Spruce road screen

[CSHunter802]

This spring we will be planting around 200 Norway spruce trees (14" bareroots) to screen off a long section of road that borders our property. The trees should arrive in the first week of April and we are planning on planting them as soon as weather permits. We have a properly sized auger on our tractor and a crew of 4 guys so the work won't be too bad.

The stretch we are screening is not wide open so we are spacing the trees for long term coverage, (My brother and I are in our early 20s so we should reap the benefits of this screen for many years).
Currently we have no plan to cage the trees. For context, we do not have a high DPSM here, but in our area and on our property we have a much higher DPSM than the rest of the state. We are probably wintering ~10 deer on our 150 acres this year. At the time of posting they haven't come close to finishing the 2 acres of beans that we have on the property (they were fenced until the first week of November), the 3-4 acres of Brassicas have been mostly demolished. I am looking for thoughts on caging, are we making a mistake by not planning to cage? If we absolutely should protect these trees what is the most economical way to go about it for a planting of this size? We protect all our fruit trees with 4' welded wire or mesh, 3 t posts, and rodent netting around the base but even a scaled down version of this for the spruce feels like a huge undertaking.

Also this is my first time posting on this forum but I am a long time reader, I've been studying these threads and threads on the old QDM forum since I was 13 years old and have learned so much over the years.

 

[Tree Spud]

This spring we will be planting around 200 Norway spruce trees (14" bareroots) to screen off a long section of road that borders our property. The trees should arrive in the first week of April and we are planning on planting them as soon as weather permits. We have a properly sized auger on our tractor and a crew of 4 guys so the work won't be too bad.

The stretch we are screening is not wide open so we are spacing the trees for long term coverage, (My brother and I are in our early 20s so we should reap the benefits of this screen for many years).
Currently we have no plan to cage the trees. For context, we do not have a high DPSM here, but in our area and on our property we have a much higher DPSM than the rest of the state. We are probably wintering ~10 deer on our 150 acres this year. At the time of posting they haven't come close to finishing the 2 acres of beans that we have on the property (they were fenced until the first week of November), the 3-4 acres of Brassicas have been mostly demolished. I am looking for thoughts on caging, are we making a mistake by not planning to cage? If we absolutely should protect these trees what is the most economical way to go about it for a planting of this size? We protect all our fruit trees with 4' welded wire or mesh, 3 t posts, and rodent netting around the base but even a scaled down version of this for the spruce feels like a huge undertaking.

Also this is my first time posting on this forum but I am a long time reader, I've been studying these threads and threads on the old QDM forum since I was 13 years old and have learned so much over the years. Over the last few years my father has slowly given me the reigns and let me take over the management of our property. I have lots of ideas buzzing around in my head (as I always do after the season closes) and will probably be posting on here more frequently. Thanks to all!

Coop

First, welcome to the site. Adding your USDA zone to will help folks assess your situation better.

Second, your comment on planting when weather permits is not the approach you should take. Once trees are received, they really should be planted within a week of receiving.

Regarding caging, rabbits will also browse young spruces and deer will too. The other issue is bucks love to rub young conifers. Always frustrating to see 2'-4' tall spruces rubbed and destroyed. One young buck could easily destroy 10-15 in a night. I know as this happened to me and why I started advocating caging.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

You have an auger for 14" seedlings?? What size auger?? How big are the roots??

You can't go wrong planting Norway spruce for a screen. We did that about 23 years ago at my camp, and for a number of years now, you can't see anything off the road we were screening. Cut off road-shooting poachers for sure. A camp further across our mountain planted Norway spruce to screen off a road about 30 years ago, and they planted their spruce in staggered rows so no gaps between trees. For years that property has been a thick, green WALL. No seeing or shooting from the road for years.

Caging spruce, IMO, is a call each of us has to make depending on how many deer we have in our individual locations. Deer feeding pressure depends on how many other food sources are in your area. If you're in a mostly big woods area, with not much in the way of agricultural crops nearby, it might pay to cage them. Our deer were eating the tops off in the winter, despite having winter rye, winter wheat and brassicas planted for winter food. We didn't cage EVERY spruce - but the ones we wanted to make it and survive for specific reasons - we caged those. Once spruce get to be about 3 ft. tall or greater, bucks like to rub on them, so be prepared for some damage if your trees are uncaged. We've lost a few 3 and 4 footers to bucks destroying them by rubbing & thrashing.

Cheapest method to cage a line of spruce might be to buy poly mesh fencing and use T-posts to support the fencing. The poly fence comes in 6 ft. and 8 ft. heights, I believe. Good luck with your planting.

Welcome to the forum - and keep us posted on your projects!! We all learn here.

 

[CSHunter802]

First, welcome to the site. Adding your USDA zone to will help folks assess your situation better.

Second, your comment on planting when weather permits is not the approach you should take. Once trees are received, they really should be planted within a week of receiving.

Regarding gaging, rabbits will also browse young spruces and deer will too. The other issue is bucks love to rub young conifers. Always frustrating to see 2'-4' tall spruces rubbed and destroyed. One young buck could easily destroy 10-15 in a night. I know as this happened to me and why I started advocating caging.

By weather permitting I guess I meant within a few days after we receive them. It can be raining sideways here for multiple days in a row that time of year which doesn't make for fun tree work, but we'll get 'em in quick.
We certainly want to minimize losses on these trees so it sounds like some form of caging is probably a good idea. We get lots of rubbing activity, one buck quickly made his way to the top of our hitlist after having his way with my parents magnolia in the front yard.

 

[CSHunter802]

You have an auger for 14" seedlings?? What size auger?? How big are the roots??

You can't go wrong planting Norway spruce for a screen. We did that about 23 years ago at my camp, and for a number of years now, you can't see anything off the road we were screening. Cut off road-shooting poachers for sure. A camp further across our mountain planted Norway spruce to screen off a road about 30 years ago, and they planted their spruce in staggered rows so no gaps between trees. For years that property has been a thick, green WALL. No seeing or shooting from the road for years.

Caging spruce, IMO, is a call each of us has to make depending on how many deer we have in our individual locations. Deer feeding pressure depends on how many other food sources are in your area. If you're in a mostly big woods area, with not much in the way of agricultural crops nearby, it might pay to cage them. Our deer were eating the tops off in the winter, despite having winter rye, winter wheat and brassicas planted for winter food. We didn't cage EVERY spruce - but the ones we wanted to make it and survive for specific reasons - we caged those. Once spruce get to be about 3 ft. tall or greater, bucks like to rub on them, so be prepared for some damage if your trees are uncaged. We've lost a few 3 and 4 footers to bucks destroying them by rubbing & thrashing.

Cheapest method to cage a line of spruce might be to buy poly mesh fencing and use T-posts to support the fencing. The poly fence comes in 6 ft. and 8 ft. heights, I believe. Good luck with your planting.

Welcome to the forum - and keep us posted on your projects!! We all learn here.

The auger is our hunting partners and we had him on the phone with the nursery and they said our auger was perfect for the root size on these seedlings, I don't have the exact details on that but I'm hoping they have that figured out correctly lol.
I'm happy to hear your success with the Norway screens, we are planning on a staggered row for our screen.
We've used poly mesh fencing on a few of our bareroot apple trees and haven't had any problem with critters busting through yet. Makes my head spin thinking about caging all these trees but it'd probably be worth it in the long run. If it ends up being too much to take on there are certain stretches that are much more open and would be a priority to protect. I have seen bud caps mentioned on a few other threads but have never seen them in use around here before, I'm wondering if that would be beneficial, especially if we aren't able to cage all the trees.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Like you, we concentrated on our more open areas for protecting our spruce when we planted them. Maybe fencing with poly on your priority open spots is a good way to go. An auger will sure save you time and back aches!!

Starting in year 2, I tossed some 10-10-10 around the spruce seedlings and that gave them a nice jump in growth. I kept tossing 10-10-10 around them for the first 7 years, and they took off pretty well. We got nice 7 to 8 ft. spruce in 6 or 7 years doing that. Staggering the rows fills the gaps. We also planted spruce in clusters with about 20 feet between them. As they grew, they became a great bedding area for deer with grasses and weeds growing between the spruce. On windy, cold days, it's nice and calm in those areas. Deer love it.

I've read on here of guys using bud caps to good results. Whatever works!!

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Planted my first 160 or so Norway and BH spruce this year in MN. Most at my hunting land and some in my yard at home.

At the hunting land I didn’t get them all caged right away and by fall I still didn’t notice any browse on the uncaged ones. At home where im adjacent to lots of corn and beans the uncaged ones got browsed pretty hard this summer.. I would have bet the ones at the land would be more prone to getting browsed but it just goes to show it’s hard to know exactly what will happen.

 

[H20fwler]

A buck can tear up a half dozen young conifers in a night easily then come back for more all fall.
Some snow can get deer browsing more than you would think.

Caging is time consuming and costly but it works and pays off in the long run.

Most economical way I have found is making them out of old used farm fence and staking them with one electric fence post just to anchor them in place. That has been enough to deter deer from abusing my spruce and pines.
When and where I can I’ve grouped trees in bunch’s of from 3-8 and and fenced them in.
I’ve even bought a couple rolls of new farm fence when I’ve had to and it has saved me a lot of wasted energy having trees ruined.

 

[TheGroveEstate]

Cage them! I too learned the hard way as some other members have stated. After feeling defeated by an animal - I started researching, which landed me on this forum. Tons of info that led me in the right direction. I went the long term, strongest cage approach. I prefer to cage once, for years worth of growth. I don’t want to revisit the cages until it’s time to remove them and repurpose the steel. I caged about 165 trees in the summer of 2022. What a job it was, and investment. But it’s DONE…til the evergreens don’t need caged anymore. Pay now or pay later!

 

[TheGroveEstate]

A buck can tear up a half dozen young conifers in a night easily then come back for more all fall.

Exactly. I witnessed 50 trees destroyed in the matter of a month during rut. By the time I realized what was happening it was too late. I vowed to not let it happen the following year.

Caging is time consuming and costly but it works and pays off in the long run.

I burned a month of weekends and spent over $2000 in caging last year. Every minute and penny was worth it when I go for a walk with the kids and all my conifers are untouched!

 

[ChrisA]

Agree with all comments on protetction. Wife and I have spent more time and money on cages than I ever expected, but it sure is nice showing up in late winter and no longer cringing at spruce trees that have been stripped to look like a paint brush. We too have similar issues with large numbers of trees and not being able to cage every one of them. For those we can’t, tree toppers have helped and are not too hard or timing consuming to install. Doesn’t stop the rubbing, but does deter some of the tops from being nipped off. Good luck with your project!

 

[ruskbucks]

I bought 300 scotch pine and probably 25 each of blue and white spruce. The first year the deer browsed 298 of the scotch. None of the spruce were browsed that I noticed. Most of the scotch made it. I wish I would of planted Norway spruce. The deer don't touch Norways up by us except for rubbing a few. Fencing is always good insurance . I fence almost everything now except spruce or balsams.