One of the most frequently asked question by new users of tree tubes is: Should I use 4ft or 5ft tall tree tubes for deer browse protection?
Tree tube suppliers have traditionally explained how to choose
the correct tree tube height is by suggesting that tree planters use 4ft
tree tubes to protect from "moderate" deer browse, and 5ft tree tubes
to protect from "heavy" or "severe" deer browse. (Presumably that means
that newly-introduced 6ft tree tubes should be used for "super mega wicked bad" deer
browse!)
This
"moderate, heavy, extra heavy" deer browse approach to choosing the
right tree tube height is based on the ridiculous assumption that the
landowner can actually know - in advance - how bad the deer browse level is
going to be a year or two down the road when the trees emerge from their
tree tubes. That is asking the impossible.
So I gave myself the task of coming up with a more rational way to explain to new - and old - tree tube users how to decide which height of tree tube will work best for them. Here is what I came up with:
Basis: All tree tubes provide some level of deer browse protection.
4ft tree tubes provide enough deer protection for successful establishment 75% of the time.
5ft tree tubes provide enough deer protection for successful establishment 90% of the time.
6ft tree tubes provide enough deer protection for successful establishment 100% of the time.
Decision Tree: There are three equally legitimate strategies for using tree tubes to grow trees past the deer browse line:
1) You can save money (or protect more trees within you budget) by using 4ft tubes.
There is a 25% chance that the deer will browse emerging trees heavily
enough that you will have to either treat them with a deer repellent or
add a 2ft "tube extender" to get your trees past the browse line.
Note: Some tree tube suppliers state that 4ft tree tubes
do not protect against deer. That is patently absurd, since 75% of the
time 4ft tubes provide enough deer protection, and the
rest of the time a treatment of deer repellent or the use of a tree tube extender get the tree past the browse line. To say that 4ft tree tubes do not protect from deer is like saying LeBron James never makes a free throw since he misses once in a while.
2) Spend a little more up front on 5ft tubes.
That added 1ft of browse protection is an insurance policy, leaving
only a 10% chance that you will need to provide additional protection
for your trees after they emerge from the tubes.
3) Go with 6ft tubes and remove all doubt.
I believe that this decision tree provides a more logical framework for decision making. As a tree planter you can protect
more trees with 4ft tree tubes within your current budget, but you might
need to go back and provide more protection in the future, or you can
protect fewer trees with 5ft or even 6ft tree tubes and reduce the
possibility that the trees will need supplemental protection down the
road.
Both are perfectly legitimate strategies for successful tree establishment in the face of increasing deer pressure - and both make a lot more sense than expecting land owners to predict if their trees will face "moderate" or "heavy" deer browse in the future. All deer browse seems "heavy" to the tree that gets munched!
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Tree Tubes for healthy, low-cost & long lived landscape trees
The whole reason I started promoting tree tubes back in 1989 as a newly-minted Urban Forester (University of Minnesota) was because I saw them as a way to successfully plant in urban landscapes tree species that are not sold as large potted or B&B trees by the commercial nursery industry, but instead are available only as seedlings. I was concerned primarily with oaks, which are not widely sold in the nursery trade due to the ridiculous misconception that they are slow growing, but also with other native species that are drastically under planted.My thinking was:
1) Many tree species are only available as seedlings (especially deeply tap-rooted species that don't lend themselves to current nursery production practices)
2) Plant a seedling unprotected in the landscape and it will get eaten or run over with a lawn mower
3) Tree tubes + seedling trees = a low-cost, highly effective way to plant seedling trees in the landscape
Twenty-three years later my conviction that this is the best way to plant landscape trees is even stronger. That's because I have learned,
1) Most potted or B&B trees sold in the commercial landscape industry have deformed, mangled and/or maimed root systems that impede growth, cause long term health problems, and dramatically shorten the lifespan of landscape trees.
2) The smaller the tree you plant, the less root disruption/deformation there is, the faster it will growth, the healthier it will be, and the longer it will live.
Landscape tree tube naysayers have often made the argument that tree tubes in the landscape, and especially when used for street trees, would likely become targets of vandalism. To which I say:
1) In the increasing number of cases where tree tubes have been used to establish street, park and landscape trees the amount of vandalism has been nil.
2) Trees do get vandalized. Would you rather have a vandal wreck a $300 B&B tree or a $10 tree tube and seedling combo?
I am getting more and more emails and phone calls from folks thinking along the exact same lines. According to one online poll of tree tube buyers 13% of them are using the tree tubes to plant landscape trees. Back when I started that number was a lot closer to zero.
I received this email from a customer last week:
Within the last few weeks, the Emerald Ash Borer made its way into Massachusetts. In central Massachusetts, the USDA has been trying to eliminate a threat from the Asian Long Horned Beetle. I think because of pests like these there will be increasing emphasis on ways we can increase biodiversity in the forest. The tree shelters seem like they should greatly improve results... In these difficult economic times, the town does not have the funds to remove all the dead trees, never mind plant new ones. I wondered if planting seedlings and using tree shelters might be an economical way to get something new planted in the springtime.
To which I say: Amen!
And here is an awesome post with a first hand case study of using tree tubes to plant landscape trees - and it involves planting my favorite tree, bur oak - a FAST GROWING, rugged, gorgeous trees that is laughably under planted in the landscape.
Monday, October 1, 2012
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.
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).
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).
Friday, September 28, 2012
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!
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!
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
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!
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
This is what tree tubes can do!
Click to enlarge
The facts on this tree are astounding. This is a hybrid oak from Mossy Oak Nativ Nurseries.
It was planted as a 18 inch seedling in late fall 2011. In other words, this is it's first growing season in the ground, and it's been less than two years since the acorn that produced it dropped from the mama tree.
It emerged from the green tree tube early this summer. That green tree tube is 4 feet tall - so if the tree had stopped growing and decided to call it quits for the season at that point, the rate of growth would still have been impressive bordering on amazing.
But as you can see, it didn't stop - it was just getting started! Deer started browsing the tip after it emerged from the 4 foot Tree Tube, so the grower added a 2 foot tall "tree tube extender" to provide another 2ft of deer browse protection.
Within a month the tree had emerged from the top of the tree tube extender, meaning it was by then 6 feet tall and had grown 4.5 feet this season. And it still wasn't done.
Since then this tree - this supposedly slow growing oak tree - has grown another 2.5 feet, putting its height at about 8.5 feet. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 7 feet of growth in a single growing season, starting as an 18 inch seedling.
Top-notch growing stock and state-of-the-art growing practices are the basis of results like this. But after seeing this you can't tell me that tree tubes aren't one of the most important developments in tree planting to come along, well, ever.
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!
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!
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