A guide for Lewisville, NC yards
Stopping Stump Regrowth After Grinding in Lewisville
A stump ground deep enough does not come back. The shoots people see afterward come from a few kinds of tree whose roots sucker on their own, and here is how to tell the two apart, what the pass has to reach, and what to do with the sprouts that show up anyway.
Free, no-obligation estimates. Tell us what the tree was and how wide the stump is, and the whole job is quoted on the call.
Stump regrowth after grinding in Lewisville
A stump ground below its root collar does not grow back, because the growth point that makes new shoots has gone. Felling a tree does not finish it: the stump left in the lawn keeps its "root collar", the flare at its base, and that flare holds dormant buds that push new sprouts the following spring. A saw taken across the top, what the trade calls a "flush cut", leaves every one of those buds in place, and the sprouts are back within a season. The grinder is a different matter. Its wheel takes the stump and the flare together into chips well under the turf, and once the collar is chips there is nothing left with the means to sprout.
That is what "grinding below the root collar" means when we say it on the phone, and it is why a stump we grind in a Lewisville yard stays gone. Oaks, maples and the pines that come out of yards here all behave the same way once the collar is gone: the roots left behind have no buds of their own and slowly rot where they lie. The shoots people do see after grinding come from a short list of trees that send up "suckers" from their roots, and those are a separate question we take up further down. First, the part of the stump the pass has to reach.
The growth point the pass has to reach
The root collar is the flare where the trunk meets the roots, and it holds the buds that would otherwise push new shoots. The trade calls it the root collar or the "root flare"; on the phone most people call it the base of the stump, the part that widens out and grips the lawn. It is also the tree's growth center: the tissue there is what a felled tree sprouts from, which is why a stump cut level with the grass sends up a ring of shoots by June. TreesAreGood, the International Society of Arboriculture's homeowner site, has guidance on the collar and the roots below it. Grinding aims at that flare rather than the trunk above it. The wheel starts at the top, works down through the collar and keeps going until the flare is chips, and that pass is where the whole tree stump job, grinding included, differs from cutting low; it starts at tree stump grinding.
The depth that settles it
Taking the stump six inches or more below grade carries the pass past the collar and through the flare. Six to eight inches under the lawn is the depth the trade names for stopping regrowth, as against "just knocking the top off the stump", and it is where we finish in a Lewisville yard unless something else is going in that spot. At that depth the wheel has been through the whole flare and into the top of the roots below it, so the buds are gone with the wood. The lawn side is simple: the hollow gets its chips raked back, settles over a season and takes grass again, and how a Piedmont clay lawn takes seed over a filled spot is covered in the NC State Extension publications on soils and yard trees. What changes the number is what comes next on that spot. A new tree in the same place wants the pass taken deeper still, and the stump grinding depth for a lawn and the deeper depth for replanting are both laid out on our depth page.
Trees that still send up shoots
A few species can sucker from roots well away from the stump, and those shoots come from the root, not from the stump the wheel took out. A stump left standing encourages a crop of unwanted shoots at its base; one taken below the collar does not, and what comes up afterward is a different thing. Some trees carry buds along their "lateral roots", the shallow ones that run out under the lawn, and those roots can throw up suckers ten or twenty feet from where the trunk stood whether the stump is there or not. Suckering shows up in a small group of species.
- PoplarTulip poplar runs long shallow roots and may sprout from them for a season or two after the trunk comes down.
- WillowWillow roots can sucker freely, and a wet corner of a yard keeps them at it.
- Black locustBlack locust can sucker from its roots across a wide patch of lawn, well out from the old trunk.
- SweetgumSweetgum can push sprouts from the surface roots that run along a drive or a bed edge.
If yours is one of these, say so on the call. The grinding is the same, and the shoots that may follow have their own answer below.
Not sure what the tree was?
Tell us what you remember of it, how wide the stump is at the base and how we reach it, and the whole job is quoted before we start, with no surprise charges after. We answer the phone or call back the same working day, and we show up when we say we will.
More on shoots
Two further questions follow. The first is what to do with the shoots when they turn up in the lawn, from a root or from a stump that was only cut low, and the second is whether a shallow pass with a rented machine gets the same result as the depth described above. Both come up on the phone, and both have short answers.
What to do with the shoots
Shoots that appear should be cut back as they show, and they weaken as the roots they come from run out of stored food. A sucker lives on what the old root put by, not on leaves of its own, so mowing over it or snipping it at the turf each time it appears spends that store down until the root gives up. Nothing needs digging, and no chemical needs pouring on the lawn. Where a valued tree stands close by, its roots may be grafted to the old ones, and an arborist should look before anyone cuts at a root there. The leftover roots the pass does not reach, with their decay and grafts, are followed on our page about leftover roots.
Whether a shallow pass stops it
A shallow pass may leave the collar in the ground, which is why a rented machine often does not settle it. Consumer-grade rentals run about $150 to $280 a day plus fuel and rarely grind deeper than four to six inches, a depth the trade's own figures call "insufficient to prevent regrowth in most species"; the collar sits right in that band, so the top comes off and the buds stay. A professional wheel goes past it as a matter of course. What the stump grinder does at the cutting wheel, and why the depth it reaches is a matter of the teeth and the machine's reach, is explained on our page on how the cutting wheel works.
What our neighbors say
Tommy came out the same week and took the old maple right down below the lawn. He raked it level before he left and you cannot tell where it stood.
We had three of them and a mess of raised roots along the drive. All of it went in one visit and the spoil went back into the holes.
Needed a big pine out before the new turf went down. Quoted over the phone, done two days later, and the spot was left flat and ready.
Taken past the collar, it stays gone.
Tell us what the tree was, how wide the stump is and how we reach it. Free, no-obligation estimates, the whole job quoted before we start, and the spot raked level when we leave.