Chicken Wire Basket

[socal natives]

I have a lot of gophers and I made the mistake of lining the hole I planted the tree in with chicken wire. I know now that was the wrong thing to do and it was about two years ago. I did it to like 20 trees. I have removed all but five, but I killed one tree.

Does anyone know if the wire will kill the tree eventualy or if it will just rust away? Would you recommend removing the last five or just leave them alone?

I heard the tree will look fine and then one day it just falls over.

Thanks

 

[Labman]

I am not sure what you mean. I have worked at planting trees. We always left the wire baskets many balled and burlaped come in. Unless it is tight against the trunk, leave it. What is important is to cut any synthetic twine holding the basket to the tree. Otherwise it slowly strangles the tree.

 

[Toddppm]

The thin chicken wire that they use for coops? If it's that, I wouldn't worry about it. Unless you've got it wrapped around up near the top of the rootball. Otherwise the new roots will grow right through the wire and break it apart as they get bigger and it may rust away eventually.
If it's the thicker gauge wire it might be more of a constriction problem but after 2 years I would say leave them alone.
I've never seen a tree just uproot from wire being a problem, many from burlap not being removed but not the thick wire cages.

 

[socal natives]

I used chicken wire from the hardware store and I lined the hole with it

I read this srticle and I thought oh no I killed all the trees I planted so I carefully dug around the trees and took out as much of the wire as I could.

http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TR....coopext.colostate.edu/TRA/PLANTS/ankara.html


The wire was begining to decay but some of the bigger roots were being "bit" into by the wire

here are a couple other articles

http://www.marshalltrees.com/articles.asp?p=2&id=4&cid=0

http://joa.isa-arbor.com/request.asp?JournalID=1&ArticleID=152&Type=2

 

[Toddppm]

I mostly agree with what that articles are talking about but the bigger problem is the combination of the burlap and wire together. That first article kind of said one thing then changed to another about wire baskets and then showed an uprooted ball where the roots never grew out of the burlap except for small feeder roots.
The roots aren't being bit into, they are growing thicker and will either break the wire or grow around it, I think you're fine.

 

[socal natives]

Thanks I appreciate your feedback, I thought I made a big mistake. I planted like twenty oaks two years ago.

 

[thomas72]

How big are the trees? If you are that concerned about it I would take a 1" rod with a 3" piece of plate welded on the end and drive it though where you think the wire is and break it up. I do not think that would hurt the tree and would break up the wire.

 

[capetrees]

The wire will not hurt the trees. The natural burlap won't hurt either so long as you make some slices in it when you plant the tree to allow for roots to grow freely. I have planted hundreds of trees and large shrubs with the heavy guage metal baskets left on to keep the root ball intact. The trick is to open the top part of the tree ball as much as possible, removing the upper levels of wire and always open the burlap from around the trunk. Always remove as much if not all the manmade cloth from the ball in that it doesn't decay. Natural burlap does. Keep them watered and the decay happens that much faster.