I always call a guy who grinds stumps.He leaves a nice pile of mulch from the tree in its place.He goes down far enough I can plant right in the same spot!

Not sure why this was bumped...but indeed, I've been surprised by how quickly potassium nitrate (typical 'stump out') or ammonium nitrate (still available online in small quantities) will accelerate the decay of large pieces of wood. I had some huge 3' X 10' logs from a tree that fell about 3 years before, that I had pushed back into a wooded area with my FEL. They just weren't breaking down very fast. I didn't even drill into them, I just carefully sprinkled prills of KNO3 into the nooks and crannies where the bark was splitting. (edit: I now remember I did put just a few drill holes in places there were only big flat surfaces...but not many.) A year later those nooks and crannies took on a porous, cardboard like appearance, with big chunks of the wood sloughing off. Mushrooms are also growing all over them. If I do another round this year, I think they will be on schedule to have totally vanished by 2-3 years time.

@Heruga (7a Northern NJ) “Great, I guess I could save some money on stump removal then.“ Five years ago we had a large Sweet Gum removed. I thought I’d save a few bucks, wait a couple of years and burn it out. I followed the guidance I’d seen in a You tube video; drilling several 1” holes with an auger bit, soak periodically with used motor oil, and after a couple of years, stack a couple of 20lb bags of charcoal on it and burn. I ended up using 80lbs of charcoal and a half rick of firewood. The fire burned for three days. The next Spring the tree shot up new shoots. The tree service was back this year to take down some dying Ash trees. I had him grind the stumps, including the Sweet Gum. He smiled when I told him my stump story.

I know you all are going to enjoy this... There are 4 stumps in my front yard that I'd really like to disappear. They were here when I bought the place, so at LEAST 20 years old. But the house was built in 93 and I'd bet that they were really taken down then. When I bought the place I drilled holes and added some kind of stump killer, and every year I put mulch around them to (a) help me not hit them, and (b) theoretically make them rot away faster. So I started to dig them up last week. The first one, after I've dug down about 3 feet: You can see that the base of it extends outward. But worse, what's left is AS HARD AS A DANG ROCK!! I could shave off about 2" of rotted wood around the outside, but after that it's petrified. I tried to shear it off at ground level using my electric chain saw, thinking I'd just cover up the rest. I'm not sure if you can tell from the second pic, but I made it about 3" before the 3 fully charged batteries all died. That was 20 minutes of cutting!! Next day, I decided to tackle a smaller stump; thinking that if I get it out and there's a hole, I could use the excess decomposed mulch from the other one to fill it in. I dug it out about 18": Same thing, the exterior was soft but after a few inches it's just petrified. I bent my steel shovel trying to dig it out, so I gave up and thought I'd try to shear it off, too. With this one, I could make it about 2" in before the wood would swell around the blade and it wouldn't cut anymore. So I'd have to cut 2" parallel to the ground, then cut downward to take out a small chunk... rinse and repeat until the batteries died. This is where I am after 4 days: It rained today, and I'm glad because my back needed a break!! At this rate, I'm going to be hacking on the SMALLER stump every day for about 2 more weeks :-O :-O