More cage questions

[Chainsaw]

Thank You everyone for your detailed responses And for sharing your learnings with me and others that either hadn’t tried growing fruit trees or had temporarily given up trying so long ago as I had. You all have helped me a lot. And now protecting trees when they are planted here this spring AND having "doorways" to get into the cages to perform maintenance as needed should be quite achievable.
I plan on emulating to a T the caging, staking, matting, screening and doorway procedures as explained by all and shown with some great pictures of properly protected trees.

Thank you again and am I ever glad there are no bears here in my part of New York, at least not yet.

 

[chummer]

Side note. With my method you do not need a door. I just bend a couple of the cut wire to seal up the cage. Makes it real easy to open the cage if I need to do something. The first year I planted a ton of trees I bent every wire over. I learned when I went to do maintenance how unnecessary that was. Now I just bend one at the top, bottom, and middle.

 

[Catscratch]

Same; bend 2 or 3 wires to secure the overlap and it's easy to get in for maintenance. I seem to get a lot of branches growing under the window screen that needs pruned.

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[BuckSutherland]

In my area I would never think of protecting a white pine. They are like weeds here. I do find it interesting to see how other people from different parts of the country manage their land. I have also come to the realization that deer seem to prefer to eat or destroy anything I do plant. I think if I did try and grow some white pine and didn’t protect them they would be damaged by deer. I have a naturalized stand of lilacs that I propagated to a different location and have had to deal with excessive deer browsing. I wonder if my caring for the stuff I want to grow is making it taste better or if the deer just know it pisses me off when they mess with the stuff.

I like the white pine just for the sheer size, majesty and history that they have with my area. There are some real brutes in my area that are easily 30-50 feet taller than the rest of the forest, but there just isn't many left. Its almost impossible for them to survive by my land without some type of protection. The deer hammer white cedar and norway spruce as well. Young conifers, edges and diversity are an absolute deer magnet where I hunt. It took several years to figure out that planting fewer trees and taking care of them (cages) was about the only way to get them going. Small uncaged plugs got swallowed and choked out by weeds and browsed off by the deer. I finally got pissed off enough too that I am starting to cage almost everything. About the only thing I can do without a cage is white spruce, and I have an awesome source for them and will probably drop a couple hundred again this spring.

This is one of my favorite trees in the Chippewa National Forest, the pics dont do it any just. Its an immense beast.

 

[H20fwler]

In my area I would never think of protecting a white pine. They are like weeds here. I do find it interesting to see how other people from different parts of the country manage their land. I have also come to the realization that deer seem to prefer to eat or destroy anything I do plant. I think if I did try and grow some white pine and didn’t protect them they would be damaged by deer. I have a naturalized stand of lilacs that I propagated to a different location and have had to deal with excessive deer browsing. I wonder if my caring for the stuff I want to grow is making it taste better or if the deer just know it pisses me off when they mess with the stuff.

I have planted hundreds and hundreds of pines in the last five or six years of all sizes, between the deer and rabbits they eat white pines like candy here in winter and browse them some even in summer. Any that survive the bucks beat the crap out of until they are nothing more than pencils. I think they get some kind of hyper attention from deer because they are different and not that common for them to see in my area. Caging them with something is a must, unprotected the only chance they have is if they have really good weed cover to hide them. I mostly use cheap old used farm fence on them with one post and that seems to be enough to deter them from killing them...they rub the spruce too but not near as bad as pines. Once they are ten feet or more the trees seem able to keep ahead of the abuse.
It is strange how different things are from area to area.

 

[chummer]

Someone use to staple a small square of screen on the central bud of the tree. I thought that was pretty neat. I don’t thing he caged any of them. Won’t help with rubbing but if you are planting hundreds of them it might make sense to get a few years on them.

 

[KickapooKid#1]

cortland planted 2010 on Ant.chestnut crab planted 2017 on b118. I will be reducing the cages on 2 trees planted in 2015 and 1 tree 2016 this year.

 

[woodduck]

Someone use to staple a small square of screen on the central bud of the tree. I thought that was pretty neat. I don’t thing he caged any of them. Won’t help with rubbing but if you are planting hundreds of them it might make sense to get a few years on them.

I also seem to remember someone here stapling small pieces of paper around the central bud in the fall protecting from winter browsing and would then deteriorate in the spring and either fall off or the new growth will push the paper off as it begins to grow. Never tryed either method but thought they were good ideas. White pines I plant get hammered here without protection too. I seem to think the individual was protecting spruce rather than pine though.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I bud cap norway spruce, cannan fir, a few scotch pine and a few of the white spruce plugs I have, but not the transplants cause they are hardened off. Bud caps work pretty good, but not 100%. I would say that better than 95% of them held on through the winter last year. They still pull a few off and they hold up surprisingly well under the snow. Biggest risk for browse is usually in the spring when the snow thaws and right before the first snow. 4x6 index cards and a few office staples. Works best if you can catch some needles. After about 4-5 years the spruce seem to harden off and they leave them alone. They still like to hit the scotch pine and this is my first year with cannan fir. White pine is all caged up cause it wouldn't survive. Gotta protect that terminal bud.


From spring of 2019. Capped fall of 2018.





Planted spring 2019, capped last fall. Hope its still alive.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Because we have bears, I just go with 5' tall, 6" x 6" concrete mesh cages in about a 3' to 4' diameter. I go with that dia. so the deer can't reach the young whips and 1-2 year old trees to chew on. I wrap the trunks with aluminum window screen 18" to 2' tall and staple it on like Appleman does with his trees. (and has posted pix of his method.) No voles, mice or rabbit problems that way. Deer will nip some of the twigs that protrude outside the cages sometimes, but it doesn't hurt the trees. Once trees are 10' to 12' tall , deer aren't a problem for us. Only bears - thus the larger dia. on the staked cages. It's not 100% bear-proof, but it keeps them off on most trees.

I've found caging some of our spruce trees is a must if we want certain ones to be deer-proof long enough o get up to about 8 ft. tall. They sure love to rub the pi$$ out of spruce here.

 

[woodduck]

This is how I make doors into my cages. I just wire the fence material to the T-post leaving a little hang over. The opposite end overlaps a little and the cut off ends of the cage are used as hooks to secure the cage together. I wire the cage to both T-posts and when the door is opened you have lots of access to the inside of the cage.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Woodduck - Your set-up looks just like ours, except we have concrete mesh for cages. Everything else looks the same - window screen, tree size, metal tags with variety & rootstock type. On most of our trees now, the lowest limbs are above the 5" tall mesh cages. Thanks for posting!! Nice job.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I just looked at tractor supply. 5’ x 100’ roll of welded wire on sale for $100. 14 gauge. The 4 ft that I used is on sale for $68. I might pick up a few rolls Monday or Tuesday since I will be right by one. That would get me to 120 cages for my conifers since last spring. I will probably never do Apple trees cause I don’t wanna go through all the work and compete with all the bears we have.

 

[woodduck]

I just looked at tractor supply. 5’ x 100’ roll of welded wire on sale for $100. 14 gauge. The 4 ft that I used is on sale for $68. I might pick up a few rolls Monday or Tuesday since I will be right by one. That would get me to 120 cages for my conifers since last spring. I will probably never do Apple trees cause I don’t wanna go through all the work and compete with all the bears we have.

That's where I get mine from now. The brand of welded wire our TSC carries is made in USA. The Home Depot has same 5 ft welded wire but it's made overseas and in my opinion the welds where the wires cross aren't as strong and I've had a lot of them pop apart.

 

[cavey]

I want a repeat crack at Farm and Fleets 42.00 150' rolls of 5' concrete mesh - those were the days, the 8 rolls I bought didnt last. Fun part was getting the local fleet farm manager to choke as he matched their price.

 

[woodduck]

Woodduck - Your set-up looks just like ours, except we have concrete mesh for cages. Everything else looks the same - window screen, tree size, metal tags with variety & rootstock type. On most of our trees now, the lowest limbs are above the 5" tall mesh cages. Thanks for posting!! Nice job.

Thanks Bows, I've seen in the past, and a lot on this thread where guys prefer the concrete mesh over the welded wire. It sounds like it's probably a better option for strength. I think someone even mentioned its cheaper too. I've never really looked for it and I suppose it's probably readily available but I'm a creature of habitat and to lazy to look for it haha. I hope someday I won't have to post a picture of a smashed cage and admit to the entire Habitat crew they were right and that I was warned.

 

[woodduck]

I want a repeat crack at Farm and Fleets 42.00 150' rolls of 5' concrete mesh - those were the days, the 8 rolls I bought didnt last. Fun part was getting the local fleet farm manager to choke as he matched their price.

.....I'm all in with concrete mesh for $42 a roll! Maybe I need to start looking into it anyway.

 

[g squared 23]

6x6’ weed mat, aluminum screen split on one side and 6” stapled into ground, 12.5-16.6’ circumference cage 5’ high (14 gauge welded wire), 6’ studded T post, metal tag to label.


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[Chainsaw]

Thanks guys for all of the great pictures of proper caging techniques. They are very helpful.
Bucksutherland, Here in Tractor Supply, our five ft welded wire is on sale here for $109.00 a hundred foot Roll. Six ft. is still @ $149.00 a roll. It must cost more to get it up into this corner of New York Compared to your area as well as other locations. Additionally the people in the TC Good Neighbor plan who meet minimum quarterly purchases usually get a take off ten percent sale this time of year. I missed it this January as I didn’t, spend enough in the last quarter. Will pay more attention to it this coming year.

Bowas bucks, we have the same deal here with our spruce trees, from around now when lake effect snow kicks in, the spruce get decimated as well as all of the conifers they can get to. And yes we have too many deer for the annual period of January 15 until a week after the snow breaks up in Chummers area. Once the snow breaks up the winter herds disburse and presumably return to their home areas for the rest of the year.

 

[scott44]

I don't have the snow pack you do so I've went with 4' weld wire. My apple trees are 4' square and my others are 3' round. I bought both 3' and 4' lumite and cut it into squares and use 3/4" conduit for posts with zip ties to hold the wire up.

Edit - In that first pic is a roll of concrete mesh I got for free but I haven't tried it yet, will do this year because I have more apple trees coming.