North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dan & Marilyn Mason" <dmason@rainyriver.lakeheadu.ca>]

Tom,

A couple days ago I painted the young trees in my orchard with
mud, fresh cow manure and lime. I paint the trees from the ground
up a foot or two. This is to prevent mouse and vole damage during
the winter. This has worked well where I can paint the trees just
before continual snowcover. However, the last few years we have
had fairly heavy rains in November, washing much of the mud/manure
from the bark. This happened again yesterday.

There is still some protection from the washed bark, but I don't
know how this method of protection would work where frequent rains
occur for much of the winter. If you have access to fresh cow
manure just an application of that material whenever the young
whips appeared to be washed would work to keep rodents from them.

One advantage to painting whips in a nursery row, besides not
taking much time per tree, is that what is left of the mud paint
in the spring can easily be washed off with warm water and an old
wash rag and then rinsed with watering cans a day or two before
grafting.

Dan Mason   zone 3, NW Ontario, Canada


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