Tree Seedling Tubes

Looking at planting some oaks in the spring and I plan to protect them with tree tubes 4’-5‘ high with stakes.

There seems to pros & Cons for each style but wondering if anyone has had success with certain types or brands:
Hardware Cloth?
Perforated Plastic?
Solid Plastic?

I’m leaning toward Hardware Cloth because I heard plastic tends to attract mice that nest and girdle the trees and also ground bees’ nest at the base of the tube, later attacking black bears for the larvae. Hardware cloth would take the most effort but I’m willing to do it for a better outcome. Input appreciated.

We have used a lot of the plastic tree tubes in the past, but for the last several years we have been using 2" x 4" welded wire fencing. We buy it by the roll from Menards. You can get it a couple of different heights. We make the wire fence "tube" about 18" in diameter, then put at least a couple of tall posts or fiberglass stakes around the cage. Be sure and anchor and wire them good. Using the bigger diameter tube allows the seedling to become stronger (wind hardened) as its in the elements. We don't have any bears here to mess with our tubes like you do, but the deer sure make a mess of them once in a while.

I used 6' welded wire about 3' around and one t post to keep them in place to protect the peach and pair trees we planted from the deer. Has worked perfictly but i spent as much on the wire as I did for the trees.

We also use welded wire. Make a big enough cage so when the tree grows out of the top the tree can’t rub on the sides when windy. I have been buying 1/2” rebar in 20’ lengths and cutting it to make 3 stakes. Push the rebar at an angle to the seedling and push the cage through multiple opening in the welded wire. This stiffens the cage. When the cage is slid down to the soil, pull the rebar cage away from the seedling and slid the cage down further. Once down the cage is under tension and won’t move as much. Spend the money on welded wire and not tree tubes. The deer will eat the top of the trees when they grow above the plastic tubes

Spend the money up front protecting the trees. Better to plant less and get them going then planting a lot and not protecting them

PM me if you have questions, I learned the hard way

I’ve been trying to get some beech saplings started along the lane to my camp. I transplant 3–4 footers from elsewhere on the property. The porcupines are really hard on them. Out of the 18 I currently have planted I believe I replanted most of those at least once some of them three times after they were girdled.

I finally made 7–8 inch diameter tubes that are 33 inches tall out of a 24 x 50 roll of aluminum flashing. After doing some research this seemed to be the best option. I guess I’ll know whether or not it works by spring, winter is when they usually hit them the hardest.

I’ve used the plastic tree tubes for years with no issues. Yes you will get a mouse nest every now and then , we clean them out in the spring. We don’t have bears but do have ground bees but have never had them nest at the bottom before . There is good and bad in most cases but in this case the good out weighs the bad by far.

Send me a pm if you want more information.

https://www.amazon.com/60-Miracle-Tree-Tube-25/dp/B077Y2513C?th=1

I think you can find them a bit cheaper if you look around but these tubes are the way to go. They act as a mini green house, remove before the tree is to large, it's only to get them started.

I was at a forestry event this Fall & the instructor told us to put a mothball in the bottom of each tube every Fall to help keep the mice out.

I buy 10 apple tree seedlings every year from the local soil and water conservation district sale. I also buy 10 tree tubes to plant the apple trees in. They are the plastic type. They work great. I have apples on the trees that were planted 5 years ago.

That is impressive

if you are going to use plastic around your seedlings.
use clear or white in color.
do not use green or amber as the tree does not get enough light
and when you take the plastic of the tree will not get enough girth
at ground level. Therefore they will fall over.
Talk to David Wise at 610-268-2153 or stroudcenter.org
pick65

I use the wire mesh for rabbit cages in my little orchard. Probably 1x1 mesh? I make a tube about 12" in diameter and 24" tall. I use hog rings to close the tube. I also push the bottom a couple of inches into the ground. I only have to worry about ground hogs and rabbits eating the bark around the bottom.

I've wrapped apple trees with aluminum foil to stop mice from chewing them. Worked for me.

It's work , but use wire mesh 1/2 or 1/4 inch up to 1x2 inch to keep young rabbits out .
Air flow is in my opinion important to the tree bark .
Seen a few young trees with plastic tubes , and IMHO they didn't grow like they should of .

I had one peach tree in my orchard that was half the size of the others. It seemed healthy otherwise but stayed small. I decided to cut it down. I was poking around the bottom of the tree clearing some debris so I could cut it off flush with the ground. I found the plastic price tag from the nursery still wrapped around the trunk. The tree was swollen around the tag and the tag was embedded into the bark.

I did some penknife surgery and got the tag off. The tree took off the next year and is doing fine.

Whatever you use, make sure the tree has room to grow.

Evening Sir, the most important thing regarding oak tree establishment is sunlight. Nearly all oaks require a lot of sunlight to survive and thrive, and grow especially when they are young.
So where you are planting them is the most important thing. If you are trying to establish them in woodlands where there will be competition from shade tolerant trees, then clear out areas for the oaks. This can be achieved by girdling un-wanted trees as well.

I use tree tubes, but care must be taken on the size of sapling you are planting. It has been my experience that a really tall tube to protect does not give the seedling the light energy it needs to grow stout. It ends up being a wiry thing that can't hardly support itself. Thats why a bigger diameter is better, or better yet I just use net wire. Seems to work the best around here. Gives plenty of light, keeps the critters out, and I can make to fit.

If planting 10s of thousands of trees which I have done, then making your own tree guard is not feasible, in these situations, buy a guard that gives the young tree plenty of room, protects it from deer, and gives it enough sunlight so that it does not grow spindly trying to reach the sunlight from the top of the guard.

I use the plastic tubes, I have used 2 different types. These are for primarily White Oaks, and about a dozen Burr Oaks.

One type is the white plastic tube that comes nested, they are varying diameters with approx 1/4 holes on one end of the tube. The open ends are curled over to prevent a sharper edge.
The downside of these is mice will chew thru by enlarging one of the 1/4 holes, they do get wasps nesting inside. One other thing is I have had the trees grow thru the 1/4 holes, I'll have to hack up the tube when it comes time to remove them. This type is probably the cheapest.

The other type is a green type with slots punched along its whole length. the slots are very narrow, maybe 1/16 x 1/4 approx. I have had no mice chew thru these. they do get the wasps nesting inside tho . They are more expensive but as I go forward I will buy these.

I have also used chicken wire on White Pine seedlings. I use a 10ft length of chicken wire rolled into a tube. For Oaks I think you could get away with maybe 6 ft length rolled up. I hold them in place with 2) wooden stakes placed opposite each other. The stakes are about 7ft long so they are about the same height as the chicken wire onc3 pounded into the ground. Whether you use hardware cloth or chicken wire you have to make the tube big enough so that the tree won't end up growing thru the cloth/wire openings. Thats one advantage of the tubes, rarely will a branch come out one of the holes.

All my protectors are 5 ft tall and the chicken wire is 6ft I think.

As far as which one is best I would say the chicken wire is. But it costs the most, takes the most work and gets all sorts of grasses and other small plants growing thru the wire so that removing is a PIA. I do believe that the tubes tend to make the tree grow up and provide a micro climate that favors seedling growth up. If you use cloth/wire in the open I suspect you'll have more trees growing thru the openings.

I have some of the Oaks popping out of the tops of the tubes and they have not been touched by the deer yet.

You can not get a deer to eat an oak where I live lol

Yea, I have discovered that protecting the trees costs more than the trees do. But nothing more frustrating than having an Oak tree growing for 3-4 years and having the deer either rub it to death or chew it to the ground every winter.
It seems to me if your going to grow Oaks you HAVE TO protect them from deer.

What kind of Oak?

Makes a difference.

I have noticed that deer are selective about what they will eat. I have planted 500 White Pines at a place about 20 miles from where I am now. The deer never touched one. Where I am now I planted 10 White Pines and the deer chewed the tops off every one of them.

D*mned 4 legged locusts.

I have done the same. The mice chewed thru the tube and gnawed up the seedlings eventually killing about 70%.

Use bud caps

the deer here eat every tree, if I don't protect them,I've been using the platic tube on the swamp oak that i have been planting , so far they hae work good , I will be planting 100 oaks this spring ,

I'm planting 100 this spring also- are 4' tubes sufficient? In addition, did you use any landscape fabric for weed barrier- currently thinking about a 2 x 2 square

I've been using index cards for bud caps, stapled capturing a few needles of main terminal- it's a pain but necessary until that terminal is out of reach

Yes, index cards is what our local forester recommends

I experimented with porkies and tree protection. So far so good, cheap and easy. I noticed porkies love to chew and gnaw on fresh OSB. any deer blind or shed built with the stuff is chewed to heck. So I tried a distraction, so far it works, not a 100% but a solid 80 to 90%. Scrap OSB pieces, small one to two foot squares, or any odd chunk screwed to a short stake. put these low to the ground around plantings. I even put fox urine on some as they always seemed to get in my fox traps over the years. They tend to chew the OSB before your newly planted trees. They can be trapped at these boards also, once one starts on one, they come back over and over. I still of course shoot everyone I see. I have thinned them a lot, but pretty sure all I'm doing is a local control.

Mothballs are for moths

. As an in house ADC Guy I've seen and smelled them used for everything BUT moths.

It doesn't help!!!

Good Advice

What about ants though? I've heard ants can be a problem in a tree tube.

I'm thinking of painting some of my tree tubes beige, as the white sticks out like a sore thumb sometimes.

Here's where I ended up, just bought this rigid plastic fencing from Menards and cut it into 16" widths to make 5" diameter tree tubes- I would've preferred 4' but only found it in 3'. I found a lot of poultry type products, but nothing was sturdy enough to be self-erecting. There's pros and cons to every style but we have a high population of black bears and I was trying to limit the ground be nesting.

Update on the aluminum tubes; they work! Two winters now and the porkies are unable to chew on and girdle my beech saplings. I noticed they did some exploratory chewing on a black birch and an oak which I've never seen them do before. They prefer young cherry and beech of any age.

They concentrated on the two remaining hemlocks on the property. They spend all winter nipping the smaller branches off and have killed four so far.

I likes the osb distraction idea

I would think the black would attract too much heat. I try to lean towards white or beige. Thanks for posting. I hadn't considered that option.

The mesh would be nice to keep ants away.

Your tree plot looks nice.