Lyon County · 18 miles from Marshall · ~25 min drive
The ash-stump cleanup crew for Tracy, MN
Cleaning up the ash-stump backlog left by EAB removals in Tracy back yards and boulevards.
The details
What actually happens to the wood chips after we grind?
Every Tracy homeowner asks this — usually right after we quote. A ground stump doesn't disappear. It becomes a mound of shredded wood, dirt, and root fiber that fills the hole and typically piles 6–18 inches above grade, depending on stump size.
You have three options and we'll do whichever you want: 1) Leave the mulch in place. It settles over a season, breaks down into soil, and by next spring you can rake and reseed. Cheapest and what most Tracy customers pick. 2) We haul the excess. We rake the pile flat, leave enough to fill the hole, and take the surplus with us. Small upcharge, cleaner-looking yard the same day. 3) You keep the chips. Some folks use them as mulch around other landscaping. Free — just tell us and we'll pile it where you want.
One thing to know: fresh grinding mulch is high in carbon and low in nitrogen, so it's not great to till directly into a garden bed for a season. Great as a top-layer path mulch immediately.
What we actually do in Tracy
old ash stumps left behind after emerald ash borer removals
Tracy has a stump problem, and it has a specific name: emerald ash borer. Over the past several years arborists across southwest Minnesota have been taking down infested ash trees in waves, and Tracy — with its older residential blocks north of US-14 and its long, tree-lined boulevards — got hit as hard as anywhere. The tree crews cut the trunk to about knee height and left. That's where we come in. A lot of what we grind in Tracy right now is 8- to 24-inch ash stumps, sometimes three or four in the same yard, sometimes an entire boulevard row that a homeowner has been mowing around for two summers. Ash grinds cleanly — the wood is uniform, the root crown isn't as gnarly as an old cottonwood — and we can usually do a residential row in under a day. If you're in Tracy and looking at a stump (or a lineup of them) left over from an ash removal, this is the exact scenario we're set up for. Multi-stump pricing makes a row much cheaper per stump than a single call.
Grinding vs. digging in Tracy
In Tracy specifically, we almost always recommend grinding over digging. The ash stumps EAB left behind are shallow-rooted enough that a below-grade grind gets you a plantable, mowable yard for a fraction of the cost of full excavation.
The services that fit Tracy
What you'll probably need
FAQ
FAQs for Tracy homeowners
Nearby stops