without crossing turf
• If it is a river birch clump rather than a single trunk
• Any hard deadline, so we can decide about matting the route
• Where you want the spoil, or whether it all leaves
• Sprinkler heads, since a wet lawn hides them completely