"Tree Stump Removal - Get rid of tree stumps by drilling holes in the stump and filling them with 100% Epsom salt. Follow with water, and wait. Live stumps may take as long as a month to decay, and start to decompose all by themselves."
A fan sent me this and I was rather curious since I've done a Good Idea Friday in the past on how plants love epsom salt. It took me a bit but I found the source of the image. Guess what? It's for a chemical powder you add to stumps, not epsom salts. But would epsom salts work?
I found quite a lot of websites that mention this method, but one thing stood out to me - a lot of them said ether rock salt or epsom salt. But as I address in the previous epsom salt post, epsom salt isn't like table/ rock salt. They have different chemical compositions, "salt" is a quite broad scientific term. I have no doubt that perhaps rock salt would work, but the minerals that make up epsom salt I don't see working as well.
I walked along my lawn trying to find maybe an old stump I didn't know was there, but alas I had none to test this out on. I looked online assuming since it seems like such a popular idea that there would be people who have attempted this as well, but could only find one blog post that talked about actually using this method. Over at Lisa Earthgirl, she writes about trying this out. I asked how it was coming along but unfortunately due to a damp summer, she's going to have to try it again to see if it shows any results. Most other search results ether pulled up questionable commercial sites, or seemed to be along the lines of "a friend of a friend tried this with success"
So I'm not calling this a Bad Idea yet, but unproven to date. Personally I think you'd have far more success with something like rock salt which is known to kill plants. If you've tried this with conclusive results, please let us know!