Tree Tubes on American Chestnut Trees #2

This is the second in what will be an ongoing series of posts on the effectiveness of tree tubes on American chestnut trees.  To find the others, type chestnuts into the search bar.

A private landowner and American chestnut enthusiast in Mississippi purchased some 100% American chestnut seed last winter, and sowed the seeds in root pruning pots, grew them into 12 to 18 inch seedlings, and the planted them on his property.

While the seeds were getting started he researched tree tubes, knowing that upon planting his seedlings would immediately be subject to heavy deer pressure.  He contacted experts with the various chestnut restoration organizations for advice.  He was universally told that 4ft and 5ft tree tubes don't work well with American chestnuts.  The recommended method of establishment was either to use a 2ft tree tube (for rodent protection and initial moisture stress reduction) coupled with a wire cage for deer browse protection.

As we have discussed the basis of this recommendation was the poor results experienced by chestnut growers 15 to 20 years ago with the old, unvented, small diameter tree tubes sold at that time.  A 'corkscrew' or spiral growth habit of American chestnuts growing in tree tubes was a complaint back then, as was winter injury or die-back.

This gentlemen also discussed the issue with reputable sellers of today's vented tree tubes, and of course got a completely different story; he was told how the problems cited by chestnut experts harken back to earlier tree tube designs, and that results on chestnut with the vented tubes sold for the last 10 years have been excellent.

It was the typical conundrum for a private landowner and hobbyist:  Ask 10 foresters for advice and get 24 different - and often completely conflicting - answers.  Who to believe?  Luckily, this landowner did what so many other dedicated tree planters have done:  He didn't believe anyone, and put both methods to the test.

The upshot after nearly one full growing season:  "Tree tubes for American chestnuts should be 5 foot and trees should be above the tubes by August.  I really like the way the seem to help manage moisture."

Click the photo to enlarge.  The photo above is of his 'prize' American chestnut tree: Planted as an 18 inch seedling in spring 2013, photo taken Labor Day, 2013 with the tree now 2 feet beyond the top of a 5ft tree tube.

Asked about spiraling growth of American chestnuts in tree tubes he wrote, "The spiraling wasn't significant and now the trees have emerged straight as an arrow."

Here's another American chestnut tree emerging from a 5ft tree tube in the first season - note the very straight growth habit.  Click to enlarge to see the venting pattern on the tree tube.

The trees grown in 3ft tree tubes within wire cages also did well, but...

1) Aren't nearly as tall as those grown in 5ft tree tubes.

2) The wire cages for deer browse protection are an unnecessary added hassle and expense as compared to using the 5ft tree tubes which provide increased survival, faster height growth and deer browse protection.

Results like these show why a sea change among American chestnut enthusiasts. 

The "old" recommendation of using a 2 or 3ft tree tube along with a wire mesh enclosure for deer browse protection was based on a recognition of the effectiveness of tree tubes for rodent protection and increased seedling survival rates, but were also based on the negative results experienced when using the old unvented 4ft and 5ft tree tubes.

American chestnut planters using the newer vented tree tubes are seeing excellent results - and tree tubes are now fulfilling their promise as an indispensable tool in the monumental effort to restore the American chestnut to its rightful place in our Eastern hardwood forests.

Tree Tubes on American Chestnut Trees

Tree tubes are finally fulfilling their promise as an establishment aid for American chestnut seedlings.

If ever there was a perfect candidate tree for tree tubes it would seem to be the American chestnut tree.  Billions of majestic chestnut trees were wiped out by the fungal blight that swept through its range in the early- and mid-1900s.  It has been the focus of heroic re-establishment efforts on the part of organizations such as the American Chestnut Foundation and thousands of dedicated scientists and volunteers.  Every chestnut seed or seedling planted is rare & precious, and critical to the long-term success of re-establishment efforts.  But chestnuts are also extremely vulnerable to all of threats to successful regeneration that other species face, including deer browse, competing vegetation and periodic drought stress.

So given the value and importance of each and every chestnut seedling planted and the number of threats they face, one would think that using plastic tree tubes on American chestnuts would be a no-brainer... and indeed American chestnut enthusiasts were some of the first tree planters to recognize the potential benefits of tree tubes and give them a try.  Unfortunately, the performance of those early, unvented tree tubes on American chestnut seedlings left a great deal to be desired.

It turned out that chestnut seedlings grown in tree tubes were particularly vulnerable to winter injury and die back.  They also grew with elongated, spindly stems that often formed a spiraling or helix growth habit as they worked their way up the tree tube.  Word of these issues quickly spread in chestnut growing circles, and chestnut planters either switched to using 2ft or 3ft tree tubes (shorter tree tubes provided rodent protection but did not cause die back or spiraling growth) or stopped using tree tubes altogether.

Growers of Chinese chestnut trees, incidentally, experienced and reported these same problems, and many became disillusioned with tree tubes.

Recently, however, chestnut planters - both of American and Chinese chestnuts - have recognized the major advancements in tree tube design - most notably the addition of ventilation, better light transmission properties and larger tube diameter - and have given them another try.  This time around the results have been outstanding.

In this blog I have often discussed the evolution of tree tubes as the story of two eras:  Before Venting (BV) and After Venting (AV).  The entire history of tree tube use and effectiveness in North America can be divided into these two categories; the un-vented tree tubes that first came over from the UK and worked well in their moderate and very forgiving climate, and the vented tree tubes that work in the extreme climates - both cold and hot - found in the United States.  Nowhere is this dichotomy of BV versus AV illustrated more starkly and dramatically than with American and Chinese chestnut trees.

In coming weeks we will be posting accounts and photographs of tree tubes on American chestnut and Chinese chestnut trees.  Healthy, rapid growth and straight trunks have been the rule, as you see in dramatic fashion here:

(Click to enlarge)

This is a Chinese chestnut tree growing in Mississippi.  It was planted in July, 2012 as a 12 inch seedling.  It was protected with a 4ft tall tree tube, and was watered to help it survive the late season planting.  It didn't put on any additional growth for the remainder of the 2012 season.... in other words in entered the 2013 growing season 1 foot tall.  This photograph was taken in August, 2013.  The tree grew more than 8 feet in one growing season.

More important than the rapid rate of growth:

1) The tree - and many others like it in the same planting - is perfectly straight, with no sign of the spiraling growth seen in the early days of chestnut seedlings in un-vented tree tubes.

2)  The trunk diameter - while thin relative to it (amazing) height, as you'd expect with any tree tube grown seedling - is very robust.  This also due in large part to the adoption of flexible tree tube stakes such as 1/2" schedule 40 PVC, as was used here.

Note: That "tray" at the base of the tree is a revolutionary weed mat developed in Israel called the IrriPan Weed Mat.  It blocks weeds, captures rain water and funnels it to the tree, reflects light up to the tree, and recycles soil moisture.

Follow this blog for more upcoming posts chronicling the use of tree tubes on American and Chinese chestnut trees.

Tree Tubes - defying predictions

People who have never tried tree tubes nearly always predict dire results, the most common of which is that the seedlings will "burn up" or "cook" inside the tree tubes.

Here's an interesting tree tube post about how this near-universal prediction has been proved wrong time and again.

Why do we need tree tubes?

Why do we need tree tubes in order to successfully establish seedling trees?  After all, trees managed to grow before tree tubes existed.  Why do we need tree tubes now?

There are two answers to that question.

The first is that a tree planting project is different than a naturally regenerated forest.  A naturally regenerated forest is the result of hundreds of years, billions of seeds, and a huge amount of random chance.  The odds that any one tree seed will someday become a mature tree are minute.  The accumulation of huge spans of time and huge numbers of seeds ultimately result in a forest... sometimes.  Nature has plenty of failed attempts at forest regeneration (we call these failures "prairies"). 

It takes an enormous amount of work - not to mention money - to plant trees in order to create a new forest.  And since the tree planting can't sow billions of tree seeds and doesn't have hundreds of years to wait, something has to be done to take the element of random chance out of the equation.  There are lots of ways to do this, to tip the scales of chance more in favor of success - planting species most likely to thrive in local growing conditions, properly planting high quality stock, and aggressively suppressing vegetative competition.

But the single most powerful tool to turn the odds in favor of the tree planter over random chance, if the tree tube (or treeshelter as it is known in the UK and among hardwood silviculturists in the USA).

The second reason we need tree tubes today is illustrated beautifully in this chronology given on this web page of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.

1900 - market and subsistence hunting virtually eliminate deer in Oklahoma

1917 - statewide deer population estimated at 500 

1944 - 379 deer harvested by hunters

2005 - 101,111 deer harvested, 40% of them does (which means wildlife managers are trying very hard to reduce the size of the herd)

This numbers are nearly the same in every state east of the Rockies.  Deer nearly wiped out by 1900, followed by reduced or banned hunting for a period of time, combined with heroic conservation efforts to restore whitetail deer, combined with changes in the landscape (creation of a patchwork with exponentially more forest edge, the preferred habitat of deer) and reduced predator populations, leading to huge deer harvests that still can't keep pace with the rate of reproduction.

Many of the natural forests we have can very likely trace their origins to that 1900 time period when deer numbers were at an all time low.

We are now trying to plant trees when the deer population is at an all time high.

There are now places in the USA where natural hardwood regeneration is seriously threatened, where there are very few young hardwood trees.  The deer simply eat them faster than they can grow.

So random chance is not an option any more.

There are other ways to protect trees from deer browse, but none as cost effective as tree tubes.

Inside Baseball on Tree Tubes

Here's an illuminating post on the history and behind-the-scenes business of tree tubes, and one company's efforts to get this amazing technology to market at the lowest possible price so as to be of the greatest benefit.

Click here.

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 Poll - What is your tree planting objective?

This tree tube web site is polling visitors to learn what their primary tree planting objective is.

As of this writing the results are:
Wildlife Habitat - 40%
Food Crops - 19%
Ecological Restoration - 13%
Landscaping - 13%
Timber Production - 10%

I find these results fascinating, especially since I now have 23 years of tree tube experience to draw on and use as a basis of comparison.

In a very real sense the use of tree tubes is a measure of how much each group of growers cares about and is willing to invest in the success of their tree planting project.  I find it interesting - and a bit amusing - that folks using tree tubes to produce food for wildlife are more likely to seek out and purchase tree tubes than any other group!

I find it extremely encouraging that the number of folks using tree tubes to establish landscape trees is up to 13%.  Twenty three years ago that number would have been very close to zero.  I honestly think that the dramatic increase is due in part to a phenomenon that I have observed recently:  When people use tree tubes to establish seedling trees for wildlife or timber see how fast the trees grow, they no longer see the point of spending hundreds of dollars to plant trees in their yards.  Instead they plant seedlings - or even tree seeds - in their yard, protect them with tree tubes, and grow their landscape trees the inexpensive, fast, healthy and long-lived way.

Twenty-three years ago the percentage of tree tube customers whose primary interest was timber production - planting high value hardwoods such as black walnut and red oak - would have been closer to 90%.  The drastic reduction doesn't mean that the number of tree tubes used for hardwood regeneration has decreased; it hasn't.  It means two things:  1) The sales of tree tubes in the USA in many times what it was back then, and has expanded into many other areas of tree planting, and 2) It is much more common these days for trees to be planted with multiple goals in mind, and landowners are naturally more inclined to think of the goal(s) that have a chance of coming to fruition within their own lifetime (wildlife habitat, ecological restoration, etc.) as compared to the generation-spanning objective of timber production.

Tree Tubes for Planting Landscape Trees

Dr. Doug McCreary is the guru of oak regeneration in California.  Some years ago he spent his sabbatical in England, learning about English practices for growing, planting and protecting oaks.

One of his reports is here.

Bottom line:  We in the USA can learn an awful lot about successful and cost effective establishment of landscape and roadside trees.

Corollary:  Seedling trees in tree tubes 1) cost many times less, 2) survive at a higher rate, 3) grow faster and 4) live longer than what we currently do (planting large potted or B&B trees that cost hundreds of dollars, have deformed root systems, suffer years of transplant shock, grow slowly, and succumb to disease, insects and root strangulation).

Some key points from Dr. McCreary's report from the UK:

"When driving around the English countryside, one notices that treeshelters (tree tubes) are everywhere... Some estimates are that between three and five million treeshelters are sold annually in this country that is half the size of California."

"Even though the sight of treeshelter forests is not the most aesthetically pleasing - and I suspect some environmental groups might prefer to see them banned from the planet forever - they seem incredibly effective for reforestation in England (emphasis mine)."

We'll be looking at this issue of the aesthetics of tree tubes in a post later this week.  Not surprisingly I find a field with tree tubes in it for a few years to successfully establish trees that will live another 100 years much more aesthetically pleasing than a failed planting.

"While stuck in traffic, I tried to determine how many (tree) shelters in a roadside planting had surviving plants inside... a 'windshield assessment' indicated that over 90% of the trees were growing out of the tops of the tubes.  This is consistent with a large-scale survey here several years ago of over 4,000 (tree) shelters on 192 sites where 89% contained a living tree."

"Clearly the success rate seems far higher than for roadside plantings along California highways.  The fact that England has much more summer rainfall probably contributes greatly to excellent seedling growth and survival, but I suspect that (tree) shelters here are more carefully and properly installed and maintained... Whatever the English do, it works, and we have much to learn from their many years of experience with these devices (tree tubes) that, so far, seem particularly useful for regenerating oaks in California as well (emphasis mine)."

Tree Tubes - Dozens of Uses

In 23 years of working with tree tubes I have never really sat down and listed all of the ways in which they are used.  I'm going to try to remedy that here in this post.

1) Hardwood reforestation

2) Windbreak & shelterbelt plantings

3) Riparian zone restoration plantings

4) Wildlife habitat (food plot) plantings

5) Mitigation banking

6) Orchard establishment

7) Mine reclamation

8) Ecological restoration

9) Urban & landscape plantings

10) Timber stand improvement

12) Nursery production


 I know, I said "dozens" of applications for tree tubes, but only listed an even dozen.  Here's the thing:  within each of these dozen applications are dozens more specific uses.  For example, orchard establishment encompasses everything from planting pistachios in the sun-baked San Joaquin Valley of California, to planting a field of anti-oxidant rich Aronia berry in Missouri (speaking of which, switching the common name away from "chokeberry" was probably a good marketing move on someone's part!), to a back yard orchard of heirloom apples in New York... and everything in between.

So in upcoming posts I'll take one of these categories and look at the history of tree tube use for that application, cover some case studies, and offer some tips for success.

Come back soon!

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!