Cool thanks Alan.
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genius idea. isnāt this kind of how Erlandson made his living sculptures?
it seems so logical to do this but i would not have thought of it
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I have never had rabbits or voles go through window screen, I think you will be pleased with how well it works. Very sorry about all the damage to your trees, just terrible.
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The one apple I brought inside over the winter was on the back of my truck last night getting some natural rainfall. I peeked out this morning and saw a squirrel hanging on it trying to eat the new early growth. Of course it snapped the tree right above the graft.
It always feels like Iām chasing my tail.
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Tim, were the tree guards you used those twisty things with the holes in them? Due to injuries, I have not gotten out to my orchard yet this spring. I did trap a bunch of voles/mice last fall at least. Hope things are okay there. Another winter storm in the forecast for tonight.
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The ones chewed through were hard plastic mesh. The hardware cloth ones and the Twist ones where mostly intact but the rabbits went over them due to the amount of snow cover
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Far too many rabbits and far too much ācoverā to host them here - but usually, we experience minimal damage from Peter Cottontail. This year, on 25 Jan, we got 3ā of snow, and maybe 1/4 inch of sleet and freezing rain. Temps stayed below freezing for the larger part of 3+ weeks. During that time, rabbits had nothing to eat but tree bark. Nothing here is caged to exclude rabbits. Fortunately for me, I guess, most of the damage occurred to undesirables, like the myriad ungrafted volunteer callery pears and invasive autumn olive. There were seedling pecan and small-caliper persimmons that got nibbles here and there, but none totally girdled.
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Turns out a Galarina I grafted was girdled. IlItās super odd though: I had 10 container trees in root pouches, packed in tight together 2 deep against my foundation with some plastic container blueberries. Nothing else was touched except 2 bags (not the Galarina) had maybe two 2ā vermin eaten holes in the bag, but soil undisturbed. One of those (pluot) leafed out, grafted, all growing beautifully. But, none of my grafted apple have leafed out- one is the girdled dead, one is very much so alive wherever I cut, and one is half dead. I have no idea why since the two with life have no visible issue. Iām kind of OK with itā¦they didnāt have homes and their purpose of to teach me to graft. If something had to go for me to learn to protect them better Iām winter, these were the ones. I plan to paint them and wrap with hardware cloth next winter.
Well, I tried a bridge graft today with a friend. We studied the Gardner book and the Sacadura videos but the bark on this pear tree was Not slipping and was just tearing like paper so all we did was more damage. I did it on the fully girdled tree, thinking maybe it would be safer, but burned some scion doing so. We may try again in a month or so before I cut it down and graft something to it to try and save the roots. Hoping the other tree, which is <50% girdled, makes it through.
any other advice or observations welcome
Question- that looks all alive above the fully girdled tree? So, why mess with it? Iām just asking because I donāt know and understand. Not implying you shouldnāt.
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When trees get girdled often the top is getting moisture from the sapwood (xylem) but the tree canāt transport nutrients from the leaves back down to the tree because the inner bark where that takes place is damaged.
I tried a couple Purvis style āside graftsā on dormant wood and itās weird. You have to actually cut into the wood. Thereās no slipping. then you just jam the scion in. I was sort of surprised it worked at all. I was always told the cambium needs to touch (not that I have any clue where that is) and it seems like this shouldnāt make it work, but it did.
Did it tear when you tried to jam the scion in and the scion just popped out? You might not have been deep enough (towards the center of the tree trunk). Thatās what happened the first couple times I tried that āside graftā.
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No real experience here, but I saw a video that suggests you could get a lot of experience grafting by trying to patch them via the technique Bridge Grafting.
Example Video:
You convinced me to increase the number of bait stations in my home orchard.
Yes, thatās the method I am trying in the above post. The issue Iām running into is the bark splitting, but per @benthegirl I may be conceptualizing it wrongly.
From reading the grafting book it looks like I could also try side approach grafting as an alternative or backup.