Forestry Mulching in Ohio: Honeysuckle, Brush and Woodlot Understory Mulched in Place

Mulching is one machine that cuts, chips and spreads the growth in a single pass. A drum with carbide teeth spins at the front of a skid steer or a 300-hp tracked carrier. Stems to 8 or 12 inches become a mulch layer 2 to 4 inches deep. Nothing leaves your lot. That matters here because open burning is out inside every corporation limit, and outside one the pile has to sit more than 1,000 feet from a neighbor's house with written notice to the Ohio EPA.

Pushing with a dozer strips the topsoil and leaves a pile you then pay to haul at $600 to 1,100 a load. Mulching leaves roots in the ground to prevent soil erosion on a slope or a creek bank. The chips feed soil health and promote healthy growth in the grass you seed through them. Sustainable land management, the extension office calls it. I call it the cheap way. Send photos of the thicket line and I will tell you if it mulches.

Honeysuckle does not need a permit, a season or an invitation. It is also 80 percent of what we mulch. Density sets the price: light understory you can walk through runs $1,200 an acre, a 20-year thicket runs $2,000. The drum grinds the crown flush with the clay. That matters because honeysuckle resprouts from the crown, and a mower that leaves it alive just prunes it.

Callery pear and tree-of-heaven need cut-stump treatment within minutes of the cut, or every root sends up a sucker by July. Multiflora rose and autumn olive on an old pasture need a second pass the next winter. Invasive species come back from seed in the disturbed ground, so we leave the chip layer thick and seed through it. Specialized control services and treatment services for the regrowth are part of the quote, not an extra. On our jobs in Delaware County a second winter pass runs about a third of the first.

A mixed woodlot understory runs $1,800 to 2,600 an acre: honeysuckle under sugar maple and red oak, grape vine, and dead ash. The crew mulches the understory and leaves every crop tree. Dead ash is why the range is wider; every woodlot in the state has it now. A dead ash is brittle, drops its top before the trunk is touched, and comes down in pieces, so we fell it first and mulch it second.

Trees over 3 inches on a wooded tract over 1 acre are cut October 1 to March 31 for the Indiana bat, unless a USFWS survey clears the site. That is the window, and it matches frozen ground anyway. Tree stumps stay flush and rot in 5 to 8 years. Where you want them gone, stump grinding services run $4 an inch. Send a photo looking into the woods at eye level and I will mark what stays.

The skid steer is $2,500 a day and takes stems to about 8 inches. The dedicated 300-hp machine is $3,900 a day plus transport and takes 12 inches. The skid steer clears a half acre to an acre a day in honeysuckle. The big machine clears 3 acres on open fencerow, 1 to 2 in a woodlot. On a half-acre lot the skid steer wins. Past 3 acres or past 8-inch stems the big machine is cheaper per acre.

Both run a drum, not a disc. A disc throws chips 100 feet and is wrong near a house. The drum lays nutrient-rich mulch in a strip behind the carrier. Both machines safely remove dead ash and callery pear to 12 inches; anything bigger is felled and then mulched or bucked. I pick the machine from your photos and put it in the email.

December through February is the mulching season, and the only one with no mud surcharge. Frozen clay carries the 300-hp machine without a rut. The bat window is open. The honeysuckle still has leaves, so the crew can see it. We cleared 6 acres of dead ash and honeysuckle in Medina County last February on ground frozen 14 inches, 2 days, $7,800. That job in April would have been 4 days and a ruined field.

March and April add a day or we wait. Till clay and lake-plain clay hold water into May, and a track that spins in it leaves a rut you can read in August. Summer is dust and hard clay, normal rate, and the overgrowth is at full leaf, so the crew works slower. Book winter for anything over an acre.

Honeysuckle and brush run $1,200 to 2,000 an acre. Mixed woodlot understory with dead ash runs $1,800 to 2,600. Those are the two numbers that cover nine out of ten calls.

• Skid steer mulcher: $2,500 a day, transport included within 60 miles of Delaware or Lebanon.
• Dedicated 300-hp mulcher: $3,900 a day plus transport.
• Half-acre lot: one day, $2,500. Quarter-acre infill lot: $1,700 flat.
• Second winter pass on honeysuckle regrowth: about a third of the first.
• Stumps ground where a pad goes: $4 per inch, $150 minimum per stump.

Three acres of honeysuckle woodlot outside Sunbury ran a day and a half, $3,800. Frozen ground, no surcharge; mud season adds a day. Free on-site estimate within 60 miles of a yard. Call (740) 729-8625 or send the form with photos. I email you a budget range and two dates before the end of the day.

Mulching is the first step of most land clearing jobs here, and the only step on a lot you want to keep wooded. It is a service, not a product: the crew, the machine and the follow-up come together. Professional forestry mulching services and forestry services on a woodlot pair with professional land clearing, comprehensive land clearing to dirt where a pad goes, lot clearing services for a township homesite, brush clearing on fencerows, and stumps ground by the inch. Clearing services for land for construction or development run winter mulch first, summer grubbing second.

What we are not: a tree removal service for a single oak over the garage. Your tree removal needs near a house, including tree trimming, go to a climber with a bucket truck. We refer out professional tree removal services, tree trimming and prunning services, and professional tree planting services. We remove trees at clearing scale, on acreage, with a machine. Land clearing and mulching services from one crew, forestry mulching and land that is yours to walk afterward. Send the photos and I will tell you which hub your job belongs on.

Transport is included within 60 miles of Delaware or Lebanon, which covers Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati and every county between. Cleveland, Akron, Canton and Toledo carry a transport line from Delaware, 95 to 130 miles. Residential properties, farm woodlots and overgrown areas on commercial tracts all run the same day rate across the OH area, one service area, two yards. Let a field overgrow for ten years and the vegetation is the same anywhere in it: honeysuckle, rose, dead ash. Honeysuckle is thickest around Cincinnati and the lake-plain clay is wettest near Lorain, which is why the Dayton crew runs spring and the Delaware crew runs winter up north.

We clear land quickly and efficiently because the machine never leaves your lot and nothing gets trucked. A clean slate on a half acre takes a day. Prepare your land in winter and the chips enrich your soil by the time you seed in April. Send the form with photos or call (740) 729-8625 and I will email a budget range for your property quickly, the same day.