tomato cages left on young maple trees? And strawberries in pots during winter?
 

I have had alot of rabbit damage to young Amur Maples and decided to
put each with a tomato cage
and then wrap chicken wire fencing around the cage. It has worked well
in that some have now grown
taller than me with branches outside the cages. So I am willing to try
the idea of letting the Maples simply
grow around the cages and actually incorporate the metal into the bark
and trunk of the tree.

Anyone have any experience with that plan? Perhaps the Maples will not
grow properly? Perhaps the
maples will be choked by the round rings of the tomato cages, or
perhaps the metal will rust away
before they get that thick.

Anyone with experience of such a plan?

------

I have a second problem to deal with before winter. I finally solved
the strawberry and chives and
onion problem of weeding. I simply have them in large 5 gallon pots.
So if the weed get to numerous
I simply transplant into another pot with the weed upside down. So I
have full control of my
strawberries and other small plants. The grass and weeds simply
overrun them otherwise. But the
problem now facing me is whether those pots would become too frozen
during winter months. So should
I build a cold-frame and bury the pots halfway into the ground and
then put some transparent fiberglass
panels on top of them? Or can they survive as is through the winter? I
live in South Dakota.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Univese is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

tomato cages left on young maple trees? And strawberries in pots during winter?
 

On Sep 26, 2:58 am, a_plutonium wrote:
I have had alot of rabbit damage to young Amur Maples and decided to
put each with a tomato cage
and then wrap chicken wire fencing around the cage. It has worked well
in that some have now grown
taller than me with branches outside the cages. So I am willing to try
the idea of letting the Maples simply
grow around the cages and actually incorporate the metal into the bark
and trunk of the tree.

Anyone have any experience with that plan? Perhaps the Maples will not
grow properly? Perhaps the
maples will be choked by the round rings of the tomato cages, or
perhaps the metal will rust away
before they get that thick.

Anyone with experience of such a plan?

You'd probably strangle the trees.

------

I have a second problem to deal with before winter. I finally solved
the strawberry and chives and
onion problem of weeding. I simply have them in large 5 gallon pots.
So if the weed get to numerous
I simply transplant into another pot with the weed upside down. So I
have full control of my
strawberries and other small plants. The grass and weeds simply
overrun them otherwise. But the
problem now facing me is whether those pots would become too frozen
during winter months. So should
I build a cold-frame and bury the pots halfway into the ground and
then put some transparent fiberglass
panels on top of them? Or can they survive as is through the winter? I
live in South Dakota.

Overwinter strawberries by burying them under a foot or so of
straw (the source of their name).