This is an awesome solution to a problem I didn’t know I had.
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I was considering using aluminum flashing or aluminum can tags. Punch a small hole in the tags and insert through a wire nail. Nail said wire nail into the tree a 1/2"-1" with the remainder left for future growth. In theory I was thinking this would work. The only question is if the hole in the tag would hold up if the wind blows it repeatedly.
I have lots of limbs with stainless safety wire embedded from my label loop. I haven’t seen any girdled, or even really locally restricted.
Peaches and nects cannot survive even fine galvanized wire in my experience, and unfortunately, way too much experience. Apples are different. Interestingly, when grafting with elective tape peaches and nects never get girdled by it, but apples can be.
If you are talking about your experience with peaches that have been girdled by wire all the way around their branches or trunk, I’m a bit mystified.
I didn’t realize we were talking about peaches. I’m talking generally. I’ll have to look to see if I’ve negligently damaged peaches.
But generally, the wire doesn’t bite in everywhere at once, and is quickly grown over, it seems. Sometimes it is overgrown at the crotch long before the diameter is big enough to make the wire taut.
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I have a nursery where trees are pumped for rapid growth. I use labels attached with wire loops and I’ve lost trees and important scaffolds whenever the wire sinks fully into the bark in a way that I cannot undo it… except in those cases of which you speak, when the wire doesn’t completely circle and sever the vascular sheaf.
Sometimes if the wire is only partially encased with tree tissue, I can free the uncovered part and rewrap it on the label in a way that makes a permanent label that won’t ever girdle the branch to which it is attached.
However, I now walk my nursery carefully in the spring detaching all the wires capable of injuring a tree- when I first start growing them they often don’t have any branches to tie them to and the worst thing to happen is girdling the trunk. That can outright kill a peach tree.
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The wire I use is .032" diameter (.8mm) . Perhaps it is thinner than what you are using?
I don’t know the diameter of wire I use, it comes with the labels that I order from AMLEO. It is quite fine and I doubt diameter is the issue. Take some of your wire and wrap it around an unwanted small branch on one of your peach trees, do it tightly. See if the branch isn’t dead next spring.
I suspect the difference may be that your trees aren’t growing very fast. One thing I’ve noticed when getting grafting wood is that most members have relatively slow growing trees compared to what mine do in my nursery- it’s hard for me to get wood of what I consider the best diameter for the types of grafts I do. Also from photos I see posted here.
By the third year a peach whip needs to be about a 2.5" diameter tree ready to hold a good crop to reach my expectations. Time is money and I don’t have much land.
I’m not that curious. I’ll try to remember to pay attention to peaches. I only have a couple.
Trying a few ideas on marking to see options. Marked a few varieties. Some with white marker, some with black over white, some just black. Only works on limbs large enough to write but I can write pretty small.
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Fantastic scripting, how long do you hope it to last?
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I give it a few months. I also looked at some old posts regarding a laminated tag labeler. Just trying out different ideas.
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I’m doing coated worse and imprinted aluminum tags… hopefully it works.
Plus color coded paint is not a bad idea.
Many nurseries so a two or 3 stripe system.
Away from home this week but I’ll post the type when I get back. Also it’s a trial. Would like to see which are doing the best.
Isn’t that dangerous Scott? I mean copper is poisonous when it gets into the trees system. Driving copper nails into a tree trunk or its roots is a great way to kill a tree, (age old remedy for unwanted intrusions by neighbors trees).
The copper wire is coated so it should not be directly touching the tree. Also it takes a lot of copper exposure to kill a tree.
That said I don’t use the copper wire for tags any more, the problem is the tags eventually would rip off the wire. I think I used too thin a copper sheet for the tags themselves. I now just write the variety on with a garden marker… less work overall than continually fixing and replacing damaged tags. If the copper tag was welded on to the wire it might hold better, I was just punching a hole in the copper sheet.
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