Stump grindings
Also called: grindings, stump chips, stump mulch, grinder chips, stump shavings, wood chips from stump
The mix of wood chips, bark, roots and soil a stump grinder leaves behind — one to two wheelbarrows from a 24-inch stump. Good mulch on beds; left in the hole they sink into a soft dip over a year or two and tie up nitrogen, so a lawn gets topsoil instead.
A grinder doesn’t remove a stump so much as convert it: every cubic foot of wood becomes two or three cubic feet of loose chips mixed with the dirt the wheel picked up below grade. The default, from most companies and most rental days, is to rake the pile back into the hole and leave it mounded. It’s tidy for a week. Then the chips start to decompose, the mound sinks, and by the second season there’s a dip where the stump was, with thin grass because the decaying wood is borrowing nitrogen from the soil around it.
The better sequence, for a lawn: rake the grindings out — the ones with the least dirt make good mulch for beds, paths and around trees, though fresh chips should sit a few months before going on anything you’re feeding — then backfill the hole with topsoil, tamp it, overfill by an inch or two, and seed. It settles once as the roots below rot; top it up the next spring. Pros charge $50–$150 to haul the chips and backfill; on a DIY day it’s an hour with a wheelbarrow.
Two things not to do with grindings: use them as mulch against the house or a wood fence if the tree was termite-damaged, and pile them where they’ll compost hot next to something you care about. Otherwise they’re the one part of stump grinding that’s free. The cost page lists hauling as an add-on; the DIY guide ends with the rake.