Able To See Seedlings Again

From late spring and into the summer, the seedlings and the cages on the cedars were hard to spot unless right next to them in the dense foliage of grasses, ferns, foxgloves and stickery berries of several varieties.

Between the thick growth drying out and the browsers coming in to nibble on anything with nutritional value, the seedlings along with the cages are emerging once again from their cover. Most of the Douglas Fir seedlings had been exempt from the browsing and the ones we lost were from scorching or sunburn from our extreme heat event.

We are noticing a few of the cages on the cedar trees have been disturbed or missing completely, even on those that we wrapped with thorny berry vines. I have found cages wrapped in dried out vines several yards from the seedling it had been protecting. It seems like the wildlife are more interested in the cages than the tender new growths on the cedars while some of the bamboo stakes have been pulled out because we can see the chomp marks on the tips.

Some cedar trees have been lost to browsing. Once an animal gets a taste of the tender branches, they clean the whole thing down to a bare stem. Without any branches, the stem will wither and die. All in all, the cages that had been wrapped with berry vines are an added deterrent to cedar browsing although not a complete success. I will be using vines again next spring after we plant our next round of seedlings on both the new plantings and some of the established cedars.