North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[mIEKAL aND <qazingulaza@gmail.com>]

Around here I would be more concerned about voles.  I planted out about a
100 Nanking Cherries last year with no tree guards and all but 5 of them got
hammered by voles & a good 20% are so far not resprouting from the roots.
I've been spending the last week tubing every last prunus in the ground.

You might want to try putting a few mothballs around each tree.  As an
experiment at least.

Practice safe planting!

~mIEKAL



On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 7:09 AM, Evan <kodama@riseup.net> wrote:

> Yes, I have thought as I lay out the cardboard that mice would probably
> just love it under there. My hope for the summer is that mice have plenty
> else to eat that they won't nibble at the bark like they might in winter.
> Right now I'm trying to mulch for water conservation and to suppress/kill
> the plants growing nearest the bushes. With your comment in mind, I wonder
> if going around in the fall and pulling out the cardboard and maybe even
> raking back the sawdust might help allay mice. I'm also using hardwood bark
> mulch on some trees, and I don't imagine that creates as good mouse habitat
> as sawdust?
>
> One way or another, I need to attract some snakes and owls and other
> mice-eaters.
>
> cheers,
> Evan
> zone 6
> Southern Appalachia
>
> On May 22, 2011, at 10:56 PM, Sarah Kehler Ewing wrote:
>
> > Most fruiting things (besides Honeyberry and Haskap) like their soil a
> bit on the acid side and I don't see a sawdust mulch changing your pH enough
> to make that an issue.  The mulch itself didn't hurt my orchard: the trees
> with the mulch always grew better than the unmulched trees.
> >
> > My concern with what you are doing involves the mouse habitat you are
> creating. I am quickly becoming a self-made expert in what brings mice into
> an orchard and my personal experience shows that your plan makes the nicest
> homes for mice who will then repay you by eating all the bark off your trees
> the very next winter even when you have 18" tall hardware cloth cages around
> each tree.
> >
> > I also used to mulch with sawdust from our local mills and I also used to
> make a doughnut of animal bedding out from the bases of all my trees.  I
> discovered the hard way that that trees aren't the only living things that
> loved what I was doing.  Won't do either of those things ever again.
> >
> > Sarah
> > zone 3
> > Edmonton, AB
> >
>