I hope you'll bear with me, confirm or contradict my assumptions, and answer any questions you have answers for.
I planted a cherry tree almost a year ago, and actualy got about 20 cherries from it soon after Memorial Day. I was hoping for a lot more this year.
This winter, we had lots of snow in Baltimore (and everywhere else , for that matter) and for the first time I noticed what seemed like deer tracks in the snow, though they weren't perfect (which I attributed to melting, not to being a non-deer.) and I also saw something was eating the bark on the tree, about 1/4 o the circumference. Is that enough to kill the tree?? or to kill branches that start on the same side that the bark is gone from????
I have an end-of group townhouse with a small yard, and a 46" picket fence. I know that it's nothing for a deer, even a baby deer?, to jump over the fence, but I've never seen one inside the fence or found deer tracks. (I see lots a block away, but I don't even see them right outside the fence, except a couple times in 10 years)
There was no trunk knawing during the summer or fall. Is the recent bark eating because the snow covered other food and it was looking for something new and easy to eat that was above the snow?????
Would that imply that I'm relatively safe as long as there is no snow on the ground??
The tree came with a coil of white plastic around the trunk, that covered about 12 inches of trunk. I left it on and the dear ate from the part above the plastic. I have another coil from another tree that died, so I put that on now, covering 2 feet of trunk, all of the trunk below the first limb,
Do you think that is enough to stop the deer, or will it push the plastic aside, or eat from trunk above the limb (which might be harder to get at.) ?????
OTOH, God didn't make trees with plastic covers. Will the tree be missing out on something if I leave that cover on for years to come?????
Is it possible the bark will grow back??
Thanks.