Black Squirrel Wrote: Just make sure you protect them from rubbing and browsing. I'd recommend those tubes, also help them grow alot faster.
I'm with BS on this one (I love saying that ). The fruit trees are really in harms way from the bucks, everyone hears the danger of browsing but forgets about the damage rubbing can do. Two year old bucks are the worst, and routinely plow small diameter fruit trees in the middle of the night with their racks in my area and they don't care where they are... I have my house about 50 yards off the road with the usual front and back lawn/yard. I have two mature dwarf apple trees in my front lawn right next to the ditch which butts up to my road. The bucks rubbed them so bad they plowed one of them over at a 45 degree angle and rubbed the crap out of the other one. I managed to treat and save the bare / gouged bark of the trees and had to put in a fence post to stabilize the one that got knocked over- remember these are mature trees with 3" diameter trunks.