Whip n tongue unless my scion is really small then I’ll do a cleft with two scion.
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Here’s my tale of woe.
My dwarf apples are protected collectively by a 7 1/2’ plastic fence with a 3’ chicken wire skirt; individually by 1-2’ of hardwood cloth around the trunk plus, for the smaller trees, a cylinder of 4’ welded steel fence.
Bullet proof, right?
Early last autumn, a doe ran through the plastic fence, creating an opening for herself and her two fawns. They quickly ate a lot of fruit and foliage, ravaging a bunch of 1st year grafts.
In response, I quickly repaired the hole and wrapped the orchard in a second layer of plastic fence. My plan was to put 5-6’ of chicken wire around the perimeter in the spring. There was no further damage until a blizzard that dropped 38" of snow.
Suddenly, “ground level” was above the top of the chicken wire. As near as I can tell, rabbits then chewed a hole in the exposed plastic fence (something I’d seen them do elsewhere), creating a hole that BOTH the rabbits and the deer exploited. Needless to say, both species were scrambling to find food. As far as I could see, they did not eat twigs but they ravaged the bark. Of the 24 dwarf trees within the enclosure, roughly 2/3 suffered serious damage
Here’s an example. You can easily envision a rabbit sitting on top of the snow,.stripping the bark within reach above the hardware cloth. There’s other damage that I can only attribute to deer.
The only good news is that (1) apple is the only species attacked. There was no damage to pears, persimmons, chestnuts. And (2) there was also no damage to a large orchard of semi-dwarf apple trees where the chicken wire reached 4’, roughly 1’ above the snow line.
I used to write of the need for “defense in depth” against animal pests. Now I will insist on “defense in height” as well.
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sorry jrd51. That’s exactly what my pear looks like. I saw my neighbor’s pear today; he had no protection, and the first 3.5 feet are stripped bare of bark.
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What is your plan for your poor attacked trees ?
A few young ones are so badly damaged that they have to be replaced. Specifically, these are last year’s grafts (scions on bare root) where the rabbits ate the bark down to the graft and maybe beyond.
Many of the young trees may be salvaged. These are last year’s grafts where the rabbits ate much of the bark but not all the way to the graft. I’ve cut these, hoping that the area above the graft but below the damage will sprout new growth. Sometimes these areas are quite small, however.
Older trees that are completely girdled, like the one in the picture., will be cut just below the damage. I’ll hope that the lower trunk sprouts new growth. But I’ve also taken scions that I’ll use for bark grafts. Basically, I’ll try to regrow the trees from the stumps.
Older trees that are chewed but not completely girdled may recover. I hope. If the damage is <50% of the circumference, I’ll try for recovery. If more than 50%,. see above.
Basically I have taken scions of all the damaged trees. As necessary, I’ll removed the damage (and above) then graft the hell out of what’s left.
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You won’t try for a bridge graft on these?
I’m thinking about it but probably not. I’ve never done them before. I might try them on the trees with partial damage.
My neighbor, who was away most of the winter and didn’t dig out the snow frantically around his pear trees like I did, had almost unbelievable damage. These rabbits had ups!!
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How horrifying seeing stuff like this, I feel your pain. I’ve never seen or experienced rabbit damage like this before, how awful.
I had an idea after seeing this thread, but I have no idea if it would work to help protect larger fruit trees from girdling. I was thinking that maybe if you nailed a 2” - 3” wide strip of tin flashing 4ft or 5 ft long down the trunk of the tree maybe that would help prevent the tree from being completely girdled.
Maybe this is a really dumb idea, but as I’ve never needed to worry about this happening I could never test to see if it would help. We don’t often see snow accumulation in my area, so I’ve never had to contend with girdling. I just thought I’d mention my idea, it in case it might actually help someone.
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Bridge grafting is pretty tricky but you can take a bareroot tree of the same species and plant it beside a girdled tree and graft it to the girdled tree above the girdled part. Gradually the new tree can be the trunk of the original and you can leave as many branches on it as you want below the graft union to expand your varietal selection while benefitting from the existing root system of the girdled tree. I’ve done that. I joined the trees about 4’ above the ground.
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Look again at this picture and see the window screen that I had placed around the tree further down the trunk, no damage from rabbits there. I place the lobster wire (hardware cloth) around the tree after finding it had been damaged. If I had used window screen all the way up there would have been any damage at all. I’m still amazed at how it recovered and has done so well. Trees don’t get depressed, they grow through damage if they can.
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Looks like a beautiful tree—has it fruited yet? I’m also curious where you got it and whether it’s the apple or pear form. Really cool tree! Sorry for the off-topic post.
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I got both apple and pear forms from One Green Earth over ten years ago. I lost the pear form to fire blight. The tree has flowers twice and much enjoyed by squirrels. I have also grown out seedlings. Very ornamental.
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Well we finally had enough snow melt and a few days in a row starting today of 40s temp so I went out to do my dormant spray. Found about half of my trees completely girdled I suspect by rabbits. They either got above the protection due to the 3 ft of snow or chewed right through the tree guards or both. Most trees were toast from the graft union to about 2 feet up. I’m going to catalog the damage and see what survives. Definitely a bummer. If any rootstock survives I’ll graft next spring. May be looking for a lot of scion come next year …
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@DavidinVermont I started protecting all my new trees with window screen after your posts. I hope they will keep the rabbits away from my trees this go around.
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Sorry to hear that. Sounds like the same boat as a lot of us. Are you just going to try to see if they survive, try bridge grafting, or what?
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@Petey just finished my tally 17 trees affected. 15 completely girdled. Hopefully some may pull through. One was a 4-1 plum that I may try bridge grafting on. I took scion from 5 that I could to graft later if am able. I have so much planting and grafting to do already this spring. I don’t think I’ll have time to attempt bridge grafting on that many trees.
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Good ideal. I’m considering doing this with some 3’rd leaf Chinese elm trees I do bonsai with. Did you just cut the sides of each tree and tie together until they fused?
Just cut and match cambium. Coat the outside with whatever. Lac Balsalm isn’t bad. You can use thin nails or even electric tape to secure trees to each other.
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