North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Bruce Hansen" <brucehansen@acd.net>]

Charlie:

Piece of cake. I have about 400 trees and they all have that acacia look. It
is really kind of nice. I use tree tubes for my young stock. Now the only
problem I have with deer are the city folk who hunt.

Bruce  Z5 MI

-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Charles Paradise
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 1:19 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: [NAFEX] Grow fruit higher than deer can reach?


Suppose I conceded that in a particular orchard deer would occasionally
get in and browse my proposed planting of apple and pear trees.

You may have seen pictures of trees grown on the African savanna, where
the tree is leafless up to about eight feet high, then the foliage
grows with the bottom branches looking like they are growing flat on a
tabletop, because the foraging animals below have gnawed everything
they could reach up to.  So the first 8 feet of the growing tree has
been conceded to the wild animals in Africa.

For an example of how this browsed tree looks in Africa, see:
http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/acacia_tortillis.htm

I'm asking for opinions about the practicality of growing apples and
pears on standard seedling rootstocks, and trimming so the first
branches occur several feet off the ground - not easy, I know, for
pruning and harvesting - but as a proposed way of avoiding the
necessity of repelling deer.

So, what's your opinion?    Possible?   Practical or impractical?

Charlie Paradise
zone 5/Massachusetts

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