Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Painting trees to prevent sunscald

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Sarah Kehler Ewing <skkewing@yahoo.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Painting trees to prevent sunscald
  • Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:30:59 -0700 (PDT)


Hi Matt,

Yes it is. In northern regions the sun is so low on the horizon all winter
that it strikes the trees almost perpendicularly to their trunks. The result
is that the tree bark warms up and the sap gets flowing while the sun is on
it and then the sap freezes when the sun goes down splitting the bark open.
A few repeats of this and your tree is very damaged. Local Birch trees have
been known to have 1" wide cracks that flow freely with sap in the spring,
but for some reason it doesn't seem to bother them as much as it bothers the
fruit trees.

I read in a very old fruit tree book that an alternative to painting tree
trunks used to be merely planting the tree with a 23 degree tilt towards the
sun thus preventing the perpendicular sun strike!


Sarah
zone 3
Edmonton, AB


--- On Tue, 3/31/09, Matthew Oller <matthewoller@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Helene, I thought it was , also to
> reduce cracking, from extreme temperature changes,and
> primarily on the south sides of trees,no?, matt,peace
>








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page