First 2 pics are the pile obviously, the rest are the crap I still have to deal with… There's so. So. So much.
All of this, besides the honeysuckle (not pictured), are dead wood from about .3 acres. Mostly trees that were choked out by the vines. And a few ash tree corpses that were killed by EAB.
I finally decided to start fighting the vines (Japanese bittersweet, Virginia creeper, and wild grape) that have been choking out my trees. Also have had honeysuckle slowly take over the woods and edges of my lawn. I didn't realize just how bad it all was until I started fighting it…
I had so many trees that I thought were alive… But it turned out all the green was the vines. Took me about 18 months of repeat slashing and spraying with triclopyr ester to get rid of the vines… But i did. I somehow genuinely got rid of it all. Still have a ways to go with the honeysuckle.
So now I'm cleaning up all the dead stuff left behind. The bottom 4 feet of the pile is all straight vines that I broke into small pieces to pack more densely.
Took me about a month of roughly 1 hour a day to cut and collect what you see here… I'm probably about 40% done.
by nilesandstuff