Will mulching a whole holly tree cause widespread seedlings?
April 16, 2022 9:21 AM   Subscribe

I am not a gardener, but I do basic yard maintenance around my property. There are a few holly trees in my yard, and around here they are tenaciously invasive. If I were to cut down another holly tree and run it through a wood chipper, trunk, branches, leaves, berries, and all, would the resulting mulch encourage widespread seeding/sprouting of more holly trees?

Scattered around each of the holly trees in my yard are a bunch of small holly sprouts/seedlings, I am assuming from berry drops. I regularly pull these as early as I can, but it is a constant chore. The holly trees also grow like crazy and are choking out my other, more desired trees, so I want to just get rid of the holly trees completely.

I have thought about getting a wood chipper for a while now, for the convenience and producing usable mulch from maintenance and prunings, but I worry that if I run a holly branch through it, complete with leaves and berries, the resulting mulch will just encourage vastly more holly trees wherever it is spread.

Is this true? Not only of the holly, but of other species as well?
posted by xedrik to Home & Garden (4 answers total)
 
Poison the tree first, let it die completely, and then mulch it.
posted by aramaic at 9:38 AM on April 16, 2022


Best answer: It’s the remaining roots and berries that might cause you trouble. City of Portland says to put the berries in the trash or birds will eat them and spread more. And they also say you need to remove the roots completely. So, it won’t be enough to chop them down, unfortunately, and you definitely don’t want berries in your mulch.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:04 AM on April 16, 2022


Best answer: If you can pull off hot composting it should be sufficient to kill the seeds but that would likely require much finer chips than a wood chipper can produce.
posted by Ferreous at 10:32 AM on April 16, 2022


Response by poster: Sounds like I'll just keep hauling them to the yard waste recycler. Thanks for the feedback!
posted by xedrik at 12:14 PM on April 16, 2022


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