Ole Tree Stump Project

Last fall when we cut down the big cottonwood tree in our yard we kept contemplating what to do with the old tree stump. We talked about turning it into a slide, building a deck into it so we could build a tree house for Luke and even talked about grinding it down to nothing. Finally we thought it would be a great planter but didn't know how to go about it and it kept being pushed back and didn't think we would do anything to it this summer. 

Well last week we came across the exact idea we had and went to investigate it and how they did it. It was so full of flowers we couldn't see how they did it, so we didn't know if the tree was already hollow or if they did something hollow it out.

Because we knew it was possible, we googled it and found that a company used a mattock to clear it out, so we tried that and it was taking way too long, so we tried chiseling it out with and the chain saw and then mattock, but that wasn't working either (chain was getting full all of the time) finally we decided to burn it out with charcoal.

 

Success- we could see it was the easiest way to get the depth we needed, though we had to do this 4 times. But it still worked.

Finally we scooped the ashes out drilled a drainage hole in the deepest part of the stump (we didn't have a long enough but so it took us awhile to get it lined up correctly. Finally we put gravel in to help drainage and added the soil and topped it with our flowers.

It turned out beautiful and can't wait to try it again on the next stump that ends up in our yard. Personally I think ours turned out prettier.