Sam you asked where I am located. 40 miles north east of Green Bay
in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. zone was 4 and now changed to 5. Lowest
temp this past winter was 16 below here. With the cold wind blowing
from Lake Michigan we have a delayed spring and so we missed the
frost. The frost was here but the trees were not sprouted enough to get hurt.
On a different subject:
I have a couple of peach trees and the crop started out great. One
tree is Red Haven and the other is Haley Haven. Both had set a nice
crop and I thinned the Red Haven down to maybe 150 peaches that were
left. First we got a big time hail storm that damaged a lot of the
fruit and I was not paying too much attention to the trees and one
day I checked and what a surprise. There was two peaches left on the
Red Haven. I knew I was robbed by squirrels as I feed all wild life
in the back yard and often would count up to 8 squirrels. I quickly
wrapped a layer of tin foil around the trunk of the Haley Haven as
they had not robbed that one although I saw a squirrel in the tree
while I was gathering my supplies. He grabbed a peach and left into
the pine trees behind to the back. I wrapped the trunk and secured
the foil around the tree with masking tape. Then I painted the
entire foil with the sticky stuff called tangle foot. Although
squirrels have a vertical leap of 4 feet they did not jump into the
tree and I saw a squirrel go up to the tin foil and then back
off. To this day my crop has not been bothered and is just starting
to ripen and about another week I should be picking them from the
tree. I have had good crops from these trees every year since I
planted them in 1999. The Red Haven is a freestone and gets larger
fruit on it than the Haley Haven which is not freestone. It's
branches are bending badly as I did not thin it this spring. What a
beautiful picture that makes. Both freeze and taste.nice for
winter eating. I think the Red haven also has a better sweeter taste.
Will not know it this year however.
[NAFEX] Location and squirrel protection,
Ray Kaminski, 08/24/2007