Howdy, I'm in western NJ (Hunterdon County) and have a small, not quite sure what type Maple tree that has at times, (last fall most recent,) fallen prey to male deers, (rubbed.)
I've posted some pics here:
Thanks, I appreciate any feedback.
I've been having this same problem. One birch had been visited at least two years in a row in the antler-shedding seasons & the bark is rubbed off two-thirds of the way around. Those bucks seem to remember where they did it before & return to rub the same tree -- & that means your maple could be at risk of a return rub so that a wound it might heal will not be permitted to do so, but will be made larger.
In the past couple of weeks, an apple tree & another birch had major limbs broken off by the elk. For one tree, it looked like an elk had to stand on its hind feet to break off the limb about eight feet up, apparently so as to bring down & eat fresh young leaves that had just emerged at the top of the limb only.
Our general attitude at SinLur Gardens has been to tolerate the elk bands & plant in such a manner as to not be feeding them on purpose. Apart from breaking or rubbing trees the only plants they've eaten to the point of destruction are the roses, which aren't my favorite things anyway. A large area of muscaris they also ate off all the flowers & some of the muscari grass, so an area with lots of blue flowers one morning suddenly had not even one blue flower. Annoying, but not the end of the world.
They haven't ruined much that was done in permanently, but I sort of feel like I'm waiting for them to destroy something really wonderful, THEN it'll be interesting to see how tolerant I & the owners of SinLur feel. So I felt the need to ask around the county among some grower friends, plus do some on-line investigating, to see if any product, amidst many that are complete hokum, is notably effective at repelling deer & elk.
There are many local growers whose extensive fields of ornamental stocks are at considerable risk from elk & deer here in Kitsap County. I've talked to three growers who swear by a product called Plantskydd (these growers are not vendors so they have no invested reason to tell me the stuff works). Three satisfied users does not a field study make, but it got me interested in checking out the product.
A study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research in 1999, & a forestry industry study in Canada in 1994, showed the product to be an effective deer, moose, elk & rabbit repellant for up to six months between applications. The Plantskkydd website reproduces the complete texts of some of the studies so that it's possible to judge whether their own paraphrases of the "proofs" are fudged; that was good information, though the numerous gardener "testimonials" are meaningless; if personal testimonials meant anything real, then sasquatches are certainly real. But independent field studies provide valuable info.
Numerous studies have shown that bloodmeal is a genuinely effective repellant, but nasty-tasting stuff like garlic & pepper sauce & all sorts of similar recipes are next to worthless. Bloodmeal is available cheaply apart from a product like Plantskydd, which uses bloodmeal as its active ingredient, but isn't cheap. The local growers however claim the Plantskydd honestly doesn't need application very often, while the manufacturer claims that as a foliar spray it functions as fertilizer, so from the plants' point of view it's just a nice organic component of a healthful environment.
-paghat the ratgirl
"BE" wrote in news:%8yce.1914$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:
Ouchie. Not a whole lot you can do, really. It's best to just leave it be and hope it will callous over in time. If deer are still browsing in your area you can wrap the lower trunk in 'hardware cloth' or chickenwire, leaving some room of course between the barrier and the trunk. Most garden centers/Bloated Orange Retail Groupings have 'deer barrier' which is a plastic shielding with which you wrap the lower trunk.
plant a whole bunch of large ferns around the base of the trees....ALL your trees, if you can. whilst deer will eat hostas, they HATE ferns and the ferns' roots will not disturb the tree's roots. you can try it on one tree and see how it fares, and then work on the others. by large ferns, i'm not talking about fiddlehead ferns....more like the maiden-ferns.
good luck.
Round here the elk LOVE the native deerferns, so-called because of what eats them. The elk go through an extensive area of wild huckleberries surrounding SinLur Gardens, & though to my astonishment they eating none of the berried bushes, they completely do away with the swordfearns & deerferns. But comparing notes with others I'm fast coming to conclusion that different "families" of these animals have completely different favorites place to place. At SinLur the elk don't eat the rhododendrons; but others have told me they have to net the rhodies in winter or they'll be eaten to nubs.
-paghat the ratgirl
I agree that you should just let the tree repair itself. You can hel it out by removing more grass under the tree and making your circle o mulch larger. That way the tree won't have to compete with the gras for moisture. Take a look here.
-- Newt
Thanks all for the replies.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.