Forestry mulching in Brevard County

What the machine does

The working end is a heavy drum lined with teeth, mounted on a tracked carrier or a skid steer. The operator walks it into the brush and the drum chews everything in front of it down to about ground level. What's left is a mat of shredded wood and leaves, with the trees you wanted to keep still standing.

It fits a lot of Brevard work: opening a palmetto-choked lot in Palm Bay, thinning the understory on a few acres in Grant-Valkaria, cutting a trail or a fence line, knocking back a pepper thicket by a pond. It's a weaker fit where the ground has to end up bare, like a house pad, or where the trees are big enough to need felling first.

Why it suits small lots here

Burning used to be the cheap way to get rid of cleared brush, and on most residential lots it's off the table. Every land clearing pile burn in Florida needs Florida Forest Service authorization. Residential piles must sit 300 feet from occupied buildings other than the owner's, 100 feet from paved public roads and 50 feet from wildlands or brush (FFS, Know the Law). Put those distances on a quarter-acre in Port Malabar with houses on both sides and there's nowhere left for the pile. Infill lots in Melbourne and West Melbourne run into the same wall.

Brevard's drought ban doesn't change that math. The county bans open burning automatically when its Keetch-Byram Drought Index average reaches 500, but state-permitted burns, including FFS-authorized pile burns, are excluded from the county ban (Brevard County Code s. 50-1). The Forest Service setbacks are what rule out burning on a small lot.

Hauling is the other route. It leaves clean sand but means trucks, loading time and dump fees. Mulching skips those, which can bring the price down, though the crew's number after walking the land is the one that counts.

What happens to the mulch if you build

A mulch layer is fine on land you're keeping wooded, a pasture edge or a trail. Under a house it's a different story. Many builders want the pad area down to clean sand before fill goes on, so ask yours before the mulcher comes. Otherwise you may pay once to mulch and again to scrape the chips off the pad.

Palm Bay counts mulching in place as one of the ways to grub, which means taking out underbrush. Its grubbing permit doesn't cover clearing, scraping, filling or removing protected trees, and single- and two-family sites under 1 acre are exempt from it (Palm Bay Code s. 175.015). Removing trees on those lots falls under the city's separate clearing permit. The permit guide covers the rest of the county.

Burrows, scrub and the 25-foot line

Mulchers spend their days in sandy palmetto ground, and that is gopher tortoise country. FWC requires a permit before clearing, grading or site prep within 25 feet of a potentially occupied burrow, and no permit is needed if all the work stays at least 25 feet away (FWC gopher tortoise permits). A burrow under palmetto is easy to miss from a machine seat, so walk the land first and flag every hole.

Low, scrubby oaks on bright white sand can mean Florida scrub-jay habitat. FWC lists the bird as federally threatened and names habitat loss from development as a main threat (FWC scrub-jay profile). If your land looks like that, read the scrub-jay guide before anyone mulches it.

Questions to ask before you book

Two mulching quotes can describe very different jobs. These questions sort them out.

• How fine will the mulch be, and how many passes are included?
• Which trees come down, and how are the bigger ones handled?
• Are stumps left at ground level or ground below grade? Grinding below grade breaks ground, so who places the Sunshine 811 request?
• How close will the machine work to the fence, the septic tank or the well?
• What's the plan if a burrow turns up halfway through?
• Is a second pass for regrowth priced in, or extra?