A customer in Illinois emailed me yesterday:
I have been very happy with the tree tubes I purchased last year. I came back to your company because your prices are competitive and you took the time to provide helpful information to a tree planting rookie. Last year we had a rather severe drought, plus the deer browse on the unprotected trees was very heavy (in one week the deer ate the buds off 60% of the unprotected trees in one two-acre parcel)… I watered the protected trees every 8-10 days from late June through August using a 25 gallon sprayer in the back of my Gator (and carrying four 5 gallon buckets of water to refill the sprayer). It took me 10 hours most weeks because the new trees are intermixed with mature trees in four two-acre parcels around our farm. I also used wire cages, but my highest survival rate was with the tubes because I could put a quart or so of water in the tube and it would slowly drain into the roots. I sure learned the importance of sealing the bottom of the tube with dirt.
Many of my customers will remember the summer of 2012 as the one they spent on their 4 wheeler or tractor watering thirsty trees after months of scorching temp’s and virtually zero rainfall (it always seems to fall one county away!).
Our tree tubes consistently saved these customers from total failure of their plantings, by reducing the moisture stress on the trees and conserving, condensing and recycling what little moisture they did get.
This customer also had some interesting comments about deer biting and lifting off some of the tree tubes. Thursday I will post on some ways to avoid this.
In the meantime I am doing a rain dance every day for all of my customers, praying for more moisture this year. So far, so good; this customer reports that precipitation is 2.7″ ahead of normal for this time of year.
Hopefully rain will be plentiful. Then all those customers that spent thousands of hours out there watering trees last year can spend (a fraction of!) that time killing the weeds and grass that are trying to steal the abundant moisture from their trees!
