bigbendmarine
5 year old buck +
Know there's a "tube vs wire cage" thread going, and some general maintenance tips buried in a number of threads on the forum but after doing a search didn't find a single thread dedicated to young tree maintenance (appreciating tips will vary a bit depending on fruit vs nut, tube vs cage, etc).
My reason for posting is that I have approximately 100 young trees living that I planted within the past 3 years and want to do maintenance on them in the weeks ahead before warmer temps start tree and leaf growth.
I have all mine (dolgo crabs, chinese chestnuts, kieffer pears, sawtooth oaks) in 5' tubes but for the purpose of this thread, I would ask forum members WHAT METHOD OF PROTECTION AND WEED CONTROL MEASURES HAVE YOU GROWN WITH TIME TO MOST PREFER, appreciating that some will recommend removing tubes / using cages.
Maybe to help keep the thread focused I would ask members who've tried multiple methods what have you settled on as best all around, and if you could speak to weed control maintenance it would be much appreciated as I've seen rocks mentioned as a barrier, various fabrics / materials, organic material (leafs / pine needles), weed spray, combination, etc... all shared in various threads.
Looking for this thread to be a time-saver for me and anyone else who might be looking for a "best practice" method versus tackling tree loss and / or time consuming additional work caused by painful trial and error (for example I'll pulling a fair amount of weeds that have grown in tubes I've been using this past year and see it compromised growth on some of the trees even if still living).
PICTURES THAT ILLUSTRATE YOUR PREFERRED METHOD ARE ABSOLUTELY WELCOMED! Know there will be some redundancy with other threads and hope that doesn't cause too much heartburn. If I failed to find a near identical thread, TOTALLY understand if someone just wants to share a link pointing to it / not re-spin the issue.
My reason for posting is that I have approximately 100 young trees living that I planted within the past 3 years and want to do maintenance on them in the weeks ahead before warmer temps start tree and leaf growth.
I have all mine (dolgo crabs, chinese chestnuts, kieffer pears, sawtooth oaks) in 5' tubes but for the purpose of this thread, I would ask forum members WHAT METHOD OF PROTECTION AND WEED CONTROL MEASURES HAVE YOU GROWN WITH TIME TO MOST PREFER, appreciating that some will recommend removing tubes / using cages.
Maybe to help keep the thread focused I would ask members who've tried multiple methods what have you settled on as best all around, and if you could speak to weed control maintenance it would be much appreciated as I've seen rocks mentioned as a barrier, various fabrics / materials, organic material (leafs / pine needles), weed spray, combination, etc... all shared in various threads.
Looking for this thread to be a time-saver for me and anyone else who might be looking for a "best practice" method versus tackling tree loss and / or time consuming additional work caused by painful trial and error (for example I'll pulling a fair amount of weeds that have grown in tubes I've been using this past year and see it compromised growth on some of the trees even if still living).
PICTURES THAT ILLUSTRATE YOUR PREFERRED METHOD ARE ABSOLUTELY WELCOMED! Know there will be some redundancy with other threads and hope that doesn't cause too much heartburn. If I failed to find a near identical thread, TOTALLY understand if someone just wants to share a link pointing to it / not re-spin the issue.