Experiment failure

[Northbound]

Came across a post about spaying young apple trees with rubber undercoat to prevent voles and rabbits from chewing. I generally tube trees with great results but wanted to try this.
Trees purchased from nursery last spring it's worked on so far-no damage. One enterprise and a Whitney both on elma7. About one inch diameter.

However, some bud9 I grafted on various scions last spring have all been destroyed. 10 of them total eaten right off down to the graft. Some girdle on the stock also. About 1/2" diameter.

I had used clear flexseal spray. Thinking black rubber would get to hot. I'm considering pulling tubes off a few more grafts and try the black rubber. Don't like wasting trees but do enjoy learning new techniques

 

[Turkey Creek]

The only way to know if something works or works even better is to often try it. Sometimes it does.... sometimes it doesnt! We always just hope that the things that dont work out dont get too expensive.

 

[Apple Junkie]

Sorry about the loss of the grafted trees Northbound, we can all learn from your experience. What I can't quite understand is what difference the rootstock would make, or, the diameter of the tree. Were all these trees planted in the same spot?

 

[Northbound]

Sorry about the loss of the grafted trees Northbound, we can all lean from your experience. What I can't quite understand is what difference the rootstock would make, or, the diameter of the tree. Were all these trees planted in the same spot?

Yes I'm also really confused by that, not a single Mark on the elma7 trees even with plenty of bunny tracks in the snow right around them. All the trees are within 100 Sq ft area. And all got two light coats of the flex seal. I was fully willing to loose the trees, was hopefull that this would work as I seen multiple post on other sites about guys using the under coat in fall but they never posted their results the next year. Think I'll untube a couple more of the grafts and see if black rubber under coating dose work better, even though I'd think this could cause heat issues/ splits. I was hopefull this would work so I could grow grafts for one year in garden without tubes. Have 150 emla7, and 50 bud9 coming this spring, and always looking for ways to increase my efficiency.

 

[Apple Junkie]

Black undercoating would scare me, but if you're willing to sacrifice a couple trees as an experiment, ya never know until ya try it. If I had a better idea, I d' tell ya. Unlike those other guys, let us know how you make out.

 

[chickenlittle]

Some apple trees taste different than others so it could be that. Bud 9 I assume is red leafed/red barked like Bud 118. M7 is normal apple looking. I am sure they must taste different and your bunnies like the Bud9. There was a selection of malus prunifolia that was trialed as a rootstock and found to be unpalatable to voles. It was called Novole and patented by Cornell in the early 1980s. It was not dwarfing and not commercially successful. I got some Novole scionwood a couple years ago and am working on producing some rootstock from that.

 

[cavey]

I tried some spray on black under coat on a couple of older trees years ago, when i did it I also tossed sand onto the still wet under coating... the trees never got chewed on; but I have long since gone to just using aluminum window screen and have had 100% success with that.

 

[Northbound]

Just thought I'd update on this,
I took tubes off of 4 more bud9 and 4 more m7. This time I sprayed 3 of each with white color flex seal as the black just seems like a bad idea.
Sure enough in a week the 2 unprotected trees where chewed up. The 6 sprayed with white flex seal have had no chewing from the critters in 6 weeks since removing the tubes.
No clue what would be different between clear and white, something must taste different

 

[Bill]

Maybe the white looks enough like snow that the critters don't bother.

 

[wooduck]

Rabbits do some damage , but I would bet meadow voles to 80 percent of the damage here

 

[Northbound]

Voles used to be my primary problem. I adopted some barn cats and that has really improved the mouse and vole problem. Unfortunately they don't seem to kill the rabbits. Thinking about going as far as a deer spin feeder in the orchard for cat food so the cats to spend more time there than they already do. This however could backfire and feed the mice