Clethodim around young fruit trees?
- Thread starter crowskee
- Start date
That's good to hear. I planted all my fruit trees in an old horse pasture and the grass is relentless. The past couple of years I have needed to spray glyphosate around them twice a year, which has involved carrying around a piece of plywood to prevent getting any on the trees. My hope is to find something i can just spray to kill the grass with out the worry of harming the trees. In a perfect world I would like to be able to spray the grass without removing the cages
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Your good to go with Clethodim. You will want to use crop oil with it to help kill the grass.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Most plants in a 4' circumference of the tree will ta take resources from the tree and reduce growth. I think the best solution is to use landscape material to keep plants from growing near the tree. Mowing will keep many broadleaf weeds at bay and cleth can control grasses. I would not intentionally spray cleth directly on the leaves or trunk, but I would not worry about wind-drift like with gly. If it were me, I would remove your pasture grass and plant perennial clover. I like clover as a base for fruit trees.
Thanks,
Jack
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
Clover is good, chicory mixed with clover is even better and I'm beginning to think adding Red Dogwood into the mix will be tried here. And some orchard areas will be left almost wild with briars, red dogwood and goldenrod mowed just enough to keep volunteer trees in check. The almost wild orchard areas get to enjoy more daytime movement of mature bucks here. And I am a fan of Clethodim also.
4wanderingeyes
5 year old buck +
I have noticed having something(weeds) around the tree is better then bare black dirt. But ideally weed mats, and rock is best.
BrushyPines
5 year old buck +
What are the benefits of this?
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I think the general idea is to create what I call a "wildlife opening". I start with a perennial clover base for a small sub-acre field. Clover fixes N into the soil and is a cool season legume. Some clovers go dormant in the summer and can be hurt by a drought. Chicory is a good complement as it uses the N that the clover fixes into the soil and is drought resistant and performs well even in a drought as it is deep rooted. I have gone to Durana clover for my area. It is persistent and drought resistant. It goes dormant for a very short period in very dry summers around here. It is slow to establish but quite aggressive and outcompetes chicory in a few years here. So, I quite adding it just on a cost/benefit basis. It worked well when mixed with common ladino clover for me.
Next you add your trees. They can be a combination of soft and hard mast, whatever fits for your area. I cage the trees when young and use weed mats. I don't spray, just mow, but if grasses are dominating you can spray cleth as it is not as dangerous to fruit trees with wind drift as gly. I only mow every couple years. As chainsaw says, I just want to keep hardwoods from infiltrating. I want it to grow up in weeds and stuff.
I find deer are encouraged to use this kind of wildlife opening more during shooting hours than on open pretty green field. I get 5 - 10 years out of the clover. Deer have enough cover to feel safe and attractive mast and native forbs and broadleaf weeds as well as the clover. But there is not so much cover that I can't see into the field and get a shot from a nearby stand.
I'm not sure if Chainsaw is doing the exact same thing, but his descriptions sounds similar.
These "wildlife openings" don't completely replace my small harvest plots, but they are another kind of attraction. My open green fields get a daytime use in archery season when pressure is relatively low, but they dry up as daytime attraction as pressure increases.
Thanks,
jack
sandbur
5 year old buck +
Shade from weeds on the south and SW side reduce winter sunscauld on the trunk.
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sandbur
5 year old buck +
The only place I see young red osier dogwood growing is inside my deer cages. I suspect this being a wintering area severely limits growth.
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Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
The deer ate it much of the dogwood down to an even level that was likely about snow height during February and early March. Also our woods are full of browse as a result of previous intense logging so there are a lot of deer here, there is also a lot of food. Rusty pointed out to me that we have both Red osier dogwood and silky dogwood. Some of each looks like it has reached above deer level so those plants may be putting out lots of seeds as well. It is almost invasive but since the deer like it we welcome it.
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
Our biggest hurdle is keeping bucks alive long enough to grow up. Having areas where the girls go that the bucks feel safe in during the day on our property keeps them out of harms way. Most bucks would be shot at one or two years old if they were on certain neighboring properties no matter how many bucks said had already killed. Some orchard areas are hunt-able as Yoderjac describes but many are not. They simply use up the bucks daylight where he won't be hunted until he grows up. There are plenty of trails going from one orchard area to the next and we set up on them if necessary.
