Plastic tree guards/tubes etc

[tony_t3d]

I will take a pic next time I'm passing bud

[Jerome]

Hiya everyone.

 

I found this thread while googling 'recycled tree guards' wondering is it possible for a private individual to get used tree guards. I have been planting trees for the last 10 years, mainly oak trees, on farm land which is grazed by sheep, and it's costing a fortune in tree guards. In this thread I see that in some places they are littering the ground and unwanted. I try to plant out approx 300-400 oak trees each year and ideally each tree would need two spiral tree guards to keep the safe from the sheep. The trees are currently in a nursery area and are all over 10 years old. I have to did them up with a digger. I am based in Ireland, I'm hoping there might be a similar amount of unwanted tree guards here but to be honest this county is arseways.

 

Is there any environmentally driven scheme in which people can obtain used spiral tree guards? Perhaps covering the postage cost?

 

 

[Stere]

Digging up  10ys old oaks doesn't sound the best way to get new trees established as may damage roots and oaks are sensitive to tranplanting ?

 

Are you using 2 spiral guards above one another?

 

Any pictures?

[Guest Gimlet]

Tree guards are a bloody nightmare when you're hedge laying. I've got one farm where there's literally miles of hedging that's been planted with the intention of laying. 

They've used spiral guards on each sapling and every one has to be carefully unwound before you can start cutting. The type they use are supposed to be biodegradable but after fifteen years all that happens is they become brittle and if you're not careful taking them off they break into a hundred bits. I have to drag builder's dumpy bags around with me and I fill one with plastic guards about every hundred yards.

 

I've noticed crab apple saplings react badly to guards. They keep the stems very damp and mossy and crab apples in particular tend to get some sort of fungal infection where they're encased in the guard which kills off most of them. In most mixed native hedges I've laid on this farm about 80% of crab apples are dead when I come to take the guards off. Which is a great pity because crab apple is a lovely species for hedging and always produces an abundance of blossom when it's been laid. 

 

The farm in question doesn't actually have many rabbits but it is exposed and windy (which is why they're planting hedges) and the bloke who does the planting says he uses guards more to stop the saplings getting blown over than to protect them from rabbits. I hope I've persuaded him to look at other solutions. 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Gimlet

[Tommy_B]

There was a family run company at the last AA show which made cardboard ones which looked brilliant. I forget the name

[Guest Gimlet]

Ezee Tree?

 

http://www.ezeetrees.com/hedge-guards

[porky]

The spiral guards are not Biodegradable as I had always thought. They are Photodegradeable which means they go brittle and break in to lots of unwanted plastic litter unless you get them off as soon as they have done their job. Used old ones would tend to be very brittle and shatter easily.

[Jerome]

14 hours ago, Stere said:

Digging up  10ys old oaks doesn't sound the best way to get new trees established as may damage roots and oaks are sensitive to tranplanting ?

 

Are you using 2 spiral guards above one another?

 

Any pictures?

Thank you for the reply. Well 10-12 years ago my father planted an enormous amount of acorns that we collected from a few forests and from this initial planting we have approx 6  thousand trees. We also have another few thousand random trees growing, pretty much any time my dad would find a nice tree growing he would take note of location and collect seed. So we have large amounts of crab apples/plums/cherries/hazel/damsenetc.

 

We also have an established area with older oak.

 

Anyhow it's these trees I am planting.  The key to planting these bigger trees is to prune the very hard, pretty much just leaving a 10 foot pole. It looks terrible when you do it but after a few months they develop a lovely crown and this brutal pruning  increases survival rates. I have even planted cherry trees that were over 20 years this way with100% survival rate.

 

I only have a few pics, I have some videos but they are shaky as I was just using my phone

 

[Will Heal]

If your planting them that big I wouldn’t have thought they need a shelter, that is a different way of planting trees but if it work then great [emoji106]!

[difflock]

I take it the guards are to prevent the "fecking" sheep eating the trees, this could also perhaps the reason they are transplanted when larger?

Marcus