Hi,
After you graft apples and plums onto rootstocks, what is the best thing to do with them? I want to let them grow up a year before I put them in their permanent rows and so the deer dont munch them off.
Should I put them in pots till next year or plow a small area and put them into the ground temporarily and fence that area in?
Thanks for your help,
-Jeremiah Goudreau
Midcoast Maine
I doubt they’ll get past deer munching height in one season … unless you’ve got a lot richer soil than I do 
" title="Wink" /> As far as planting them out, I’ve done both, but prefer to place them where I ultimately want them. But when doing so I’ll surround each (8 inch tall) tree with 4 seven foot steel fence posts wrapped with no larger than 2 inch mesh ‘chicken wire’ fencing. …you’ve got to unwrap the fencing every time you want to access the tree but that same hassle makes it much harder for anything else to mess with them. Plus, after the branches form, those posts serve as an excellent anchor point for training 4 limbs into a permanent ‘vase shaped’ tree, my favorite.
My main concern with newly planted-out trees are gophers… around my neck of the woods - they’re deadly - though a two year old tree’s likely as susceptible as a newly grafted… If you can control the underground pests – individual fences will protect them from those above ground.
Nursery bed: I like to graft my trees at my coffee table and then plant them out into my garden to grow until they are 3-4 few feet in height (we have heavy clay soil so stuff moves upward rather slowly). It does mean extra transplanting, but the trees get a better start where I can water them more regularly and make sure nothing eats them!
Deer: I also have deer problems although since we got a Great Pyrenees dog, the deer are being kept out of my orchard. I surround my cherry/more remote trees (deer's favourites) with a 3' coil of 5' tall page wire held in place by one 'step in' plastic electric fence post so it doesn't blow away in our prairie winds.
Bark: For trunk protection I make a 5" diameter, 18" tall tube of 1/4" hardware cloth to form a collar around each and every tree (mice are my biggest issue for tree trunks although this would help somewhat for rabbits depending on the height of the coil). I kind of twist the tube to embed it into the ground so it will stay in place and because the mice don't do a lot of digging in the dirt and then back my mulch (sawdust and livestock bedding) up to the hardware cloth to help keep it in place even more.
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
1 Guest(s)