Many tricks to fostering trees

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, May 22, 2007

For those of you who do not know, I have approximately 40 apple trees. That news probably doesn’t guarantee much in the way of credentials. But what I do have to offer is the fact that, over the last 25 years, I’m certain that I’ve killed well over twice that number. So, here are some of the ways you too can kill your fruit trees.

Plant a tree that’s not appropriate for Zone 4, which is where we are. Yes, the folks who tell us what zone we’re in are presently convinced that, due to the build up of greenhouse gases, we are currently going to be declared to be in Zone 5. I had Zone 5 trees that lived here for several years, up to the point where one winter it hit a ten-year low. They won’t make it.

Don’t water them in late July and August, for sure. Even better, don’t water them at all. Best of all, plant them in sandy soil and don’t water them ever. Pretty quickly, you won’t have to mow around them, which is a pain in the you know what.

Don’t surround them with metal hardware cloth, up as high as possible. Don’t trim off the first few branches so that the screen can be installed higher, even though those branches won’t let you mow, because they’re so low.

For a long time, I wrapped them in tin foil. For a long time, it worked. Years and years. Then one winter, the mice discovered that their claws, not their teeth, worked wonders at tearing through the stuff. Even though the tree is chewed off up above the metal mesh, it’ll still come back, but chew it off down at the graft, and that’s pretty much all she wrote.

Don’t drive posts in to support them. That way, once they leaf out and the wind gets in their sails and begins to blow them back and forth, the ground around the roots can open up and let those same roots dry out and die.

I like a steel fence post, one on each side, and a hunk of number 12 or 14 Romex house wiring, looped once around the tree and fastened to each post. It’s easy. The plastic jacket on the wire protects the trunk from abrasion, and as the tree grows, it tightens, until you see that it’s no longer needed and can be removed, usually at the end of the second year or so.

Somewhere in here, although it isn’t a sure way to kill a tree, I’ve learned that planting bare root stock early in the spring works best. Yes, those potted trees will also do well, but disrupting them once again isn’t really in either of your best interests.

When you mow around the tree, be sure and scrape the tree every chance you get. Even better, send your kids out there with a powered weed whip to knock down the tall grass that grows so well because you followed the step above about watering them well. Use a weed barrier mat instead, one wide enough that there isn’t any danger in barking the tree’s shin so badly that it decides to give up and die, or some Round-up herbicide, if you’re really into better living through chemistry, or some mulch — which also works pretty well.

From here on forward, the tree will likely live, and mostly now you need to know some tricks that might make your tree bear better apples.

Insect control boils down pretty much to the apple maggot fly, which selects apples in which to lay its eggs, in the hope that those apples will eventually fall down to the ground, where the egg can hatch and the maggot can worm its way down into the soil, to come up the next summer as a fly, which can once again lay hundreds and hundreds of eggs. If you live in town, most folks around you have pretty well guaranteed that you’re going to have wormy apples. Most nursery catalogues sell a red plastic apple that, once coated with stickum, appeals to the fly, who becomes trapped on it. In heavy infestation areas—like in town—you’d maybe need a hundred of these, there are so many flies. Outside town, they work well

Finally, don’t let young trees bear fruit the first three years. Pick them off. Every year, prune the tree so you can throw a hat through it.

The trees tell me, as I’m clipping the equivalent of human toe nails, that it tickles them. Don’t let that stop you.

Alan Linda writes from his home in New York Mills.