To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: RE: [NAFEX] Grow fruit higher than deer can reach?
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 14:37:08 -0600
At 02:49 PM 3/24/2003 -0500, Bruce wrote:
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.
We have friends who live about 90 miles south of us. We both started
planting some fruit trees about the same time('95-'96). He was and is
involved with the American Chestnut Foundation, and EVERYTHING he planted
got a 5 or 6 ft tree shelter placed on it. We had purchased a number of
grafted apples, on M9/M111 rootstocks, and I was surprised to visit his
place 2 or 3 years later to see his apple trees branching out above their
5-6 ft tree shelters, whereas mine, grown in a more conventional manner,
were not a great deal taller than the 5-6 ft height at which his started
branching.
These tree shelters were staked with fairly substantial stakes, but I
wonder about trunk strength, as my own experience with oaks grown in tree
tubes is that if you remove the tube 2-3 years down the pike, they often
flop over on the ground, almost like a vine. I've not been back to visit
in several years, so I can't comment on what his apples are looking like now.
Lucky Pittman
USDA Zone 6
Hopkinsville, KY
Re: [NAFEX] Grow fruit higher than deer can reach?
, (continued)