Winterizing my fruit trees

Last weekend I prepared my young fruit trees for winter. I had some plastic tubing I had gleened from somewhere and I used them to wrap the tree trunks. This helps protect the young tree trunk from splitting during the freeze/thaw cycles. Also, in the past over winter I had deer break through my simple fences and eat the tree trunk bark killing the tree. This will stop that.

I had a few trees where I hadn't gotten around to putting a simple fence around, or else I hadn't fixed the fence after the cattle broke them this past spring. I made sure each tree had a fence.

The first photo shows a new fence. I also added old bailing twine to the two strands of wire as extra barriers. But more importantly so I can see the fence. I don't look too intelligent when I walk into one of these fences without the bailing twine.

The second photo shows an older fence where I had added some chicken wire because the cattle would put their head through the wire and twine to sample the fruit tree leaves and branches.

The wire and baling twine apparently was enough to keep the deer away from my trees, but not my curious cattle! The chicken wire did protect my trees from the cattle.

Lastly, I had fenced and twined my bushes to keep the cattle away from sampling them. Here is a blueberry bush I had fenced.

Some cattle tried to get their nose through the twine but it kept them away from my bushes.