good to see hard work pays off, planted some swamp oak 8-12 inch seedling [108] of them, last year and 25 of them two years ago, I put the 5-foot plastic tubes over them.



you can see the two-year-olds are out of the top of the tubes

any of you out there use the tubes?

My friend that purchased the hunting property across the street from me used them when he first came down here. He and his wife spent a whole weekend going along the property line. I’ll grab a couple photos on my way out this morning.

We used them all the time for tree/shrub plantings in the windbreaks in North Dakota. Generally left them on for the first few years and then the folks would remove them.

My All Purpose Boy has tubes on the apple trees he planted on the food plot on my South 40. He also put a fence around them (each separate) to prevent deer from eating the leaves/buds.

We used them here for a few years. While the tube provides a good environment for the seedlings, we found the trees became very "leggy" and would not support themselves. Some trees grew enough out of the top of the tube that they would bend over and eventually die off.

We started cutting the 5' tubes down to 20" and put that around the seedlings for rabbit protection. Then we made a cage of 4' wide by approximately 2' diameter poultry wire fencing and a couple of fence posts around the outside of the tree tube. Doing it this way, we found the tube protected the seedling from the rabbits and the wire cage protected the seedling from the deer. The shorter tree tube allowed the seedling to grow and become "wind hardened." While the seedlings didn't grow as tall, they grew bigger in diameter and were sturdier.

This worked for me, but I didn't plant nearly as many trees as you have Roy. I appreciate the work you went to in planting the amount of trees you have.