Installing bole guards is an important pre - winter stone’s throw toprotect young trees from hungry critterslike voles and rabbits . Whether you ’re using cloth wraps or sturdy guards made from plastic or metallic element mesh , wrapping a protective bed around delicate youthful tree trunkswill help ensure your tree do n’t getgirdledduring winter .
If you have only one or two young trees that need protecting , set up body guard wo n’t take long . But if you’veplanted an orchardwith a dozen or two vernal fruit Tree , it ’s a job that requires provision and a meaningful clip commitment . ( And if you have four dozen young fruit tree diagram , like I do , you had better commit a couple of long afternoons to the job . )
After six eld of installing proboscis guards around my trees , I ’ve learned a affair or three about pitfalls to avoid . Here are some best practice to keep in mind when installing automobile trunk guards ahead of wintertime .
Don’t Wrap Your Trees Too Early
You might be tempt to get a head start on winter and set up proboscis guard in late summer or former fall . This can be a fine approach with some type of trunk guards ( if they leave behind room for the trunk to grow ) . But if you ’re wrapping anything tightly around trunks , defy the temptation to lead off early on .
You want to wrap the trees when they ’re inactive . If the tree diagram is still growing and the trunk attempt to blow up while wrapped in cloth , you ’ll damage the bark .
For the same reason , you ’ll want to remove any tight guards in belated wintertime or early spring , before the trees awaken up .
Wrap Before It’s Unpleasantly Cold
The above advice notwithstanding , for your own comfort you ’ll want to start getting your tree protect before warm conditions has completely deserted your region . I retrieve a year when I wait too long to tackle the project and wound up installing tree torso guards on a dreary wintertime Clarence Shepard Day Jr. when the high temperature was in the miserable thirty . I was fight to expend waterproof electrical tape while wearing bulky winter baseball glove … by all odds not so well-off .
Wait until the trees are channelise into dormancy , but clean a day that ’s warm enough so you could work without bulky gloves and revel the appendage .
Make Sure You Have Enough Supplies
This is an important step , because you do n’t require to depart installing trunk guards on the consummate day and agnize too belatedly that you ’re short of supplying . One year , I ran out of my preferred electric tape and had to switch and practice regular promotion tape rather . It turned out to be insufficiently waterproof , and by the clip spring hustle around my tree were shedding their body guards .
Consider also that your trees will spring up each class . So even if you had a sufficient quantity of fitly - sized sentry duty / wrap last year , that might not be the case this yr . I utilise corrugated plastic guards that measure 2 feet tall by 8 inches wide , and when my trees were young a undivided guard would wrap comfortably around each proboscis . But now that the trees are older , their trunks are loggerheaded and I have to tape two guards together to wrap around a individual trunk .
Keep these three tip in creative thinker , and the trunks of your untried trees will be good guarded before you sleep with it .
