With the fall season upon us, now comes the task of preparing our yards and homes for the upcoming winter months. Aside from raking leaves and cleaning out gutters, you should also remember your young trees and shrubbery. Winter months, when food is more scarce, make your tender young tree bark and shrubbery very tempting treats for many animals such as mice and rabbits.
Rabbits gnawing at tree bark can actually kill a young tree, as they will strip away all the bark from along the base of the trunk, causing the tree to die. I once had this happen to a Japanese Red Maple I had planted in my front yard. Over a particularly harsh Midwestern winter, the rabbits took to eating my tree bark, and the tree never recovered.
There are a couple ways to deal with this situation. You can purchase some mesh hardware cloth and wrap this all around the base of the tree. Make sure you cover any exposed bark along the base of the tree, even going below the ground’s surface by an inch or two, to keep the critters at bay. Also, cover the tree trunk up far enough so that at least 24 inches above the highest anticipated snowfall line, to protect from damage there. Remember, when it snows 18 inches, the “starting point” for the little animals to begin gnawing would be at the height 18 inches up your tree trunk.(See a good article about protecting shrubs and bushes in winter at : http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/dg1411.html .
You may also purchase a rabbit repellant to spray around the trunk, but this would need to be applied often. Consult my article about environmentally friendly deer and rabbit repellant for more information at: www.associatedcontent.com/article/8281747/environmentally_friendly_deer_and_rabbit.html?cat=32 .
Save your landscaping investments by taking the necessary steps to prevent the little critters from damaging your young trees this winter. An ounce of prevention could be worth the life of the tree in this case.