chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
I planted an apple and pear orchard last spring. Given the density of the planting, I was more interested in surrounding it with an electric fence than caging each tree. The orchard is about 300ft x 150ft and presently has 80 trees and likely grow to twice that in a couple more years. I decided to go with the 2 row fence, usually done with the outer wire at 18" and inner wires at 10" and 24" and 3ft between the rows. That style fence is just a deterrent and you need a much larger fence to truly keep out deer. I added another wire to the inner row at 36" and rolled the dice.
The results haven't been too bad but still some anguish at seeing a few trees get damaged. Mid summer, a Honeycrisp I bought from Cummins had damage to the central leader. We reviewed the fence and thought the spacing between rows was too much in one area and corrected that. That Honeycrisp recovered nicely and I didn't see much damage until the last month. Several of my bench grafts got nipped. A few of my larger Cummins trees had limbs chewed on, including that Honeycrisp again, but none suffered damage to the central leaders.
I have placed cheap plastic mesh tubes over the central leaders of the big trees to protect those. My bench grafts have almost all been protected with a cage and that Honeycrisp got one too. About half my trees were bud grafted this summer and I have not done much for them, just a mesh tube around the base of some. If the deer want some of rootstock growth, that is available. We put up a couple cams and caught this guy munching on some Polish 18 leaves.
Since I have a bunch of little trees over the next few years, I decided we better upgrade the fence. A couple weeks ago a 2nd wire was added to the outer row and I think a 3rd will come. We started to add another wire to the inner row at 48" and might add another at 60". I'll have to replace the inner row fiberglass posts with T-Posts to support the extra wires. I probably should have done that to start with but I've been playing catch-up with these trees all summer. I might switch from the solar charger to a more powerful 110V supply. Maybe I should have caged the trees but it is really nice to be able to work on the trees without the cage, especially when working with the bench and bud grafted trees.
The results haven't been too bad but still some anguish at seeing a few trees get damaged. Mid summer, a Honeycrisp I bought from Cummins had damage to the central leader. We reviewed the fence and thought the spacing between rows was too much in one area and corrected that. That Honeycrisp recovered nicely and I didn't see much damage until the last month. Several of my bench grafts got nipped. A few of my larger Cummins trees had limbs chewed on, including that Honeycrisp again, but none suffered damage to the central leaders.
I have placed cheap plastic mesh tubes over the central leaders of the big trees to protect those. My bench grafts have almost all been protected with a cage and that Honeycrisp got one too. About half my trees were bud grafted this summer and I have not done much for them, just a mesh tube around the base of some. If the deer want some of rootstock growth, that is available. We put up a couple cams and caught this guy munching on some Polish 18 leaves.
Since I have a bunch of little trees over the next few years, I decided we better upgrade the fence. A couple weeks ago a 2nd wire was added to the outer row and I think a 3rd will come. We started to add another wire to the inner row at 48" and might add another at 60". I'll have to replace the inner row fiberglass posts with T-Posts to support the extra wires. I probably should have done that to start with but I've been playing catch-up with these trees all summer. I might switch from the solar charger to a more powerful 110V supply. Maybe I should have caged the trees but it is really nice to be able to work on the trees without the cage, especially when working with the bench and bud grafted trees.
