Protecting Your Fruit Trees

Plan Ahead

Every apple you ever ate was planned for by a farmer years in advance before you ever laid eyes on it at the grocery store. If you start planning now, you will be reaping the rewards of what would otherwise be the most expensive food at the grocery store years from now. Your fruit trees will give you decades of fruit if you take good care of them. Things to plan for and take into consideration are: site selection, disease management, soil preparation, and protection from mice, deer, rabbits, and birds. All of this effort will still result in your fruit costing you a small fraction of what a grocer would charge you.

You Don’t Want To See This

So you’ve decided to plant a fruit tree. First, plan to find a suitable location that will get full sun if possible. If you have a lot of shade trees in your yard already, you may want to sacrifice some to be sure that your fruit tree yields well. Do not plant the tree where the ground is likely to get flooded and soggy. Also, make sure that there is no power or gas lines where you plan to dig. If wild trees or grass do not grow well on the site, you may want to have a soil test done so that you are not left wondering why your tree is not growing well years down the road. You can use our contact form to request help with details on what time to plant, how deep, and watering issues.

After you have the tree in the ground the next thing to do (immediately) is to be sure that mice and rabbits cannot gnaw the bark off. We have seen far too many first time fruit tree owners become frustrated to the point of giving up due to skipping this simple step. Sometimes a person can get lucky and go a few years without protection. However, eventually rodents will most likely do some damage if you don’t take precautions. One little mouse can kill a 5 year old apple tree without much effort. It will be best to get some aluminum insect screen or hardware cloth wrapped around the base of the tree (slightly buried in the ground so that they cannot burrow under it in the winter) at least 16 inches high and not too tight as to strangle the tree as it grows. The screen will need to be adjusted every year or two to allow for growth.

Deer Deterrent

Another disaster that is easily avoided is keeping deer from eating not only the fruit but also the branches themselves. We suggest buying fencing that is at least 5 feet tall and protects at least 5 feet in diameter around the tree. We actually have our cattle pasture double as our orchard, so we use cattle panel fencing to keep the cattle and deer from doing significant damage. The cattle keep the grass mowed for us and fertilize the trees as well.

If you can manage using a step ladder to harvest, then keeping the lower branches pruned off will prevent deer from being able to reach them in the first place, and cattle won’t be able to rub on them and break them off either. As seen in the photos above, the white latex paint on the south side of the tree will prevent the sun from thawing the bark on the tree in the winter when refreezing can split the bark and cause the nearly irreversible damage seen on the above cherry tree with the damaged bark.

As for any necessary spraying for bugs, that is dependent on your particular situation and we would like to chat with you before making recommendations so that we can spare you any unnecessary expense and effort. For us personally, we have never had to spray our Nanking cherries or Juneberries. Netting isn’t always necessary for apples, but cherries will usually need it.

Last of All

And if the sweet taste of your hard work isn’t enough, the smell of those trees blooming in the spring is indescribable.