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Yes, if you “paint” or brush a freshly cut stump with a specialty herbicide containing glyphosate within five minutes of cutting the fresh surface, the stump will soak up the herbicide and prevent new growth. One application often works, but you might have to re-paint two to four weeks later if you see growth.

It takes anywhere from three to seven years for a stump to decompose on its own. This timeframe can depend on the kind of tree and your climate. The lower to the ground the stump is, the faster it rots. If you kill a tree stump with salt, boiling water, herbicide, light deprivation, or burning, the tree stump decomposes faster. 

No. Rock salt and similar concoctions use sodium chloride. It may be great sprinkled on your roasted potatoes, but plants don’t like it at all and in large amounts it will poison the soil. So while standard salt will dry out a tree, it will kill everything else nearby and cause other problems. The confusion is due to the word “salt” being an old catch-term for any dry chemical mixture.

Stump grinding consists of removing the visible part of the stump, but the roots remain intact. Depending on the tree and root system, the roots may still grow after stump grinding. If you are concerned about root growth and damage, you may want to consider having a stump removed completely.