Waching daily Oct 29 2018

so good morning everybody you're having a great day today just out here in the

ducts it's nice and chilly 30 degrees when I came out here and changed the

duct water this morning as you can see it's all frozen in a recent video that I

did about planting trees a lot of you had questions about what the deal is

with all of these quote unquote PVC pipes well they're not actually PVC

pipes they are tree tubes when you have baby trees one of the biggest risks you

have to deal with in the early years is contending with animals specifically

deer and rodents far as the deer go they will browse down and they will eat your

plants apart and they will just brutalize them they just love to eat

that stuff especially in the winter they lead all the buds so that the tree can't

grow that next year and they do a pretty nasty job they will also rub against

kind of intermediate aged trees and that also can really significantly damage

them it can rip up their bark it can cause a lot of problems the other

problem you'll have are rodents so specifically voles but also mice to a

certain extent love to you tunnel in and around the trees especially eat at the

base of the the trunk of a baby tree and eat around the bark

do something known as girding when they do that they can actually kill and dry

out a tree so that is another reason why you'd want these tree tubes so I put the

tree tubes on our more high-value trees so for example so if you look at these

black locust trees right they've got some grisly thorns so not all that

worried about a deer or something coming in

eating on those but as far as the chestnuts ago I feel like they are a

much more delicate tree and they're actually much more important to our

long-term plans so to do that I protect them with these tree tubes I opted for

the 72 inch tubes they're actually just a little bit taller than me actually a

lot of bit taller than me I'm a short guy the idea is that the tree grows

undisturbed in the tube for the first couple of years it starts to pop out of

the top and it's at a height that is much much harder for the deer to browse

and graze on you can actually see in this mulberry tree it's actually just

started to pop up over the tube I'm over the course of this year that was about

18 inches tall when I planted it a year ago and now it's already popping up over

the top of the tube I expect a lot more of these trees to do that next year

I only had a handful that did that this year I ordered tree tubes from a company

called Tree Pro it's specifically their Miracle Tube model I'll leave a link to

it if you want to find them for yourself I bought a whole bunch of them in bulk

so I got a pretty good discount and I keep them stash over in our barn see

look this is my secret stash it was financially advantageous for me to buy

more than I needed and stash them here in the barn for future use keeping guard

for mice, Pablo good thanks buddy I am NOT doing this as a commercial for them

they have not paid me they have not given me anything free so in full

disclosure I am just a guy trying to grow trees trying to teach other guys

and gals about how to grow trees and I found them to be a very helpful product

so these things are pretty well made they're just a solid piece of some sort

of plastic they are translucent so they actually let light in according to the

manufacturer they let in about 95% of the sunlight so they're not going to

create issues for you as far as light blocking goes you'll notice here and

it's got little holes to those holes are allowing them to vent because the other

thing that these tree tubes do is they create what's known as a

greenhouse effect they trap heat in it's really nice especially at this time of

year because I have a theory that it's extended the growing season maybe a

couple of weeks on the front end and a couple weeks on the back end as I try to

protect against Frost's here on our farm so especially here in northern Vermont

having that a little extra growing time is really useful they're very easy to

install all you have to do is you use like a post driver to put in the the

garden stake you can buy the garden sticks from the manufacturer or you can

just find your own they come already pre-installed with these zip ties you

know the zip ties are actually adjustable too so you can change the

size to make it easy to pull them off or you can tighten it this is actually a

two year old chestnut seedling we put it in last year right around this time it

was about this tall it's now growing up to here I'd actually hoped that by the

end of next year it's probably up to the about the height of the garden stick you

always want to be careful when you put the tube back on make sure you're not

pinching any branches I also find it's pretty important to push really hard to

make sure that they're firmly down in the ground in here the the tight

placement to the ground makes them much less attractive to voles and other

rodents the tube stay up pretty good this whole hill gets pretty pretty windy

especially in the winter and there were only a couple times that we had to put

tree tubes back up after a bad windstorm or a blizzard so it's a pretty low

maintenance there is one downside though that I discovered the other day while I

was actually checking on trees and replanting some trees so one of the

things I've noticed is especially in the spring and summer birds love to like sit

on the top of this and nest you can see like this whole tube is covered in bird

crap and I don't particularly care about that part of it but I have made a couple

of discoveries of what can happen with these tubes with birds one of the things

I noticed was this getting closer here see this feathers it is a rotten dead

bird carcass right here by my count I found seven dead birds trapped in these

tree tubes and even a couple of weeks ago I was actually walking through here

checking on some stuff and I heard a bird struggling to get out kind of

jumping up and down what I think happens is these small birds they're just like

little small songbirds they get they jump down to the bottom of the tube to

try to find food or whatever and they end up getting stuck because they don't

have enough space to flap their wings enough to fly out and so they get

trapped at the bottom of the tube so I guess the upside though would be that

this dead bird is now going to be a fertilizer for this little tree seedling

a little chestnut so uh guess the circle of life right so

it's not a deal breaker for me I mean I feel like the overall net benefit that

the trees are gonna do for the land outweighs the cost of a few birds but it

is something to be aware of and it is something to watch out for if you guys

want to learn more about how we built our 600 tree permaculture orchard with

about 6,000 feet of swales and berms be sure to watch this video over here or

you can learn more about our farm by watching this also feel free to hit that

subscribe button thanks a lot guys I'll see you in the next video