The Reason for cages

In a word --- deer.

I mowed about a half acre of goldenrod and sawgrass to plant our aronia plants and we found several small elms and a couple of good sized cottonwood saplings. And more walnut trees. I decided to not mow them over with the intention of transplanting the elm and cottonwood elsewhere. With about 3000+ walnuts on the place, I wasn't worried about those. I ran out of time to transplant or cage them and decided that I would put them on the list for the following week's work.

With clearing off the weeds and grass, now the trees are visible and vulnerable to deer. They were hidden before mowing and now it was like I put a spotlight on them and a giant arrow to point the deer right at them. Below is a cottonwood sapling at about 8 feet tall:

And this is what was left of the walnut:

With the rut starting earlier this year compared to the past two years, the rubbings started in late September and are about a month ahead of last year. Repellents do nothing to discourage these giant rats, and with three trails that cross the property, hunters have not been able to keep the population down.

The trees should recover, but they are set back years. All because I waited a week.

I found that it isn't always necessary to wire the cages to posts but just having the woven wire cage surrounding the tree is sometimes aggravating enough to confuse the deer. Because of the numbers of walnuts we have there is no realistic opportunity to cage them all. But others, like the coffeetrees get caged up.

The best supplier of fence, wire and posts has been farm auctions with my latest acquisition of about 800ft of 30" woven wire and another 500ft of barbed wire. I loaded up two pickups and an 6x8 trailer with rolls of used and new wire for $70, disappointing an older farmer in the process. Earlier this summer I was able to get 90+ steel posts for $40 with a few wooden posts thrown in.

It's best to protect the trees and berries as much as I can