Coaldust
Senior Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2011
- Messages
- 3,354
- Location
- North of the 60
- Occupation
- Cargo Tanks, ULSD, RUG, Methanol, LPG
Mulchers are amazing. That’s awesome.
Looks nice. All that mulch would be good cover until the grass gets going. Unless you're removing stumps I'd have a lot of regrowth from osage and locust.Personally, I like to clear out the small stuff first. Once that's gone, I have room to drop the progressively larger stuff without being hung up and wasting time. I normally leave a safety barrier if I want to control flying discharge and take that stuff out last. My finish cuts are done last after material has had some time to dry - even 30 minutes can make a difference. Finish work is always cut down low enough to allow maintenance bush hogging and driving over with vehicles. I've been driving over my jobsites with my trucks for over 24 years with no flats from chips to date.
I reclaim a lot of property to put it back to pasture or make initial pasture after logging work. No need to get rid of chips or even till the ground with my methods. I have one cattle farmer that usually has enough grass coming up within 2 months after I finish my work that he sets his cattle out on that new to-be pasture ground.
I had a customer ask what things looked like after a couple of years after I did my work. Here is a series of pics from what the loggers left me, what I processed it to and what it looks like earlier this year. This is on some land that is cut with a bush hog 2-3 times per year. I doubt they even cast down any grass seed on this. Everything you see was processed to chips. No stumps were removed from the ground.View attachment 246025 View attachment 246026 View attachment 246027
Here is another job earlier this year. Customer had timber cut several years ago so lots of stump sprouts and standing dead stumps to deal with. He wants pasture for cattle. Maybe I can get back down there in the next few months to add in how things are going.
View attachment 246030
Spot spray with proper herbicides to kill off stumps once the sprouts come up. Crossbow will kill woody species without killing grasses. Win-win.Looks nice. All that mulch would be good cover until the grass gets going. Unless you're removing stumps I'd have a lot of regrowth from osage and locust.
What's your method?
I encourage my customers to just throw seed down right on top of the mulch and let it percolate down. Seems to work just fine. Also, native grasses come up easily as well. I always try to leave any grass root base intact and it will recover within days of the next rain. Most important thing is to keep the work area bush hogged about 3x year to kill off stump sprouts and large weeds. This will cause the grasses to re-establish and thicken up. Our weather is naturally wet here so trees and grasses grow fast.Depending on the rain fall in your area use treemunchers method but with a slight difference. Get the mulcher to rough cut an area then throw seed onto it , then get the mulcher to do the finish cut. That way the seed is mixed into the mulch and a little top soil. With a few days of steady rain you'll be grazing stock in about 3 months. The other benefits, no erosion and another layer of good soil. The stumps stay and won't rot down and are not any problem in pastoral areas, cultivated areas different story.
The above method I used when I was in business doing this type of work and never had an unhappy customer
It all gets down to overall costs, fire is the cheapest, mulching is the highest price, especially when you figure in chemical costs over the next few years, done it about ever way clearing can be done.
Cribbing as in shoring and stabilization structure. I build it out of logs that I will burn anyways and with logs as large a diameter as possible. I run a PC200 with a clearing rake and matching hydraulic thumb so I can reach about 25'+ high to stack my piles if I do S&B.Hey Treemuncher, what exactly do you mean by "cribbing up?"
Cribbing as in shoring and stabilization structure. I build it out of logs that I will burn anyways and with logs as large a diameter as possible. I run a PC200 with a clearing rake and matching hydraulic thumb so I can reach about 25'+ high to stack my piles if I do S&B.
Build a structure that looks like this, but shorter, with logs to an elevation of 5'-10' at the top row. What matters is that you have room for air flow into the base of the pile. Ignore the dimensions of cut timbers as shown in the definition drawing. Just build it out of scrap logs as long and wide as you have the materials for and 5'-10' tall.
View attachment 246174
When I tried this method, the fire was so hot and so extreme that I had to keep the excavator door closed due to the radiant heat. My material had 1-2 days drying time after it hit the ground. Once my cocktail started, 15 seconds later and there was no chance to put it out unless I had a fire hose. As fast as I could grab, track and stuff a wad on top of the pile, it was burning full bore as soon as I could repeat the process. I burned the majority of 2+ acres of heavy scrap wood, tops and some mulching chips from 2 PM-7PM that day. NOT the type of fire you want in a residential setting!
- You can build a crib over a dug pit with air inlets dug out at the 4 sides for best air flow. A dug pit will also retain your ashes for easy clean up.
- Load your brush pile on top of the cribbing structure as high as you can reach it. Preferably set the dryest material towards the bottom or middle.
- I prefer a small diesel Molotov cocktail as a starter if the material is good and dry. Heave it in midway and the diesel will leak down through the pile and things will start quickly. A pump up sprayer with diesel is also a great starter, especially mixed into the airstream of a leaf blower. Oxygen is the most important ingredient to get it going good and nothing beats fast air flow over a trickle of diesel for cost effectiveness.
- Cool, dense air will be entrained through the slats of the crib and feed up into the brush pile laid above the cribbing. Rising heat will create a vacuum below and feed the oxygen faster and burn the material faster as well as cleaner. Once things start burning down enough to refuel, grab a wad and place it on top of the burning pile. Keep the burn refueled at the top of the structure and the cribbing will last quite a while as cool air feeds into the bottom and 100'+ flames incinerate everything above.