Mulching or slashing, which one does your property need

People often ring asking for a slash when what they are describing is a mulching job, and occasionally the other way around. The difference comes down to what is growing and how woody it is.

Slashing

A slasher cuts grass and soft growth off at height and leaves it lying as a fine layer. It is fast, it is efficient over open ground, and it is the right tool for paddocks, firebreaks in grass, tracks, vineyard rows, solar farm rows and general property tidy ups. It handles light woody stems, but it is not designed to chew through established scrub, and it will ride over anything too stout to cut cleanly.

Forestry mulching

A mulcher grinds standing vegetation into chip, including scrub, blackberry thickets, saplings and small trees. It is slower per hectare than slashing, but it deals with material a slasher cannot touch and it leaves the mulch on the ground where it suppresses regrowth and holds moisture. No burn piles, no cart away.

How to tell which one you need

Walk the area and look at the thickest stem you can find. If almost everything is grass and soft weed, it is a slashing job. If you have got woody stems the thickness of your thumb or bigger through it, standing dead timber or blackberry canes, you are looking at a mulching job, at least for the first pass.

Plenty of properties need both. We often mulch the scrubby fence lines, gullies and Asset Protection Zone, then slash the open paddock in the same visit or as the follow up job the next season.

The first pass and after

A common pattern on a neglected property is one mulching pass to reset it, then yearly slashing to keep it that way. That is usually the cheapest way to end up with land you can actually use, because you are not paying for heavy clearing over and over.

What we do on a site visit

We look at fuel type, stem size, ground conditions, slope and access, then quote for the machine that suits it rather than the machine that happens to be on the trailer. If a slasher does the job, we are not going to charge you for a mulcher.

Got a job in mind? Send your address and we'll come out, have a look, and put a written quote together. No obligation.