Trees removed, stumps grinded - what's next??

[nutshellml]

Morning all... I finally had some trees and bushes taken down last week, the trees were a maple and pine and some smaller bushes, they ground up all of the stumps and left the chips. None of the bigger trees were near the house. My question is what should I do with the chips since I didn't have them removed. I don't plan on doing any major landscaping / grass work until next year (priorities with a new house, ha). I read (thanks to you all) that leaving them in place will take a while to settle, how much is a while (I'm in the Northeast), so I guess my options are
1) Leave them they are along the property line which a fence will ultimately be put up.
2) spread the chips over parts of the existing lawn to decompose
3) have landscapers deal with it next season.
My concern with #2 is when I go with the mower over the lawn the chips will cause issues w/ the lawn mower.

What are your all thoughts?

 

[Chuck]

Can you rake them up and store them somewhere and then next year use them as mulch? If you don't want to use them just scatter them lightly over your lawn. Your mower won't even know they are there as they will end up at soil level.

 

[marlingardener]

Mulch is always needed somewhere! You could advertise "Free hardwood mulch, you pick up" and with any luck the chips would be gone in a few days, and you might meet a fellow gardener!

 

[Bootsy]

Hi @Chuck I'm not too sure about spreading them on a lawn. Whenever I've had stumps ground they aren't really ground fine enough to leave on a lawn. Particularly if you want the lawn to look good.

It also depends on how low you cut the grass. If you cut fairly low then the chips will be sucked up into the blades and some will drop back. They will be quite visible on short grass.

@nutshellml If you compost your grass cuttings, and you have sufficient of them, then you can mix the chips in with those. They will partially rot down with the compost but will form a little but of a mulch if spread on the flower beds.

Last March I had 22 x forty year old conifers removed and the stumps ground. Half of the chips were stored next to my compost heaps and have been spread amongst the grass cuttings over the year. The other half were dug into the soil and then compost and horse manure were spread over the top and then we dug it all again.

This was the end result

Four and a half months later this was the result