Sure, anyone can hire a tree service to pull or grind out their tree stumps but what if the stump’s hard to get to, maybe crammed right up against your 
house or your valuable plants? Or heck, what if you’d just rather not spend the money to have the stump removed for you? Not to worry; there ARE alternatives, even organic ones.
- Paul James, TV’s “Gardener Guy” recommends drilling holes in the stump and pouring a “mixture of salt and vinegar” in the holes to hasten the stump’s process of decay, but I’ve seen others shriek in horror at the idea — because salt “poisons the soil.” Okay, next idea?
- More often, it’s suggested that those drilled holes be filled not with but salt but with SUGAR (which “microcritters love,” one contributor to Daves Garden added). Then moisten the sugar and put mulch on top of the stump (assuming it’s flush with the ground). You can use white sugar, molasses or old jellies or jams.
- If you don’t have a drill, just make cuts in the surface of the stump with a saw or ax.
- Another intriguing suggestion is to cover those sugar-filled holes with construction-strength plastic bags. The plastic is reported to “cook the stump in no time.” How much time? No one ever says so if you’ve used any of these techniques, please tell me!
- One still finds the suggestion that gasoline be poured into those drilled holes or cuts but along with environmental reasons not to do this, gasoline only stops new growth and doesn’t hasten the plant’s demise anyway.
“Tips, tips, tips” — you see that word all over the Web, and search engine optimizers know to use it repeatedly. To me it conveys a tiny bit of 
information that’s helpful in the very short-term — a racing tip, a stock tip. So I think of good gardening information not as tips but rather as good gardening information.
But readers, if you’re looking for Tips, look no further because Gardening Tips with Teeth are right here. That’s my term for tips that are actually good, substantive, hard-won gardening knowledge, based on decades in the dirt.
Tips on this Website
Money-Saving Tips
- Homemade Cement Pavers and Decorations is everything you need to know for a fun project for yourself or your next party — really! I’ve given paver-making workshops for garden clubs and block parties, and believe me — fun is had.
- Finding a “Coach” Near You covers ways to get a LOT of good gardening help without paying much.
- Gardeners are notorious for giving away plants — find out how you can get some of them!
Cherry laurels are extremely popular with landscape designers as foundation shrubs and hedges, but they’re less well known to the public because they’re not showy. (These highly useful plants don’t scream “buy me” at the nursery.)
Most popular are probably the ‘Otto Luyken’ and ‘Schip’ laurels, both of which I use in my garden — to hide the foundation of my home and the underside of my deck. The taller species functions well as an evergreen screening hedge along my side property line. See pruning instructions under “Care” below.
In the U.S. they’re often referred to as “English laurels,” but in England they’re not surprisingly called “cherry laurels.” They’re indigenous to Eastern Europe and Asia Minor.
Details
- All varieties do well in full sun or partial shade, and ‘Otto Luyken’ even tolerates deep shade.
- White blooms appear mid-spring
- Size? Take your pick.
- The species (photo right) grows fast (up to 2′ per year) to 20 feet tall, if left unpruned.
- ‘Otto Luyken’ grows to 3-4 feet tall and 6-8 feet wide. It’s shown in the top photo.
- ‘Schipkaensis’ or ‘Schip’ (photo below) grows to 4-5 feet tall and 5-8 feet wide.
- Sources say they need good drainage, but doesn’t almost every plant?
- Hardy to Zone 6.
- Highly toxic.
Care
- One less-than-helpful source tells us to “water regularly”. In my experience, they’re quite drought-tolerant, once established in the garden (after at least the first season).
- To prune for smaller size, cut the tallest stems back to varying heights, but always just above another branch (don’t leave stumps). OR remove the tallest one-third of the stems all the way to the ground or close to it every year.
- Left unpruned, cherry laurels can become so thick and densely branched that light and air are restricted and disease and pest infestations are encouraged. So keep them more open and healthy by removing some of the interior branches, especially ones growing toward the center.
- Don’t prune by sheering around the edges to a perfect but unnatural shape — this will lead to the same dead interior problems described above (disease, pests).
I snapped this shot of the old English ivy that had covered my butt-ugly fence for decades to illustrate a really important fact: this stuff is waaay too thick, vigorous and heavy to be enveloping the canopies of trees. But just in case a picture isn’t worth a bunch of words, here’s the rap sheet on English ivy in trees:
- It provides the ideal home for all sorts of harmful insects, including gypsy moths.
- Its sheer weight can easily kill smaller trees, like dogwoods.
- When allowed to grow more than 10 feet or so vertically, it matures, changes form, and makes berries, which are then distributed by birds all over the place. Not nice.
Killing the Damn Stuff
But no matter how much ivy may be growing up into your trees, it’s a breeze to kill and remove it. Simply slice a section from each ivy trunk at any point you can reach it, and then let it die a slow death. Eventually the dead leaves will fall and the birds will use the old vines as nesting material and you’ll feel like a hero.
Now how to kill ivy at the base is a trickier proposition, which leads me to the question: Can ivy stumps be killed without using a synthetic herbicide? Not quickly, but it can be done slowly by drilling holes in the ivy stumps and then covering them with fresh compost. Another method that’s recommended for organic gardeners is covering the stump with plastic and again, simply waiting.
Are you one of those homeowners who never does ANY pruning? Well, you have lots of company. But really, it’s almost impossible to kill these plants by some pruning error and VERY likely you’ll improve its health and appearance, so give it a go! These are all plants I grow myself, but I’ve researched the pruning advice just in case, and here’s the best I found online.
THE BASICS
I suggest reading The Basics of Pruning first; it’s by Lee Reich for Fine Gardening. He also has a video about Where to Cut, demonstrating the 1/2-1/4-inch-above-a-bud proper way to cut.
I take issue with only one bit of Lee’s advice and that’s about Spirea japonica, which he says to prune in late winter/early spring – but for most of them, that would remove this year’s blooms. I suggest Googling the exact variety you have and the word "prune" to find out when to prune, or just do it soon after blooming, no matter which type you have (that’s always safer, anyway).
Now’s the best time to prune deciduous trees and shrubs except those that flower in the spring. If you like the size and shape just fine, at least remove these branches:
- dead ones
- diseased branches
- branches that cross other branches (literally touching, rubbing)
- branches that grow toward the center of the shrub, causing crowding
- branches that are thinner than a pencil or diseased
- suckers and water sprouts – that mess of shoots around the base of the shrub and the branches that shoot straight up at a 90-degree angle from a larger branch
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A Yoshino cherry tree growing happily for 10 years in my curbside garden up and died this year – due to the double whammy of beetle infestation and tent caterpillars, I’m told. But wedged as it is into a narrow strip of land between sidewalk and road, with close neighbors including a beautyberry shrub, ornamental grasses and lots of sedum, using a stump-grinder was NOT an option. Even if I weren’t a tightwad.
So I thought in the spirit of research I’d try using the bottle of Bonide Stump-Out that has been sitting in my basement for longer than I remember (from waaay back when I bought products pretty much on faith).
So what IS the stuff? Not that the bottle tells you, or their website, but some sleuthing reveals it’s sodium pyrosulfite, which when mixed with water turns to sodium dioxide, a smelly gas that breaks down lingens in wood to create pockets. Instructions say to pour the stuff into the drilled holes, add water, then wait 4-6 weeks and THEN pour gasoline down the holes. That seeps into those pockets, see? Then wait another 4-6 weeks, pour more gasoline down the holes and then set the whole thing on fire. (I’m not making this up.) The instructions further swear that it doesn’t really create an open flame kind of hazard, though local laws still may prohibit it. Ya think? And only six inches from the sidewalk, it just wasn’t going to happen.
Now a fun thing to do on every known gardening subject is to see what those real gardeners on forums like GardenWeb and DavesGarden have to say, based on their own gardening experiences in various parts of the country. For products and plants both, I love their forums!
And guess what they had to say about Stump-out? No one reported that it worked as claimed, but several people said it definitely doesn’t. Instead, one gardener recommended putting high-nitrogen fertilizer down the holes, and another suggested fresh manure, with mulch on top of it.
So I’ll have to add those to my list of easy stump removal techniques on the website. Then I’ll try something and watch what happens, up-close in this very public spot I pass by every day. I’ll pretend I’m a scientist and report the findings right here.
