How to Remove a Tree Stump

I'm trying to get a new potato garden ready for planting this season. Besides having to deal with lots of rocks in the garden, I had a fairly large tree right on the corner of the garden that I had to get rid of.

I first cut the tree off with the chainsaw making sure I left a good long trunk section so that I would get more leverage when pushing and pulling it with my compact tractor.

After cutting the tree off I used the backhoe of my tractor to dig-up and break the roots that surrounded the perimeter of the tree.

After digging up a section of roots I gave the tree trunk a push or pull with the backhoe bucket to test for "give".

As a final step I turned the tractor around and pushed and pulled the trunk with the tractor front end loader bucket to break off the last of the roots. (To get maximum effect I set the tractor in low gear and in 4WD.)

Total time to do the job as noted on my video camera was 24 minutes. I edited the video down to about 4-1/2 mins by cutting and speeding up the footage.

Getting rid of the stump is another job. Might end up burning it as it's way too heavy to lift with the FEL.