11.46am - Friday 5th February 2016 8,236

It actually took me a couple of days to post this video because it bums me out so much. This is definitely a hard lesson learned as a greenhorn farmer.

The rodents had tunneled in the dirt and thatch that was in the orchard and went from tree to tree and actually dug under the rodent guards that I had in place. They then chewed up the trees worst then I have ever seen.

I talk about it more in this farm podcast:
http://farmmarketingsolutions.com/blog/gfp086-its-my-birthday

It has been a warm winter so far. So much so that the trees had started to bud out all over the farm. I think with that there was extra sap running in the trees which made them extra tasty to the rodents.

I don't know if I should put gravel around the remaining trees to help stop this? Kate and I cleared all the grass and leaves from under the trees and mowed again the beginning of February. So now there's really no place for rodents to hide, we hope.

Instead of buying more trees this year I'm going to try and salvage the root stock from the damaged trees and graft new scions on. Scions are just the branches that I'm going to prune off the surviving trees. Here's hoping that works.

If you have ANY rodent advice or stories leave them in the comments section below. How do you keep rodents off your trees? What tree guards do you use? How do you do this and stick to organic management? Do you think stone is the way to go?

http://farmmarketingsolutions.com