Drill holes in them (the top). Fill the holes with urea & add a little water to the holes now & then. The N in the urea will feed multiplying microbes that break down the hydrocarbon chains that make up the wood & soon the stumps will be so punky you can kick them out of the ground. KNO3 works in similar fashion.

Al

Thanks, Al. Where can I find urea in the suburbs? Or for that matter KNO3?

Urea can be had at most nursery greenhouse ops that sell fertilizer. Any store that sells Espoma products usually always has small bags of urea, too. For the KNO3, you can just do a web search for "potassium nitrate" and you'll find multiple options. KNO3 is the primary ingredient in stump removal products and works better than urea.

Al

Thanks a lot, Al. I have a stump removal product from Lowe's - and I checked it now - it does have potassium nitrate as an ingredient. But, it says that it works only on dead stumps and not on green stumps. I need to find a way to make the stumps dead before applying it.

Urea is aimply a source of Nitrogen and since most all urea today is synthetic it is not an acceptable organic product. Blood Meal can be substituted as can any other, more acceptable, organic Nitrogen source.

You can kill the stumps by removing anything that grows from them that is green. This eliminates the plant's source of food. Plants make their own food, so: - no leaves - no photosynthesis - no food - no plant. You can also use either the urea or KNO3 as they are dying. In fact, the high concentration of soluble salts that occurs when either product product enters the nutrient stream will draw water from cells, causing them to collapse in a process called plasmolysis.

Oops ..... maybe I goofed, Ashley? I'm torn, and I'm left to wonder if I should apologize for offering a suggestion that precipitated the ruling that you can't use either product because they are not acceptable to those with an ideology that all must embrace, or forever remain on the fringe looking in at the circle of organic perfection. ;o) I hope you feel just as free to ignore any directives you might receive regarding your inquiry as you are to adopt any suggestions.

Good luck with your back, BTW. Take care.

Al

kimmsr -
Blood meal doesn't work for stump removal.

Ashley -

! - Slice the stumps as close to the ground as you can.
2 - Get a long drill bit and drill the stump FULL of holes running vertically. Lots of holes.
3 - Mis some of your dirt into a bucket of water and pour it into the holes, inoculating them with whatever is in the dirt.
4 - Keep the area wet, maybe pile some dead leaves over the stumps to hold the moisture.

By next spring they should be well-rotted by the local soil fungi. If not, just plant around the stumps and eventually they will be gone.

Of course that will eventually work, but the N in urea and/or KNO3 feeds the microorganisms you reference and increase their populations far, far beyond what only the hydrocarbon chains in the wood would support. The result is that the stumps will decay in a fraction of the time they would w/o the additional N. You can get from coast to coast on a bicycle, but it's faster to take the bus.

Al

Urea (the organic kind) comes from urine. Cheap source for it would be your bathroom.

I removed a very old hedge by placing a whole bag of steer manure over each stump. cover with several inches of soil mounded up over the stump. In several months ... can't remember how many, but wasn't a whole year ... those stumps were very easy to remove. BTW ... bad back & lack of garden time were my two motives for using this passive method. My next door neighbor who used more labor-intensive methods to remove his share of this overgrown hedge [hired a day laborer to root them out]was kind enough to say he wished he'd use my method - far cheaper for one thing. And while the fertilizer was working on the stumps the whole mound was covered with annual flowers.

You know what the practical difference between organic and synthetic urea is? NONE! Yes Organic fertilizers are made from organic waste products, yes that is potentially better from a resource standpoint, no that doesn't mean that it is any better for the land it is applied too. The real benefits of organic to the land and produce come from building a soil food web, high N content salts added to a carbon source like a stump will help you build the soil foodweb. Unless you are trying to stick to the ridiculous laws around "organics" then you should use the nitrogen. All of the chemicals in chemical fertilizer can be found in the most healthy natural soils in the world, it is all about application rates and the structure and ecology of what you are adding it too.

Mushrooms cannot grow in a live stump either FYI.

Personally I would provide N somehow and inoculate with oyster spores, shade, and allow them to do their thing and harvest the mushrooms over several seasons. That is: if the stumps are the preferred host for oysters.

I miss my mushroom patch in Western WA when the oysters would come first, then boletes, then chanterelles, then the few russulas worth it. Once you get some real oysters and prepare them so you can taste real mushrooms - not those selected field mushroom things - you'll never go back, and you'll take trips into the Sonoma-Mendo Coast Range mixed conifer forest to find any excuse to tramp in the woods for 'shrooms.

Dan