Sometimes it becomes necessary to kill a tree, here's how to do it!

This tree was growing between two houses, and we hired it removed. But they left a 14 foot tall stump, trying to get extra cash for removing that too! It is still 3 foot diameter, and began growing out the top; so it had to be terminated.

I told my Son to run the chainsaw around the stump, to kill it. It didn't work! I decided to follow his cut to see why it didn't work....

We took another cut at it; and I decided to be sure that the cambien layer under the bark was CUT! I ordered a chain saw attachment for my angle grinder.

I found out why the chain saw didn't kill it. Most of the bark is about an inch thick, but this tree; had 4 inches of bark! It was an elm tree, and had been affected by some elm tree disease; so it became unsafe to leave intact.

I went to war with this bark:

Fortunately, the chainsaw attachment was up to the job! For a while, with a full faceshield for my regular chain saw; I became a sawdust submarine! I actually wore a mask (but I'm pretty sure the tree didn't have COVID) to survive the dust cloud. My eyes, behind a full face shield and glasses; still are dry from the sawdust I fought!

The reward is the sap running out of the cut:

The sap running out here was heading up to the new growth, when you see this; the battle is over, you won! To really kill this tree, it took a 2 inch wide trench; ten feet long to finally remove the cambien layer. This deprives everything above the cut of sap; which is the lifeblood of the tree! The tree will now begin to sprout from the base, so next year that will need to be removed too, but the tree will eventually run out of supplies.

If I had it to do over again, I'd wear swimming goggles; that was an amazing amount of sawdust! After it was done, it took a while to become human from the dust statue; by removing the layer of dust, to get back to clothes!

One less problem....