Filling deep, persistent stump holes with broken pottery, glass, cans?

We have a fairly large number of stump holes from pine trees on our property. The holes can be over a foot ( 0.3 m) deep into very stiff red clay and have formed where the long tap roots have rotted.. The clay doesn't slump and fill the holes.  Filling with woodchips or organic matter is a temporary solution - the wood and weeds are consumed by the community in the lively soil and eventually the hole is back (perhaps a little less deep).  The previous owner left some kitty litter clay which has been successful in some of the smaller holes (places where the ground was graded over stumps that have now dissolved, and the "cap" of clay is subsiding in the void).

I am particularly interested in filling stump holes that are near where we need to walk. The holes are remarkably frequent and hazardous. At certain times of the year undergrowth or fallen leaves can hide them. While sometimes it's OK to make trails avoid them, other areas need a bit more latitude in movement.

Clay or rocks seem like the only solution, but i'd need to source them from somewhere else. Whenever i have a need to dig into the clay, i take the spoil to a hole and refill, but there are many more stump holes than my need to dig.

However, I have wondered about broken pottery and possibly even broken glass. Or even cans?  It seems even with small voids, metal, ceramic, and glass waste could fill to the top six inches and then be capped with clay. I assume the voids might slowly fill with clay from the cap, and that the cap would need to be refreshed.

Barring catastrophic change, this area's planning has the lot size staying the same (or a little larger), and any agricultural use is not going to be at a large scale. Given proximity to septic field and the well and the house, it's hard to imagine any plowing.  This could be a surprise if the house were torn down and the property subdivided. Yech.

I'm happy to hear other thoughts!

judith

You want to bury random rubbish around your property? The previous owner of mine did that and I can tell you it is NOT fun to dig a hole for a tree and find old rusted sharp cans, broken glass, plastic bags etc.

I would dig around the hole and turn it from an ankle breaker into a small depression instead, or fill it with hardcore, you can generally get that with a few adds in the local paper, people will often deliver it just to get rid of it. You would have to be a bit picky to make sure it was small enough lumps and not massive pieces of concrete.

If I had small children I would seriously be concerned that they might be hurt stepping on broken glass and broken pottery.

I feel strongly that there is a solution though.

If this were my yard, I might start with the holes closest to my house or where I walk the most.  Then I would the holes with as many twigs and broken branches as I can find, then coffee grounds, leaves, and any other green or brown manure that is available. Finally, I would find any dirt that I can get from other areas of my yard.

All this is going to decay and will need to be done again and again until mother nature turns everything into soil.

I hope you will find a solution.

I would not put anything in the soil that would not decompose and become part of the soil. It will always become a problem for someone eventually. MAYBE concrete/brick rubble on the bottom, but never glass or metal IMO.

Free or cheap fill dirt is never too hard to find. Even green wood could get you buy for a long time with a little dirt packed in or mounded on top. Those could even become mini huglekultures.

I had some similar holes on my property. To deal with them I waited until I had a lot of projects to knock out (gravel for the driveway, free woodchips for the garden, some cheap fill dirt for the holes) and rented a small skid loader to knock it all out at once and maximize my rental time. Rental places usually have small walk-behind ones that anyone could use.

If you have heavy clay, it seems to me like filling the holes with anything other than organic material is a missed opportunity.  The thing heavy clay needs most is organic matter, and one of the worst things about clay is breaking through it or having to dig in it.  It seems like nature did the hard part for you.  I would keep filling it with organic matter for as long as it took.  That OM will improve the soil around the area and continue outward, so even if it is "disappearing", it's doing it job and improving a substantial area.  The very last thing I would do is fill it with the materials you mentioned.   It seems to me like voluntarily making your land into a dump.

Hey,

So your talking about a drive way,
The trees that were on the driveway and near it are gone, making it dangerous to drive on,

Other wise just put a stake in the holes and leave them be, let them fill with leaves and collect humus, and grow things in them.

in the driving case, yes, post adds on line asking for free fill, concrete, tiles, bricks, ect.

I have done this, with tiles, and unfortunately got a piece of tile, speared into my arm and I have a scar and I did accidently shook hands with a guy and put blood on them. I laid the tiles along a pasture driveway, free dumping from a renovation. So wear correct PPE, this includes long sleeves and My new friends after getting a bit of blade spearing 4mm through my right cornea, safety glasses!

Glass will work its way up and will just cause a mess, you need to pummel it so small. not really worth it.
Tiles and bricks and concrete small to pieces larger than 10mm.


Smashing up waste and filling the holes is a fine, putting ash and rubbish in holes has been done for 1000s of years.


how to fill the holes for this purpose,
First, clear out the holes,
Burn the holes if you want,
Next you will mix sand, debris of rubbish at sizes 10mm to 30mm  (if glass used smash, into grains, if your using metal cans then cut them up, into flat strips and keep a few inches from any end part of the mixture, ) and some bone char or lime into the hole,
You will then hose this in and stir this and let it set,

And just for explanation sake, in nature without humans driving on these spaces, stump holes are awesome they oxygenate the soils, feed the soils, collect humus, collect moisture and rain. so those ugly stump holes are awesome!


Regards,
Alex

I'd fill them with wood-chips and surround them with deep-rooted things in an attempt to turn each one into a pocket of good soil instead of clay with a hole. Having had to deal with the kind of mess you're thinking about making, I will never put shards of stuff in the ground.

I would either
- fill with rubble (not glass or metal)
- plant a tree in the hole if that’s viable (it’s got a nice root corridor into the clay and decomposing roots to feed on), or
- fill with biochar, which will not decompose quickly