Tree Service in Walnut Grove, MO

Tree Service in Walnut Grove often comes back to the tree the town is named after. When it was platted in 1859, the community took its name from nearby groves of wild black walnut; before that it was called Possum Trot, after all the possums in the area, a name it still celebrates with Possum Trot Days each September. About 652 people live here on 0.62 square miles, roughly 20 miles north of Springfield, in what a Springfield News-Leader reporter called a largely agricultural community.

Living with walnuts

Black walnut is a valuable, long-lived native tree, but it is a tricky neighbor in a yard. It produces juglone, a compound found throughout the tree and most concentrated in the buds, nut hulls and roots. Plants that are sensitive to it, including tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, hydrangeas, lilacs, rhododendrons, yews, apples, pines and spruce, can stunt, yellow, wilt and die when their roots grow into walnut root zones. Beans, squash, corn, most maples and oaks, daylilies and common lawn grasses tolerate it.

Removing a walnut does not fix the soil right away

University extension guidance points out that walnut roots stay in the soil after the tree is gone and can keep causing problems for sensitive plants for a long time. If a garden or orchard is the reason you want a walnut removed, plan for that. Grinding the stump deeper and pulling out major roots near the planned bed helps, and raised beds or root barriers are common workarounds. We also suggest not using walnut leaves or hulls as garden mulch.

What walnut work usually involves

• Raising and thinning walnuts over driveways, where nuts and hulls stain concrete and cars
• Removing walnuts that shade or poison a vegetable garden
• Pruning deadwood, since walnut limbs can be heavy and break in wind or ice
• Felling with care when an owner hopes to sell or mill the log; straight, clean trunks are worth more than ones cut short
• Stump grinding and root removal near planned planting beds
• General yard and farmstead tree work across the area

Farm properties around town

Most of the land around Walnut Grove is pasture and cropland with fencerows and farmstead windbreaks. Those trees get little attention until a storm drops one across a fence or a lane. We do a lot of fenceline work out here: removing leaning and dead trees, cutting back limbs over fences and grinding stumps so mowers and equipment can run the line.

Greene County ash

Walnut Grove is in Greene County, where MDC confirmed emerald ash borer in 2018. Ash often grows in the same fencerows and creek bottoms as walnut, and dead ash in a fencerow can drop limbs on livestock fence without warning.

Call for an estimate

Call (417) 374-2037 or send the form. If you are hoping to sell a walnut log, tell us before the tree comes down so it can be cut with that in mind. Get a free estimate