Improved fruit trees health

Commercial fruit producers have to maintain hundreds of hectares of orchard areas. A time-consuming activity is manual or mechanized tending of the orchard floor to keep weed growth at an acceptable level. Even, if done with accuracy, after every repetition of the tending operation, a slight percentage of stems is suffering from bark damages. With a long term view on the earnings, a damaged tree could never develop the full potential of fruit production.

Juvenile orchard trees, especially those growing in rural regions at non-protected areas, are typically used as a kind of nutrient provider by rodents and deer during wintertime. Depending on the size of the herbivore, the bark is removed at different stem height – but damages could be massive, especially if roe- and red deer are destroying the cambium by stripping the stem.

At young fruit tree plantations with small trees, sun radiation on the floor is high. Under these conditions, the application of herbicides could become the only solution to suppress weeds. As the young trees have not developed a strong bark at this stage, herbicides are able to pass this paper-thin protection layer. To prevent damages to trees or complete loss of some individuals, spaying has to be done very carefully and in a time-consuming matter.

Massive damages on bark and stem could be caused by temperature differences between day and night during the winter months. Typically, stems are painted white to prevent the stem surface from heating during the day. The time and cost consuming treatment has to be repeated year by year – until the tree has developed a strong, self-isolating bark after several years.

TUBEX shelters for fruit trees are designed as a strong double-wall construction to protect from damages caused by rodents, roe- and red deer and they are strong enough, to resist against trimmers as well. An extra strong version, developed to protect against heavier trimming tools, is available as well. A healthy bark and unwounded stem is the only option to prevent the tree from affection by viruses and fungus diseases. Every shelter is double worth its investment, as it saves the single plant from a process of decay – and every tree from a plant abused as a host for viruses and wood-destroying fungus.

The self-closing Wrap products within the TUBEX portfolio guarantee the best protection against herbicides and they are available at different diameters and heights. A perfect adoption of tree size and spraying system is possible. Further, the shelter protects the young plant from the risk to be overgrown by weeds for a certain time span and thus, spraying operations could be reduced or timely placed at the perfect moment in terms of maximum weed control success.

Under certain continental climatic conditions, fruit trees are running a very high risk to be damaged by sunburn during the winter period. TUBEX offers an alternative to the mandatory painting of stems with white coating colour with the big advantages of a single investment of labour to mount the shelter and the option to reuse the same shelter after a couple of years for another, younger tree, that needs to be protected.

It is just logical, that all the single benefits provided by TUBEX tree shelters are resulting in better growth rates and tree health in the stage of youth and thus in higher survival rates. It takes several years until a fruit tree reaches the phase of being able to produce fruits at maximum level – and beside TUBEX is accelerating the time span to reach this phase of highest productivity, our shelters are helping to extend this phase by preventing the tree from bark and stem damages and thus, from viruses and wood-destroying fungus.