Deer still clobber my trees even in the tubes. Now I drive 3 or 4 T-posts around the tree a few feet from the trunk and run barbed wire around the posts. Paint the posts white or slip white PVC pipe on the tops of the posts so the running deer wont crash into them at night.
A cone shaped shield is more stable, will lift up when the tree top hits it. The shield should filter out UV, be stiff enough to withstand animals, wind, and hold in moisture.
Interesting idea but the guard (in this instance) needed to stay on for several years so the tree would be a lot higher than the guard by then. When you say the shield should filter out UV do you mean that UV damages the tree or that the tube shouldn't be damaged by UV (which I understand is why plastic tubes degrade over time)?
@@diverseforests UV damages plants. Other filtering requirements depend on your goal, e.g., slow growth for thick trunk or the reverse? It's complicated, depends on the tree species. I have never seen anyone use the cone, except a good friend who owned a nursery 50 years ago, and had tons of surplus clear X-ray film that he was trying to find a use for, being very frugal. He shaped the squares into a cone/hole at top, fused with acetone they were put over a watered seed, nothing more. The seeds had a high rate of germanation, grew faster than in the nursery, overall. He sold the nursery, using only the cones to start orchards from seed. Then he started selling the cones under the name: Blue Shield Tree protectors. He died 20 years ago.
Building a nursery for the saplings would be helpful instead of relying on tree tubes to get the trees growing, maybe fence in a field but a better idea I think is fencing around your property and planting "fruitful" trees around that perimeter where it would normally be wasted space. Plant crops within the fields doubling your productivity. Fencing in your property and planting saplings & flowers with beehives a few feet away from the fence will discourage larger animals from interfering in the development of the saplings or grazing the crops.. Planting various trees around the perimeter of the fields will allow you to work the fields with crops while providing an additional resource, even more beneficial by planting flowers around the trees on the perimeter fencing & providing bee hives between your contained fields so they can pollenate the crops resulting in much larger yields than with fertilizer alone maybe not even needing fertilizer at all...
Yes the plan is to fence the entire land to prevent deer grazing the new trees which hopefully means we won't need to put up tree tubes. Due to the density we're planting the trees at and the grants we're applying for we can't plant crops as well. Like the beehive idea!
@@diverseforests With a full forest even just picking up old dead wood as firewood can be profitable, especially if you have a christmas tree wrapper or something to package firewood and sell at curb or town stores.. also taking down dead trees and replanting. Wedges work well at splitting stumps, wedges also produce no waste when splitting wood planks instead of using a saw mill. A sawmill could be useful, people love turning stumps on lathes for bowls.. I am sure there are a ton of wooden custom crafts could be utilized.. Have you thought of planting an orchard or are there restrictions of types of trees? Beehives would go well with orchard. Wish you all the best, thx 4 reply.. Cherry wood and other orchard trees are desired woods, like mahogany & maple.
In America we have an overabundance of deer because there are not many natural predators like wolves to keep the population down. And they are also fed by farmers vast fields. They eat everything. They can can clear that fence no problem and bees don't do much good because they like to eat the buds off the tree in the spring which flat tops the tree. Not sure if you referring to bees as an anti deer measure or not but just to point out the deer are active year around while bees are not. And they eat at night as well. We need 4 to 5 foot tubes in these situations and use deer repellent in the early spring to keep them at bay. Fencing a property is really expensive if not against regulations and it constrains you to only planting trees inside the fence. Say what you want about tree tubes but they seem to be the only reasonable approach but you have to maintain them.
I surveyd tree survival in tubes in forerstry commission woods. only 1 tree out of every 100 tubes was higher that the tube after 20 years basically 99 % failure rate when the tubes are not extended by eadding canes and half tubes to keep out of reach of deer. just plant less treesd and better potection
@@diverseforests From my experience tree tubes are very helpful, but those small branches I cover with repellents, after 2-3 years I prune side branches and use higher shelters
Deer still clobber my trees even in the tubes. Now I drive 3 or 4 T-posts around the tree a few feet from the trunk and run barbed wire around the posts. Paint the posts white or slip white PVC pipe on the tops of the posts so the running deer wont crash into them at night.
A cone shaped shield is more stable, will lift up when the tree top hits it. The shield should filter out UV, be stiff enough to withstand animals, wind, and hold in moisture.
Interesting idea but the guard (in this instance) needed to stay on for several years so the tree would be a lot higher than the guard by then.
When you say the shield should filter out UV do you mean that UV damages the tree or that the tube shouldn't be damaged by UV (which I understand is why plastic tubes degrade over time)?
@@diverseforests UV damages plants. Other filtering requirements depend on your goal, e.g., slow growth for thick trunk or the reverse? It's complicated, depends on the tree species. I have never seen anyone use the cone, except a good friend who owned a nursery 50 years ago, and had tons of surplus clear X-ray film that he was trying to find a use for, being very frugal. He shaped the squares into a cone/hole at top, fused with acetone they were put over a watered seed, nothing more. The seeds had a high rate of germanation, grew faster than in the nursery, overall. He sold the nursery, using only the cones to start orchards from seed. Then he started selling the cones under the name: Blue Shield Tree protectors. He died 20 years ago.
Building a nursery for the saplings would be helpful instead of relying on tree tubes to get the trees growing, maybe fence in a field but a better idea I think is fencing around your property and planting "fruitful" trees around that perimeter where it would normally be wasted space. Plant crops within the fields doubling your productivity. Fencing in your property and planting saplings & flowers with beehives a few feet away from the fence will discourage larger animals from interfering in the development of the saplings or grazing the crops.. Planting various trees around the perimeter of the fields will allow you to work the fields with crops while providing an additional resource, even more beneficial by planting flowers around the trees on the perimeter fencing & providing bee hives between your contained fields so they can pollenate the crops resulting in much larger yields than with fertilizer alone maybe not even needing fertilizer at all...
Yes the plan is to fence the entire land to prevent deer grazing the new trees which hopefully means we won't need to put up tree tubes.
Due to the density we're planting the trees at and the grants we're applying for we can't plant crops as well.
Like the beehive idea!
@@diverseforests With a full forest even just picking up old dead wood as firewood can be profitable, especially if you have a christmas tree wrapper or something to package firewood and sell at curb or town stores.. also taking down dead trees and replanting. Wedges work well at splitting stumps, wedges also produce no waste when splitting wood planks instead of using a saw mill. A sawmill could be useful, people love turning stumps on lathes for bowls.. I am sure there are a ton of wooden custom crafts could be utilized..
Have you thought of planting an orchard or are there restrictions of types of trees? Beehives would go well with orchard.
Wish you all the best, thx 4 reply..
Cherry wood and other orchard trees are desired woods, like mahogany & maple.
In America we have an overabundance of deer because there are not many natural predators like wolves to keep the population down. And they are also fed by farmers vast fields. They eat everything. They can can clear that fence no problem and bees don't do much good because they like to eat the buds off the tree in the spring which flat tops the tree. Not sure if you referring to bees as an anti deer measure or not but just to point out the deer are active year around while bees are not. And they eat at night as well. We need 4 to 5 foot tubes in these situations and use deer repellent in the early spring to keep them at bay. Fencing a property is really expensive if not against regulations and it constrains you to only planting trees inside the fence. Say what you want about tree tubes but they seem to be the only reasonable approach but you have to maintain them.
I surveyd tree survival in tubes in forerstry commission woods. only 1 tree out of every 100 tubes was higher that the tube after 20 years basically 99 % failure rate when the tubes are not extended by eadding canes and half tubes to keep out of reach of deer. just plant less treesd and better potection
Interesting, that seems a very poor success rate! Seems better where we are. Whereabouts were the forests you were surveying? What types of trees?
@@diverseforests From my experience tree tubes are very helpful, but those small branches I cover with repellents, after 2-3 years I prune side branches and use higher shelters
wedges split stumps