Forestry Mulching in Tyler

Forestry Mulching

Forestry mulching is the right tool for most of East Texas, and it is the machine I run every day around Tyler. A tracked skid steer with a mulching head drives through standing brush, yaupon, briars, saplings and trees up to a moderate diameter and grinds them into chips on the spot. Nothing gets stacked, burned or hauled. The chips lie on the ground as a mulch layer that holds the sandy Smith County soil together, keeps the sun off the dirt so the yaupon is slower coming back, and lets you walk the property the same day. It is how I open up overgrown acreage in Lindale and Mineola, thin the understory on wooded homesites in Flint and Whitehouse, take pasture back from sweetgum around Canton and Athens, and clear trails and fence lines on timber tracts out toward Gilmer and Kilgore. Because there is no burn pile and no dump fee, it is almost always the cheapest way per acre to turn a thicket back into land you can use.

Why mulching beats a dozer on sandy East Texas ground

The old way was to push everything into windrows with a dozer, burn what would burn, and leave bare red sand that rutted on the first rain and grew back in briars by summer. Mulching skips all of it. The brush is ground in one pass and spread back over the ground, roots and topsoil stay where they are, and the mulch layer slows erosion and regrowth. On the rolling, sandy ground that runs from Lindale down to Bullard, that difference shows up the first time it storms.

Selective: the pines and oaks stay

A mulcher works around things. I can take out every bit of yaupon, briar, privet and sweetgum under a stand of loblolly pine and post oak and leave every one of the big trees standing, which is exactly what most people want on a homesite or a recreational tract. The result is open, park-like woods you can see across and walk through, with the shade and the property value still there. Flag the trees you care about or just walk it with me and point.

What a mulcher handles, and when it is not enough

A mulching head eats brush, saplings and trees up to a moderate trunk size without slowing down. Big hardwoods take longer and at some size it is smarter to drop them with a saw and grind the stump. A mulcher also does not take a lot down to bare, gradeable dirt. If you need a slab pad or a drive base, the clearing is my part and the pad work belongs to a dirt contractor who comes behind me. I will tell you where that line is on your property.

What’s included

• Yaupon, briars, privet, sweetgum and small trees ground in place
• No burning, no windrows, no haul-off cost
• Mulch layer left behind to hold the sand and slow regrowth
• Mature pines, post oaks and shade trees left standing
• Overgrown acreage, homesites, pasture edges, trails and lanes
• The cheapest per-acre way to reclaim brushy East Texas land

Want the brush gone but the good trees kept? See underbrushing around Tyler.