I think if you want grass back there, you'll need to cut down several of those trees to help with reducing the shade as well as making maintenance (mowing) easier.
I feel dculberson's pain. My wife and I purchased a lot last July to build a house hopefully this fall and it's 2.5 acres of basically just field. I've been mowing it regularly to help turn it from pasture to lawn, but wanted to plant a few trees in the hopes that they'd be established by the time we moved in. Deer got them all - ate them right to the ground. So now, I'm not doing anything until we live there and can hopefully keep the wildlife mimized with help from our dog.
Rent some goats for a few days. I'm 100% serious. Check craigslist, you'd be surprised.
In reply to Steve_Jones :
LOL ...well... okay, I will look into it!
P3PPY said:
In reply to Steve_Jones :
LOL ...well... okay, I will look into it!
Well... okay, three years later, what's it look like?
In reply to VolvoHeretic :
Funny to see this one come up again. No goats to report, though I did look for them on CL way back when. This early spring it looked great, very promising! In the main area only mature trees are left, with a few outliers that I'm slowly putting the ax to (literally -- it's good exercise). The tree coverage is spottier than I realized at first so I even have a grassy area in the way back. We started a little walking trail of someone's discarded yard of mulch, too.
BUT
I have too many long-term irons in the fire and have been looking for what I could cull. This spring I was discontentedly looking at the back woods area in question, which is fairly well delineated from the "regular yard," and realized that I couldn't ever just relax in my own yard since the woods work was looming over me. So I decided that, lacking time to really knock it out, I would be best served by removing the project from my plate for the remainder of the spring and summer.
It's been more relaxing being out back with the kids now, and I certainly am never lacking for something to do, either.
I'll do some more thinning of the herd this winter and perhaps this next spring I'll get the ivy done.
I've pretty well ruled out the idea of seeding back there; that's money and time I don't have. Exception would be if I cleared it entirely, which I occasionally consider.
I know that I'm late to the party, but I did just what you considered. We have a long driveway(600') and it was basically small trees, shrubby crap, pickers, vines, striped maple and other unwanted stuff. Down both sides of the driveway, I began clearing back about 40' or so in order to eventually plant grass. First step was to walk it and remove any large rocks. Next was continually run an old tractor thru the area and cut everything down that I could drive over. Next was to pull out any and all small trees and scrub that I could. I didn't cut them because I wanted all of the root material gone. Next was the time consuming step of getting rid of all of the trees under 8-10" in diameter. I pushed them over with the skidsteer so the roots "popped" and then de-limbed, cut up and chipped everything blowing them all over. That took me a whole season of weekends on-and-off, but it looked 1000 's better going into winter. In spring I took a toothed bucket and back dragged the whole area which ripped up a lot of vine-like stuff and root material. It also began to bring nice looking soil to the surface and semi-level things off. At this point, it was a matter of fertilizer, grass seed and Mother Nature raining a bit. It did make a decent looking "field", but not really a lawn.
2 years later when I decided it was time to pave the driveway and get real grass on both sides, it became VERY EXPENSIVE! Grass likes 4-6" of fertile soil to spread its roots unfortunately.
