Alcatraz For Trees No Longer

 

As part of the stewardship of my edge of the city property, I have cut down probably close to 50 dead or dying trees in the 15 years I have lived here. Also as part of that stewardship, I have replanted probably half that number back in native trees to our area. However, where I live deer are as thick as flies and probably on any given night, 20 or so deer pass within feet of the tree above and many a buck would love to rub their velvet off on the trunk, abrading the bark and killing the tree. To prevent that from happening when I first planted them and they were nothing but twigs about 12 inches long, I pounded in several posts around each one and wrapped that in woven wire. That method worked well and accomplished my goal of allowing the trees to grow up unmolested.

However, it had its drawbacks. Maybe every few years, I would have to unwind the woven wire panels to gain access to cut all the various sprouts that tend to grow up in land that isn't mowed regularly. It wasn't too difficult but the sharp ends of the wire always left my arms full of scratches and it wasn't particularly enjoyable work that I looked forward to doing either. That is why many of the trees looked like the one above most of the time.

Now that the trees are bigger, I decided to try a new tactic and so last fall, I unwound the wire from a few of the trees that I am the least excited about seeing grow big at some point and pulled the posts. I trimmed all the lower branches and all the sprouts to expose a nice looking trunk. Since velvet shedding bucks would still love nothing better than to use those exposed trunks to scratch their itch, I wrapped a bit of the woven wire loosely around the trunk. The wire discourages them from using the tree as a scratching post but yet keeps the trunk exposed and allows me to mow up close and keep sprouts from growing up underneath. It worked so well, that I've been spending time this fall while the weather was so nice, doing all the rest. 

Besides being easier to maintain in the future, it just looks so much better from a distance since the wire is too small to really be seen until you get up closer to them. So I can very much pretend that my yard looks like anybody's yard and not the Alcatraz for trees.