[NAFEX] Location and squirrel protection

Ray Kaminski rjkaminski at charter.net
Fri Aug 24 15:38:48 EDT 2007


  Sam you asked where I am located.  40 miles north east of Green Bay 
in Sturgeon Bay,  Wisconsin. zone was 4 and now changed to 5.  Lowest 
temp this past winter was 16 below here.   With the cold wind blowing 
from Lake Michigan we have a delayed spring and so we missed the 
frost.  The frost was here but the trees were not sprouted enough to get hurt.

On a different subject:
  I have a couple of peach trees and the crop started out great.  One 
tree is  Red Haven and the other is Haley Haven.  Both had set a nice 
crop and I thinned the Red Haven down to maybe 150 peaches that were 
left.  First we got a big time hail  storm that damaged a lot of the 
fruit and I was not paying too much attention to the trees and one 
day I checked and what a surprise.  There was two peaches left on the 
Red Haven.  I knew I was robbed by squirrels as I feed all wild life 
in the back yard and often would count up to 8 squirrels.  I  quickly 
wrapped a layer of tin foil around the trunk of the Haley Haven as 
they had not robbed that one although I saw a squirrel in the tree 
while I was gathering my supplies.  He grabbed a peach and left into 
the pine trees behind to the back. I wrapped the trunk and secured 
the foil around the tree with masking tape.  Then I painted the 
entire  foil with the sticky stuff called tangle foot. Although 
squirrels have a vertical leap of 4 feet they did not jump into the 
tree and I saw a squirrel go up to the tin foil and then back 
off.  To this day my crop has not been bothered and is  just starting 
to ripen and about another week I should be picking them from the 
tree.   I have had good crops from these trees every year since I 
planted them in 1999.  The Red Haven is a freestone and gets  larger 
fruit on it than the Haley Haven which is not freestone. It's 
branches are bending badly as I did not thin it this spring.   What a 
beautiful picture that makes.     Both freeze  and taste.nice for 
winter eating. I think the Red haven also has a better sweeter taste. 
Will not know it this year however.




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