New 'Micro-vented' tree tube hits the US market

A new tree tube with an intriguing combination of time-tested and innovative design features was recently introduced to the US market.

The Photosynth Tree Tube is in many ways a conventional tree tube, featuring a flared rim to prevent abrasion to the bark of emergent trees, twin-walled cylindrical construction for rigidity and durability, and releasable zip ties.

Venting has become standard for any high-performance tree tube.  Photosynth Tree Tubes have a 'micor-vented' design that has long been popular in Europe:

Rather than a relatively small number of larger vent holes punch sporadically in the walls of the tube, Photosynth Tree Tubes have thousands of small vent holes punched continuously from near the rim of the tube to approximately 16 inches from the ground.  This design result in more even gas exchange along the entire length of the tube.

The lower 16 inches of each Photosynth Tree Tube is solid for both herbicide spray and rodent protection.

Pricing of Photosynth Tree Tubes is highly competitive with other twin-walled tree tubes.  Tree tubes appear to be following - albeit at a slower pace - the pattern established with other new technologies, with the price decreasing as use of the technology becomes more widespread, competition among producers increases and production volumes increase.

It's a very exciting time in the tree tube industry.

Tree Tube Myths: Does this look like a spindly stem to you?

One of the "knocks" against tree tubes over the years is that, while they unarguably accelerate height growth, they produce trees with thin spindly stems.  To this criticism I have two responses:

1) A six foot tree with a thin stem and a sturdy treeshelter in place to support it until the stem thickens up enough to support itself is a whole lot better than the alternative:  A seedling without a tube that is continually browse by deer to the point where it dies or is stunted at knee height for years.

2) Today's vented tree tubes and flexible PVC stakes have combine to make a myth out of the "spindly stem" critique of tree tubes.  Thin stems are a thing of the distant past.  Take a look:

(Click to enlarge)

This is the trunk of a hybrid oak from Mossy Oak Nativ Nurseries planted in a 4ft Tubex Combitube Plus Tree Tube.  Here's the chronology:

* Planted as 18 inch seedling in March, 2011

* Photo taken on August 2, 2012 - less than two complete growing seasons later!

The tree is now well over 10ft tall.  But most exciting to me is the large caliper of the trunk immediately above the tree tube.  You can see that with today's vented tree tubes and flexible PVC stakes it's not just a matter of producing the same amount of biomass growth and just "stretching" it in height, as might have been the case with early tree tubes.  No, this tree is putting on a HUGE amount of total biomass (especially when you consider that stem diameter is the best "window" into what's going on with root growth below ground).

As with so many discussions of tree tubes it comes down to B.V. (Before Venting) and A.V. (After Venting). Before venting trees were definitely better off with tree tubes than without, but exhibited some "side effects" like thin stems.  After venting tree planters are realizing the full potential of tree tubes and seeing astounding growth, both in terms of height but - more importantly - in terms of stem diameter.

Think of it this way, using a computer analogy:  Unvented, small diameter tubes of the past = MS-DOS.  Today's vented, large diameter tubes combined with flexible PVC stakes = Windows XP.

Tree Tube Innovations, Part 2: PVC Stakes

I find it interesting that the 2 major innovations in Tree Tube design and performance in the last 20 years have both originated with customers, and not the companies that make and sell tree tubes.

I also find it embarrassing, since I am one of the few guys who has been selling tree tubes from the very beginning.

The first major innovation was ventilated the tubes.  I covered venting in detail in a recent post.  I consider the advent of vented tree tubes to be so important that in my mind I divide tree tube history into two distinct eras:  Before Venting (BV) and After Venting (AV).

The second and more recent innovation is the use of PVC Tree Tube Stakes.  Trust me, as someone who has sold tree tubes for 23 years, the stakes needed to support the tubes have been the biggest headache and source of frustration.

Tree tube suppliers didn't come up with the idea of venting the tubes because they were working under a false assumption: That the reason tree tubes accelerated growth was because they functioned as an almost hermetically sealed growth chamber.  It took customers drilling holes in their tubes and reporting their great results to make us realize that tree tubes accelerated tree growth despite being hermetically sealed environments, and that they accelerated growth even more - and without the negative "side effects" common to unvented grow tubes - when holes were punched in them allowing a freer exchange of carbon dioxide.

Similarly, tree tube makers didn't develop the idea of using PVC tree tube stakes because of another false assumption, namely the assumption that tree tubes and stakes are two separate product lines rather than two components of the same product system.

I guess another false assumption is that when we think of "stake" we naturally think of wood.

A third false assumption (gosh we tree tube peddlers sure have made a lot of them!) was the idea of tree tubes as a "plant and walk away" system for tree establishment (which in terms of feasibility is right up there with cold fusion and perpetual motion machines) - the idea being that the tree tube would photodegrade and the stake would biodegrade over time.

This "hat trick" of false assumptions meant that white oak and other decay resistant hardwood lumber became the workhorse tree tube stakes for two decades.  More recently white oak has largely been replaced by bamboo as a cost-saving alternative.

It's safe to say once again that tree tubes succeeded despite the use of wood, bamboo or any of the other materials used as tree tube stakes.  The basic problem with wood and bamboo stakes - especially bamboo - is that they break, split and degrade too soon.  There's any old joke about ranchers being full time fence repairmen who keep livestock as a hobby.  Well, with wood and bamboo stakes tree tube users were essentially stake replacers with a tree planting hobby.  That's how much time was spent in replacing broken and rotten stakes.  (A customer told me just this morning that he has never made a trip to check on his trees without having to replace old wood or bamboo tree tube stakes.)

But the problem with wood and bamboo stakes goes far beyond breakage and biodegradation.  The deeper problem is that they don't complement the tree tubes.  They don't contribute to the performance of the tree tubes.

One side effect of growing trees in tree tubes - even vented tree tubes - is that the trees tend to have thin stems relative to their heights.  Tree tubes channel growth upward, and the trees are isolated from the environmental feedback - especially the swaying and shaking effects of the wind - that trigger growth responses that allocate more growth resources into thickening and tapering the trunks and developing bigger root systems. 

About 5 years ago I started hearing about customers using 1/2" pvc conduit as tree tube stakes.  I am embarrassed to say that - as I was with grower reports of the benefits of venting the tree tubes - I was skeptical.

The solution was in the hardware store the whole time!

1/2" pvc conduit makes the best tree tube stake, swaying

in the wind but never breaking.

And once again, I was wrong.  Way wrong.

We already know that we have to go back at some point - 3, 5 or 7 years down the road - and remove the tree tubes from the successfully established trees.  Therefore we know that we can retrieve (and then reuse) a non-biodegradable stake at that point... so biodegradability is not a critical factor for a tree tube stake.  

It's also easy to understand - as my customer did this morning - that PVC tree tube stakes won't break, and will save dozens of extra trips to the field to replace broken or rotten stakes.

However, the most important thing about PVC tree tubes stakes is:  They make tree tubes perform even better (rather than being a necessary evil tree tubes - and their users - must put up with and overcome).

They make tree tubes better by providing the environmental feedback - swaying and shaking in the wind - the seedlings in tree tubes don't get with rigid stakes.  Again it is that swaying motion that triggers hormonal responses which in turn "tell" the tree to channel more growth energy into stem thickness and taper as well as root develop (so-called secondary growth responses).

Take a look at the photo above.  This photo was taken late in the second growing season of a hybrid oak grown in a vented tree tube supported by a PVC stake.  This kind of caliper growth was unheard of with rigid wood or bamboo stakes.

This kind of caliper growth means that now when trees emerge from tree tubes they don't - as they had to in the past with rigid stakes - slow their height growth while reallocating growth energy to stem caliper and taper.  Now they get to the top of the tube... and keep right on going!

So once again, to my customers:  You were right, I was wrong.  Tree tubes & stakes are not two separate products.  They are component parts of the same product, and need to work together symbiotically to achieve the best results. 

PVC tree tube stakes solve all of the problems of wood stakes, completely negate one side effect of tree tube use.  Best of all, they do so for less than the delivered cost of bamboo stakes, and WAY less than the delivered cost of white oak stakes (and, by the way, much MUCH less than fiberglass stakes).

Tree Tube Chronology: B.V. and A.V.

Outstanding stem caliper growth in 2nd year oak planted as 

an 18 inch seedling in a 4ft Tubex Combitube Plus Tree Tube.

 

 I divide the history of Tree Tubes in the USA into two distinct eras:  Before Venting (B.V.) and After Venting (A.V.).  Venting - the seemingly simple act of punching holes in the solid walls of the tree tubes - is the single most important advancement in the development of tree tubes.

 

By 1989 treeshelters were widely used and accepted in the UK.  The largest and best maker of treeshelters was Tubex, Ltd.  Tubex Treeshelters were introduced to the USA in 1989 by a small company based in St. Paul, Minnesota.

At that time all tree tubes were unvented - solid translucent corrugated tubes.  It was thought at the time that the rapid growth of tree seedlings inside the tree tubes was due to the creation of a "greenhouse effect," and the goal was to create an air-tight growth chamber.

I was there at the beginning.  I was the first employee - fresh out of forestry school - of that first company that introduced Tubex Treeshelters to the USA.  By and large the results in the field with those unvented tubes were good - excellent survival rates, rapid height growth, and of course "not getting eaten by deer" generally beats the heck out of "getting eaten by deer."

But we also started to get some troubling reports of problems from the field - and not coincidentally those problems were more serious the farther you got away from areas with climates most similar to the UK.  Those unvented tubes performed well in the Chesapeake Watershed region, and in coastal California and the Pacific Northwest.

However, get the farther north or south you went, the more frequent and serious the complaints.  These complaints fell into three categories:

1) Winter injury.  In northern climates seedlings in tree tubes simply didn't harden off properly for winter, and often suffered die back due to cold weather.

2) Spindly stems.  Seedlings in tree tubes exhibited rapid height growth, but the trees had very thin stems relative to the height of the trees.

3) Fungal problems, notably in the south, and probably due to excess moisture in the tree tubes.

 

So by this point - and we're talking about the mid 1990s - the potential of tree tubes to increase survival, shield valuable seedlings from deer browse and accelerate height growth was clear to all.  However, it was equally clear that in many cases, and especially the more extreme the climate, the upside of using tree tubes was largely counteracted by the side effects: winter injury, thin stemmed growth, and fungal diseases.

 

Enter some good ol' Yankee ingenuity!  Every software package ever introduced has had 'bugs' that needed to be ironed out with subsequent updates.  The first effort at 'de-bugging' tree tubes was a partial recognition that air flow in the tubes can be good; growers in northern climates were advised to elevate their tree tubes in early autumn to allow the trees inside the harden off for winter, and then lower the tubes back to the ground after the first hard frost.

 

This advice worked as far as it went; elevating the tubes did greatly reduce the incidence of winter injury.  It also exposed the base of each seedling to rodent damage at a time of year when rodents are hungrily feeding in preparation for winter.

 

Then some enterprising landowners applied something that we tree tube peddlers sorely lacked:  Common sense.

 

Landowners started drilling holes in the tubes, and then calling to tell us how well their trees were growing.  And we tree tube peddlers did what most 'experts' do:  We ignored them.  In was only when research done in far away France confirmed - and scientifically explained (more about this below) - the benefits of venting that we finally took notice... and slapped ourselves on the forehead with a loud "d'oh!"

The performance of vented versus unvented tree tubes is night and day.  Venting didn't just solve the side effects of those early tubes.  It unleashed the full potential of tree tubes to massively increase total biomass growth.

The French researchers figured out that in solid tubes carbon dioxide often becomes a limiting factor - the seedling uses all of the CO2 in the tube then grows very little until the CO2 level recharges. In vented tubes the CO2 level is constantly recharged, and never is a limiting factor.

In addition properly vented tubes (such as the Tubex Combitube Plus) allow dappled sunlight to strike the leaves, and allow a puff of air to gently shake the leaves.  In both cases this triggers growth responses in the tree similar to if the tree was growing in full sun in an open field (namely thicker stem caliper growth and better root development) - except that the seedling still enjoys complete deer browse protection and a massive reduction in moisture stress a compared to its un-tubed comrades.

 

Even though unvented tubes performed well in areas with mild or maritime climates, it is important to understand that there is no climate in which an unvented tube outperforms a vented tube.

So you can see why I divide the history of tree tubes in American into B.V. and A.V:

Before Venting:

Complete deer browse protection

Increased survival

Rapid height growth

* Winter injury in cold climates

* Thin-stemmed growth in all climates

* Fungal diseases in hot/humid climates

After Venting:

Complete deer browse protection

Increased survival

Increased total biomass growth - height, stem caliper and roots

No more winter injury

No more fungal disease issue

 

In summary, tree tubes as they were developed in the UK were a great idea, but it took some French research and bunch of landowners with cordless drills and common sense, to unleash their full potential!

Let's start at the very beginning...

... a very good place to start!

And let this be the official beginning of a campaign for Mr. Graham Tuley to be awarded a Nobel Prize.  I'm serious.  Tree tubes are the single most important invention in tree establishment, and given the monumental importance of successful tree establishment and reforestation it's not a stretch to say that tree protectors are one of the most important inventions of the last century.  The iPod plays music.  Tree tubes heal the planet.

Treeshelters - as they were known in their early days - were developed by Mr. Tuley in 1979.  Tuley was a forester with the UK Forestry Commission.

Frustrated by continued failures in hardwood establishment - primarily English oak (or, as the British call it, common oak) and sessile oak - due to increasing levels of deer and rabbit browse, Tuley struck upon the idea of forming translucent plastic tubes around each seedling.  The idea was essentially to provide "safe passage" past the worst of the deer browse, while still giving the seedlings plenty of sunlight for growth.

The potential benefits in terms of animal browse were immediately obvious.  The wire or plastic mesh guards in use at the time had many failings; they were cumbersome to apply, and shoots often grew through the mesh to either get browsed by deer or later become girdled by the mesh itself.

Known in those early years as Tuley Tubes these solid translucent plastic tubes would clearly provide complete protection from animal browse until the seedling grew out the top.  The question was, how well would the trees grow inside the tubes?  The answer turned out to be:  Really, really well.  In Tuley's own words:

"(Tree) Shelters are 1.2 m tall plastic tubes which protect trees from animal damage and improve growth by creating a ‘greenhouse effect’ round each tree. After 3 years the mean height growth of sessile oak transplants in shelters was 142 cm compared with 45 cm in a mesh guard and 27 cm for unprotected trees and the average stem volume was 118, 37 and 19 cm³ respectively."

I think it's safe to say that Mr. Tuley was on to something big.

And after three decades of refinement - in design, protection methods, and guidelines for proper use - tree tubes have become and indispensable tool for successful reforestation worldwide.

There are so many heroes behind the treeshelter story.  And I'll keep telling them. Stay tuned!

Your New Clearing House For All Things Tree Tube Related!

Welcome to Tree Tubes Forum!

This site is intended to be a clearing house of information on Tree Tubes - in our humble opinion the most revolutionary development in tree planting since... well, since the acorn/nut/seed.

In this blog we'll be looking at:

The history of tree tubes (a.k.a. treeshelters or tree protectors, depending on who you talk to!) - How a "hare brained" idea by a British forester took the tree planting world by storm, and how key innovations and design changes adapted tree tubes for use in the extreme climates of North America.

Tree tube design - We'll go in depth into what makes a superior tree tube.  Does color matter?  The importance of proper ventilation.  Durability.  UV resistance.  Degradability. 

Tree tube tips - How to get the best performance from your newly planted trees and tree tubes.

Grower stories - Make this your place to brag up your tree planting project!  Got an oak that grew 6 feet in one summer in a tree tube?  Tell us about it!  We'll cover grower stories, from commercial forestry operations using tree tubes to successfully establish high quality hardwood trees in the face of unprecedented levels of deer browse, to private landowners planting trees to turn their land into a wildlife paradise, to homeowners who have figured out that's it's a whole lot smarter to plant a small seedling with a tree tube as compared to a big tree grown in a nursery.

In short this blog will be your info source for how to get from seedling to tree faster than you ever dreamed possible... Consider this blog the "Hot Rod Magazine" of tree planting.

To receive updates of new posts, please become a follower or sign up for email updates... and visit often!