# WHAT THE HECK????



## NorthernWinos (Jan 31, 2006)

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE????





WILDLIFE!!!!</font>
Not the stuff down at the Tavern...this is the real deal.
If you plan on planting any fruit trees and live in a rural setting there will be problems...Mother Natures little furry friends....they have the whole world to eat, but will likely find what you are trying to grow.
We started another little orchard the last 2 spring seasons, apples, crabapples, plums, a pear to pollinate a 5 year old one, and some hardy cherries.They didn't seem to be leafing out very well...come to find does were bringing their fawns to browse on our sweet tender trees....and drink from the pond....GURRRR!!
You might have noticed in the photo of the ripe apples in the above Post some blue bags hanging in the trees....it's net bags with bars of soap..it is suppose to keep deer away...? Maybe. 
So, with the doe/fawns problem of last summer [like 9 of them one morning]I tried another approach I had read about....I tied plastic grocery bags in the fruit trees, as well as all the young shade trees we had planted...the fluttering bags are suppose to mimic the fluttering white tails of the deer, their distress/alert signal....It worked somewhat...till a calm evening when the bags hung still and the deer went and nibbled the new growth. looks like we live near a landfill with all that garbage out there, but...it sort of worked. I then tried loosely throwing bird netting over the trees, that helped....however a buck was rubbing his horns on some shade trees and must have gotten his antlers tangled in the net and wandered off with it.....So, then I tied the nets to a post at each tree and hung the nets over the young trees. Deer problem solved....maybe, also with the help of a new pup, the 2 old Blue Heelers have been getting lazy.
Okay...so then there are other problems...RODENTS....rabbits and mice, they gnarl the trunks of young trees, so that is why there is a 1/4" mesh wrapped around the bottoms of the young trees, anchored at the base with pea gravel to prevent the mice from tunneling under the mesh..
Still another problem.....only in very cold areas of the country....young trees with smooth bark will split their trunks in the late winter...WHY???The cold nights freeze the sap in the trunk, the warm sun heats the bark in the mornings and the trunk of the trees burst...solution....for the first few [5] years paint the trunks of the trees with white latex paint.The white color will reflect the suns heat...after 5 years the trees develop rougher and tougher bark and will then probably handle the freeze/thaw problems of the warm March sun.
So, you can grow fruit trees anywhere...even in wilds of the inhospitable North, you just got to tend to them.
How do I know all this....learned the hard way.*Edited by: Northern Winos *


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## Curt (Feb 1, 2006)

Northern,


Another little trick that I learned from an old timer is to tilt your trees toward the south a quite a bit when you plant them. This keeps the winter sun from getting asquareonshot at them and in the four or five years that the bark needs they straighten right up.


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## NorthernWinos (Feb 1, 2006)

Thanks Curt...making an order for 4 more trees, might try that at planting time....amazing what we have to do up here to get stuff to grow, so many obsticles...but think it is all worth it...


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