Crabapple Care Questions

bigbendmarine

5 year old buck +
Ok... so a couple of years ago I planted 18 dolgo crabapples in my back yard along a road running down to my pond.

When I put them in I broke what seems to be a cardinal rule I've noticed on the forum. I put them in tree tubes vs cages. The tubes I used were the 5' tall blue colored protex tab style, and I used two per crabapple so that they had some room to leaf and grow (about 8" diameter). They all are still alive, likely averaging about 8' tall now, and with lots of limbs sticking up through the tubes.

Know they need pruning so I'm ready to take on the job but that begs a few questions:

1) With a heavy deer population, just about anything I leave unguarded will get heavily browsed or rubbed when bucks are sporting antlers. With the trees now about 8' high would y'all recommend going ahead and switching over to cages when taking the time to prune? Or if I cut down the tubes to 3' or so and started training fruiting limbs above that point could I still use the tubes?

2) I personally like the look / shape of modified central leader trained trees a bit more than central trained leaders. Does anyone have a strong opinion on using or not training the dolgos to a modified central leader form?

3) Last one relates to another critter threat -- bears. Do those of you with crabapples get lots of damage from bears, and if so do you recommend one pruning style over another to help in any way possible to survive bear damage? I ask as I have 5 or so that cruise through my place from time to time.

Questions above asked, as ALWAYS I fully welcome any additional advice / knowledge offered to questions this "jarhead" might have overlooked asking out of ignorance. ALL input MUCH appreciated!
 
Personally I prefer tubes over cages even though the majority don't. If you haven't had problems with varmint nesting in the cage why change?
Personally I would just eliminate branches lower than the tube height as those would be browsed anyways if you cut the tube height down.

Have your dolgo fruited yet? Where they seedlings or grafted dolgo? I ask as I planted many dolgo seedling last year and curious if they are going to be simular or random variations? Some sources say dolgo grow true to seed and others say they don't
 
Have your dolgo fruited yet? Where they seedlings or grafted dolgo? I ask as I planted many dolgo seedling last year and curious if they are going to be simular or random variations? Some sources say dolgo grow true to seed and others say they don't
I'm in FL and ordered from Willis Orchards, a relatively large orchard in GA. They sell both very small seedlings and grafted. I went with grafted not as much out of concern of variation as to get trees with more growth on them. Think I had two of the 18 with a few crabapples on them last year. Crossing fingers I'lll see more this year.
 
Big Bend - I have a couple Dolgo's at camp and they are about 12' tall now. I initially trained the Dolgo's to a central leader, but now that they are that tall, they seem to want to split into 2 leaders. I don't know if I'll cut one of them off or not. I've seen pix of other guys' Dolgo's ( older, bigger ones ) and they are doing just fine with several leaders.

I've never used tubes after trying it some years ago and having mice/voles nest in them and eat all the bark off the trunks. Dead trees. I've used aluminum window screen suggested by others on here and haven't had a problem since. I cage all our trees with 5' tall concrete mesh in a 4' to 5' diameter. No deer problems after caging. We have a lot of bears too, and by staking the cages down with re-bar, it deters bears from trying to climb the trees. Our oldest "new" trees are 5 years in the ground this year, so not much fruit yet - thus not a big bear draw ....... yet. I'm just trying to get the trees big enough with enough wood on them so when bears try to pull down branches to get fruit, the trees will survive. Training to a central leader will make the trees reach for the sky and get taller, from what I've read. So if our trees get taller, bears can only climb on limbs that support their weight. That leaves upper, smaller dia. limbs to survive and produce fruit for years. I learned that thought process by watching bears at camp climbing our OLD apple trees. After seeing a few bears fall from 10' to 18' and hit the ground with a huge thump, it became obvious that the taller the trees, the safer they were from total destruction. ( The bears ran like H after falling !! )
 
Bows pretty much said it all as far as I am concerned. Like Bows, I prefer wire cages to protect from the deer, and screening to protect from mice. My pruning is suspect, so I'm still in the listening mode myself there. As for Bears, all I can say there is size matters. The bigger trees can tolerate a few claw marks and broken lower branches. Caging seems to deter them from the younger trees, but my guess is they'd wreck the cages to get at the apples if all you had were younger trees. I kinda roll the dice with bears. Good luck.
 
After spending the weekend opening my tree tubes and pruning my dolgos, I can say:

1) out of 18 dolgos I planted all are alive without even the slightest evidence of mice damaging trunks. Guessing that might be due to North Florida's relatively mild temperatures as well as me leaving much of my 20 acres of pasture thick, though with the areas around the trees closely cut. So many birds of prey around that I'm guessing the field mice like the heavy cover better than hiding in a tree tube out in the open.

2) Despite the fact of no damage being done to the trunks, if I had it to do over again I most certainly would go with cages and here's why. Out of the 18 dolgos, 3 or 4 showed good normal growth and didn't require excessive pruning.

Most others looked like this when I popped open the tubes... up to 5 or 6 root suckers and watersprouts in most tubes, and with those sprouts having actually put on SIGNIFICANTLY more growth in a single season than my original plantings.

20180219_133844.jpg

Pruning each tree ended up requiring lots of time to come up with a semi-rational pruning plan. Hope I don't get tased for the final form, but really was about the best I could do on the subject one in question.

20180219_134943.jpg

End result was I cut out a PILE of wasted vegetative growth I sure would have preferred to have been channeled to the primary trunks -- photo below shows the final tally after all the trees were pruned. Crossing my fingers and toes that all survive the relatively heavy pruning I had to inflict upon them.

20180219_175050.jpg

With the tube structures already present and protecting the trees against rubs (majority of my bucks are still holding racks) going to leave tubes up for now but if all the trees are still ok come early summer think I'm going to brave wasp nests that will fill them in order to do needed clean-up pruning of suckers / waterspouts that sure would be easier to keep an eye on with cages.

Live and learn -- maybe my sharing my painful lesson will help someone else avoid the same down the road if they see this thread before tubing.
 
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We had mice/voles chew our trees to death inside the tubes we used 15 - 20 years ago. I learned of the aluminum window screen method and caging the trees from guys on this forum and a local orchard owner near my camp. No more problems with rodents or buck rubs on trees. It's also easy to see suckers or water sprouts this way. We went through the same painful lesson as you. As you said .......... live and learn !!
 
I am lucky I found this site early on in my orchard planting and am very happy I went the screen and cage route.
 
After reading all this I guess I did the right thing last year and caged two crabapple trees. This year I have two persimmons and two pears going in and I know now that they are going to be caged. For once I got it right on the first try. Thanks.
 
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