I spray paint the trunks of my trees with white latex (the fruit trees
anyway). this reflects the sun in winter. I also use metal window
mesh, aluminum, put it around the tree and bring the sides together
and use a hand stapler to staple the mesh like it was two pieces of
paper. mesh lets air get to the bark. when I spray with oil or
pesticide, it gets thru the mesh nicely. if the tree outgrows the
mesh it easily forces the staples open which have rusted at that point
anyway.
Ingrid

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 03:18:26 -0000, byron wrote:

Virtually all of my trees have bark problems (maple, oak, catalpa,
ash, locust). I planted them about four years ago. The bark is
peeling back, exposing the wood. This occurs only on sun-facing
surfaces (southeast to southwest) so I presume it's sun damage. A
local nursery told me to wrap them with plasitic spiral wrappers, but
these seem to foster insects and spider nests. They can also can bind
and "girdle" the tree. I suppose I could remove them and re-wrap them
every month or so...Are there better ways to deal with this? All of
the crowns look really good, but I'm worried about the trunks. The
wrappers also help inhibit deer gnawing. I think maybe the problem
began when the trunks were weakened by the deer chewing and rendered
more vulnerable to the solar radiation. Any ideas on this multi-
faceted problem would be very much appreciate.