Local cedar clearing in San Antonio

Getting your land back from Ashe juniper

With cedar clearing in San Antonio, the Ashe juniper comes out and the oaks, the grass and the view you bought the land for stay put. Locals call it mountain cedar, and left alone it closes in around oak motts, shades out the grass and turns a fence line into a wall. We clear it by the acre or one fence line at a time.

Ashe juniper does well in the thin soil over limestone along the Hill Country edge. It seeds into open ground fast, and a few scattered cedars can grow into a cedar break you walk around instead of through. Very little grows underneath, so clearing it gives the grass and the young oaks room to come back.

On the Leon Springs hillsides, cedar grows on thin soil over limestone, and a dozer there scrapes straight down to rock. We’d rather cut the cedar or mulch it where it stands, so the soil and the grass roots stay on the slope. Forestry mulching does that job well, because scraped ground is bare ground, and rain carries bare soil off a slope.

Send a few photos of the cedar and the slope through the form below, and you’ll get a free estimate. We’re licensed and insured, and we answer every call at (210) 538‑6533. If the job’s bigger than cedar, our land clearing crews can handle the rest of the lot, brush haul-off included.

How a cedar clearing job comes together

Every property’s different, but the order stays the same: decide what stays, pick the method, then clear and clean up. You’ll know what you’re getting before a saw starts.

1. 1

   Walk the land from photos

   Your photos show how thick the cedar is, where the oaks are and how steep the ground gets. From there, the estimate lays out which areas get cleared and which method fits each one.

2. 2

   Flag the oaks you’re keeping

   Oaks you want saved get flagged first. Cedar tight against an oak is cut by hand, so its bark and roots don’t get torn. Any spring nick gets painted, the same habit behind our oak wilt prevention work.

3. 3

   Mulch in place or cut and haul

   On open ground, the mulcher head grinds standing cedar into a mulch layer that holds the soil. Where you’d rather have it gone, the crew cuts it, stacks it and hauls it off in our dump trailers.

4. 4

   Cut stumps flush to the ground

   Each cedar gets cut flush, below its lowest green branch, so there’s no stub to trip on or mow around. On slopes, the root mass stays in the soil and helps hold it in place.

5. 5

   Clean the fence lines and go

   Brush along the fence gets cleared back so you can walk the line and fix it again. Dense cedar is dry fuel in a hot summer, so thinning it near the house and outbuildings is worth it too.