Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Chestnut other trees for wildlife

Oh no, the Curse of Oak Island has reached YOUR property.

Good luck on your tree projects this year. My tube trees always seem to leaf out later than the existing trees on our farm. Of course, they are different species.

Our native sand plums already have tiny blossoms that are about to open. The pear trees that are in tubes and sticking out of the tops, do not yet even have buds swelling at all.

My oaks in tubes will leaf out very late.

Looks like I might wind up with maybe about 180 chestnut sprouts, 40 walnut, and about a dozen apple. No pecans.

Well.. another update. The same rabbits that chewed the bark of some expensive trees in my front yard have now decided it is fun to jump up on my 2 gl pots and snip the tops off my trees when they get about four inches tall...

If not for the wife and son, they would be buzzard bait right now...

I’ve had that problem. I put chicken wire around the trees.

I have so many chewing rodents and rabbits at our farm that every tree has to start in a tree tube. I did try some in chicken wire, but the wind beat the heck out of the branches that grew through the wire and sometimes damaged the bark.

If you do not have a deer problem, then you can buy long tubes and cut them down as needed. I purchased 5' tubes and cut a lot in half for some tiny oak seedlings. It is easy to drill holes as needed for your zip ties.

I think you can now purchase 6' tubes. You could probably cut those into four pieces that would be tall enough to deter rabbits.

I use 3/4" PVC tubing for my stakes. Buy the 10' sticks whenever there is a bulk sale at the big box hardware store. They flex a little in the wind, so your growing tree will start to put on some mass at the root collar, instead of growing up spindly.


P.S. I have had multiple trees where the main leader died due to animal chewing, drought, or a very hard freeze. At least 50% of the time, I would get some water sprouts growing out from the base of the trunk, or even from the roots. I now have several 6-8' trees that grew from such humble beginnings.

My advice is to keep nurturing the damaged trees a little, and see if they can bounce back from the stored energy in their root systems.

Aluminum window screen.

Wrap it around the trunk, use scissors to cut it long, staple it to itself. Very easy/cheap and protects against mice and rabbits.

Over the weekend I added two Dunstan Chestnut trees and replaced two that I killed by over-watering.

I've got six more to plant. Two are going in the house yard. I haven't decided where to put the last four.

Half a dozen of the trees in the grove have grown a foot or more out of the grow tube. It's time to pull those
tubes and replace them with wire cages.