Tree stump removal

[mike in Ottawa]

In the "raining" thread i posted a picture of a tree that was hit by lightning last week, today we had it removed along with 6 other trees, these were all about 40 -50 feet tall, we now have a pile of logs and another load of wood chips.
My question is does anyone know of a way to remove the trump naturally, i understand you can drill holes in the stumps and then pour some kind of chemicals to help kill the tree, but would like to do it naturally if possible, we had some other trees taken down last year and i'm constantly removing new shoots from the stumps,

[davefrombc]

If you want to leave the stump and use it as a setting for a planter or whatever , you need do nothing but remove any suckers it may throw up. It will die very quickly if no suckers are allowed to grow.
People wanting to burn a stump out to remove it used to drill holes in it and pour in Potassium Nitrate (Saltpeter), plug the holes to prevent rain from washing it out, and let it sit until the stump and roots have taken up all the nitrate. Then when the stump is burned in a small bonfire, the wood of the stump would burn much more easily because of the nitrate absorbed into it.
Potassium nitrate used to be freely available in most hardware stores, Co-Ops and garden centers , but it is not as readily available now because of the terrorist activities of recent years. Saltpeter ( Potassium Nitrate) is the oxidizer used to make black powder, and some other explosive compounds.
Now , most tree stumps are removed using a special stump grinder available at many tool rental places.

[Laura]

You could also just cover the stumps with dirt to keep them moist and therefor rot them a bit quicker.Putting a pot of flowers works too as they need to be watered often and the pot keeps the sun from drying the water up.I did this when we moved here because we had a few stumps in the garden, both methods worked great.

[maryjanej]

Mike I read before that you could drill holes and add rock salt I beleive it was?

I haven't tried it but this is what I did with mine: Remove suckers and also sprayed them with some roundup a few times that seemed to be killing them.

Then I put flower pots on top of the stump and some morning glory vines in the part that is a bit rotten with soil which haven't flowered yet and a funny face on the side.

Might as well turn lemons into lemonade lol...
Mary-Jane

[Countryboy]

I always enlisted the help of local flora and micro-fauna to help break down a stump. And they work best in a damp environment. So, like Laura, I'll do my best to keep the stump wet. I do drill holes, but my favourite chemical then is water. Covering it with dirt, if possible, would work well.

They start to rot away pretty quick. *big grin*