window screen

[gasman]

I recently planted some bare root oak seedling in 5 foot tubes. Should I be putting window screen around the bottoms to prevent mice from girdling them?

 

[weekender21]

I don’t put screen on my tubed trees. Just make sure the tubes are flush with the ground on all sides.


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[buckdeer1]

You will even be better off to get tubes in the ground alittle but rais up and clean out

 

[Keith Nehrke]

I will respectfully argue the opposite: screen them. I lost several trees over the winter that had been in the ground for three years due to mice making nests in the tubes and girdling them. It was painful. However, I started using aluminum window screen to wrap the trunk two years ago and didn't lose a single one of those trees, out of hundreds. Better safe than sorry. It's also important to clean the tubes out at least once a year. I general do this when I spray around them for weeds in late May. For volume and short term ease of installation, tubes rock, but in the long term, caging is less work.

Also, window screen stapled to the terminal leader also keeps deer off of your conifers and prevents your losing a year's growth to deer with the munchies, but remember to take the screen off in the spring to let them shoot up.

 

[catscratch]

I wrap all my tubed trees with window screen.

 

[weekender21]

I will respectfully argue the opposite: screen them. I lost several trees over the winter that had been in the ground for three years due to mice making nests in the tubes and girdling them. It was painful. However, I started using aluminum window screen to wrap the trunk two years ago and didn't lose a single one of those trees, out of hundreds. Better safe than sorry. It's also important to clean the tubes out at least once a year. I general do this when I spray around them for weeds in late May. For volume and short term ease of installation, tubes rock, but in the long term, caging is less work.

Also, window screen stapled to the terminal leader also keeps deer off of your conifers and prevents your losing a year's growth to deer with the munchies, but remember to take the screen off in the spring to let them shoot up.

Do you have pictures of screen on your conifers? I want to plant an evergreen screen along one of my access roads but don’t want to feed the deer.


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[Keith Nehrke]

I apologize, but I don't. I simply cut small rectangular pieces of screen ~3" x 6", fold them over the terminal leader, and staple them shut with three staples. I do this immediately after our deer season ends in December, then I remove them at the end of April after things have started to green up. I think it's important not to remove them too early. In our neck of the woods, once the snow melts but before anything has emerged is when the evergreens get chomped. That's generally March and April. With the screen, the lower branches might get eaten but the terminal leader stays intact and the tree puts on it's annual growth. Most of the evergreens that I plant are slow, and I hate to lose any potential. It's a great way to protect "volunteers", too, that would otherwise disappear.

 

[weekender21]

Perfect description, thanks. Seems like simple insurance.


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