Rejuvenating a deer-browsed hedgerow Photos by Plantra team
The lesson of this story is that as long as you have living root systems, you have a chance to rescue deer-browsed and drought-ravaged plantings and achieve amazing results.
Babe Winkelman’s habitat plan called for the establishment of a multi-row hedgerow/windbreak of red pine, American plum and Nanking cherry to provide cover for pheasants and food for a variety of wildlife.
Planted (and re-planted, and re-planted again to replace those lost to drought and deer) over the course of 5 years, the project was in tough shape going into the 2008 growing season (keep in mind that the “growing season” is west central Minnesota starts late – Babe got a foot of snow on May 1st!).
After 3 to 5 years in the field most of the American plums and Nanking cherry shrubs were only 4 to 8 inches tall, and had been browsed back time after time by deer and rabbit. The best description for these stunted plants: bonsai
With tiny trees & shrubs struggling amidst grass that reaches 2 ft high, weed control becomes impossible. How can you find the seedlings to spray or mow around them? And even if you can find them, how can you provide weed control without spraying or mowing off the trees themselves?
Plantra had the solutions.
The first step in rejuvenating this deer browsed and stunted hedgerow planting was to install 4ft Vented Plantra Tree Tubes. The tubes were applied May 20, 2008 over all of the Nanking cherry and American plum seedlings we could find… and finding the seedlings was the hardest part – 4 to 8 inch nubs in and amongst foot tall grass. (To the left you can see one of the soft mast crabapple food plots planted in spring 2008.)
This photo was taken about 10 days after the tubes were applied. You can see the advantages immediately:
Seedlings are protected from deer and rabbit browse
Seedlings are shielded from the drying & desiccating effects of the wind, and have their own “mini greenhouses” in which to thrive
You can find the trees amidst the grass(!), making weed control a lot easier. No let me rephrase that: making weed control possible, where before it was not.
A happy seedling – after five years of struggling against drought, weeds and deer this seedling is now safe from browse, drying winds and the herbicide treatments that will give it an advantage over the weeds.
Plantra Tree Tubes allow you to find your trees amidst the grass, and then shield them from herbicide treatment. This gives you the ability to strip spray RoundUp® or other contact systemic herbicides quickly, effectively, and without fear of damaging your trees.
West central Minnesota is the true edge of the prairie, and grasses have the upper hand over trees. Without effective weed control newly planted trees don’t stand a chance (the mature oaks you see in the background of some of these pictures benefitted from weed control of another kind– but no less effective – fire.)
Facing east into the morning sun provides the back lighting that shows the tree growing up through the tube. It’s mid June and already this tree – which was just 4 to 8 inches tall a few weeks ago – is on its way up and out of the tube.
It’s June 29, less than six weeks after applying the 4ft tubes, and the first of the trees have already started to emerge! That means that over this time they grew at a rate of more than 1 inch per day.
Here you see the purple mesh “sock” Plantra supplies with 4ft and 5ft tree shelters to prevent cavity nest birds from entering the tubes. Once the tree emerges from the tube, as in this photo, the net should be removed.
A very happy Babe Winkelman, next to an American plum that has emerged from a 4ft Plantra Tree Tube – less than six weeks removed from being a 4 inch “bonsai” that was difficult just to locate amidst the grass!
The only problem: many of the trees, including this one, were again nipped by deer after emerging from 4ft tree tubes. In many cases with 4ft tubes the trees will eventually send a shoot past the deer. However, another solution is to apply Deer Guard Repellent to bridge the gap between the top of the tree tube and the browse line.
The next 5 photos in this sequence were taken on August 29, 2008 – a little over 3 months after the tubes were applied.
After emerging from 4ft tree tubes earlier in the summer these trees were treated with Deer Guard Repellent to provide the added measure of protection that enabled them to grow past the deer browse line.
An accidental comparison tree… Back in May it was very difficult to locate these trees and shrubs, even though we knew where the row was, the grass was just getting started growing, and we new the spacing. We missed this one… and I’m glad we did. It dramatically shows the difference between the tubed trees and what would have happened if left un-tubed for another year: Continued deer browse, damaged by herbicide spray, stunted by moisture stress… and still just a few inches tall.
By the end of summer 90% or more of the trees had emerged from the tubes, and most of these were safely past the browse line.
The rows to the right of the photo had received a second treatment of RoundUp. The row to the left would be treated later than day.
Babe again, this time in late August next to one of hundreds of trees that are safely past the browse line and well on their way to providing the habitat Babe envisioned when he planted them.
