Nice job. You retrieved plenty of root
I’ll be moving a few 3 and 4 year old trees this year. After seeing your pics, I’m thinking there will be more roots than I originally imagined. I’m going to try to keep as much dirt as possible and use either a dolly or wheel barrow to move it. If these trees don’t make it, it’s not the end of the world so I’ll go ahead and experiment. I got a nice all steel nursery spade on sale last week for the job. You can’t tell from the link below, but the handle is has a wider oval cross section near the end for more strength. Seems very solid.
https://www.amleo.com/leonard-all-steel-nursery-spade/p/AM15L/
Looks like a nice tool. That should do the job for you. Good luck!
Let us know how it goes. I’ve never moved fruit trees in late fall like this (probably never will). Good luck.
That’s a good looking root structure. Is that a tree that has been rubbed by deer? Pictures can be deceiving but it looks like the tree has some scrapes. I’ve lost several peach trees from deer scrapes. Already two this fall.
Here are some pics of deer damage I took a few weeks ago.
Looks pretty bad Mark.
They raked about a dozen trees so far this year. I started spraying some deer repellent on the young trees every couple weeks. That has helped a lot. Since I started spraying the deer repellent, I haven’t noticed a single treated tree they have raked down.
I’ve been working pretty hard trying to get about half the deer fence up. It’s taken me a long time to get corner/gate posts set. I have most of them set. That’s been the hard part.
It looked like Susu had some deer damage. I’m hoping my picture will make her feel a little better. Her picture reminded me of the deer damage pictures I had on my phone.
Yours look bad! Sorry about that. Mine might be deer damage. But I just assumed it’s a groundhog’s doing. One of the branches was hanging by skin. Looked like it snapped off when somebody tried to climb it. I tied it back together. In a couple of weeks I can rule out groundhogs as they retire for the winter. Do you use Bobbex for the deer?
Yes, but I don’t know if it’s any better than other deer repellents. I’ve only tried the Bobbex. At one time I thought it performed better than other deer repellents because there was a study which showed that, but it turned out the study was completely flawed, so it was a useless study.
It has worked well for me though, so I haven’t seen any reason to switch. I buy it in 5 gal buckets, but it’s pretty expensive. I’d gladly switch to something cheaper if it worked well.
Have you tried a home-made concoction of putrid eggs?
I haven’t tried eggs. I’ve heard they work, but wash off or lose smell pretty easily.
That’s one thing I will say about the Bobbex, is that it really doesn’t wash off. Once it’s sprayed on the deer won’t eat the growth. The only reason we spray it so often during the growing season is to protect the new growth. The deer will eat right down to the last growth that was sprayed with Bobbex and stop there.
The only reason we’ve been spraying Bobbex on the dormant trees lately, is that the cost is excessive if they destroy any trees, so I’ve been approaching that as a “better safe than sorry”, but just one spray may have prevented the damage. But I don’t know for sure.
Eggs would for sure be cheaper. Do they go through a pump up sprayer?
You ever try to wash off dried egg from a plate? Maybe Bobex is more repulsive because the problem with egg is as trees grow deer eat the fresh leaves but leave the older leaves alone, based on my observation.
I do hedge my bet by adding some sticker to the mix.
I’ve been using Bobbex recently, their bulk prices are cheaper per tank than the other ones I was using. I sprayed about five gallons of concentrate last summer, that was a lot of $$.
The main problem I have is 1" of rain will wash off anything and when its continually raining for many days like it was this last summer its hard to squeeze those sprays around the rains.
At least there are not so many bucks in my yard this fall. Next door there are many saplings destroyed by bucks, they lost a lot of money. I’m getting some new trees this month but they are all getting big cages. Next door the trees had small wraps around them, most of them the bucks broke off to get at the bark.
Have you used Bobbex R? It’s supposed to repel groundhogs. But it doesn’t have as many good reviews on Amazon.
I’ve only used the Bobbex deer repellent myself.
I can usually protect trees from buck rubs with only a 3’ tall ring of 14 gauge fencing formed as a cylinder around trunks. I think once a buck rubbed above the 3’ but didn’t do much damage.
I only use this in my nursery with trees bucks start to rub- if you keep checking the process tends to be gradual. Many of the trees in my nursery are protected 3’ up with plastic wrapping which also repels bucks. If you secure the top of the wrapping with electric tape I doubt any buck will mess with it.
But I’m talking about how they behave here. There are always alternate saplings for them to use here in nearby woods.
