North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["tanis cuff" <tanistanis@hotmail.com>]

Is P.americana one of the suckering species?  If these are selections, not 
grafted, just cut off below the damage and they should regrow this year, and 
you've "renewal pruned" the thicket.

But sorry, I've no good ideas for saving grafted stuff.


----Original Message Follows----
From: "del stubbs" <
To: nafex@
Subject: [NAFEX] bush cherry/voles/bridge grafts
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 14:22:27 +0000

With the snow just gone from our orchard I was out examining things and 
found vole damage beyond any other years'. We had  a dozen evans cherries  
(3' high, multi-branched bush style) that were completly decimated. I use 
old window screen on trees to good effect, but.....
#1 How can one protect bush fruits from voles?
In walking the hay fields and closely cropped orchard, I often encountered 
concentrations of 20 burrows to the square yard! and this goes on acre after 
acre, so no poisoning or trapping or house cat regime could possbly control 
such a reproductive explosion.
I had not protected other prunus varieties, like p. americana, because they 
have never gone for prunus before. Same devastating story to my grafted 
plums. They are still dormant, so I consider doing 18" bridge grafts, but I 
have never sucessfully grafted p. americana until it leafs out......
#2 How can one bridge graft p. americana / plum after it leafs out......the 
stripped bark means the top will soon die...?
thanks, Del

Del Stubbs  http://www.pinewoodforge.com  ag zone2/3

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