Tree Tube Talk

A blog to discuss tree tubes, tree shelters, tree protectors and grow tubes. We offer a professional and unbiased opinion on the pros and cons of each tree tube manufactured from years of real in the field experience.

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How do the Tubex combitubes do in the HOT Phoenix Arizona summer? I am worried that my seedlings may cook. do you have folks with experience in Arizona?

The venting in the tubes prevents overheating in the sun. We sell a lot of tubes to Arizona and all with good reports.  The trees work as greenhouses that allow the tree to grow in a lower stress environment.

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Damaged Tree? Send them to Tree Tubes Rehab.

I was out yesterday checking my dove field and while walking the field edge I was also checking on a line of trees that are in tree tubes that I performed some spring maintenance on May 26th, 2013.  All the trees were doing great and were covered with bright green new flushes of growth, but there was one Sawtooth oak that stood out among the others.  The tree had grown 54" in a month!  Now this was not a brand new bare root seedling that was planted this past winter, but it is a 3 year old tree that the old wooden test stake had broken and it was ignored for almost a year laying flat on the ground in the tube.

3 Year old Sawtooth Oak pruned to allow regrowth

I pruned the tree back to a small bud sprout towards the base of the tree and re-installed the 4 ft Tubex Combitube tree tube.  A month later and it has rocketed out of the tube and has already re-established itself as a tree again.  This demonstrates a few things:

1.  Don't use "these will work fine" kind of stakes.  Use good solid white oak stakes or even better our 1/2" pvc stakes that won't rot or break.  Choosing the wrong stake material can ruin your planting project no matter how much time and care you take in planting your tree and installing a tree tube.  If you can't get by to maintain your trees at least 2 times a year then you run the risk of losing your tree due to stake failure.

2.  You need to come by and check on your trees at least twice a year.  Just before spring and late fall are great times to check in on your trees if you can't make it by any other time.  In the late winter/early spring you can prune your trees from any sprouting or lateral limb growth in the tube that is not desired and in the fall you can access your stakes to make sure they will hold up to the winter months and clean out any leaves, bugs, etc that accumulated during the summer in the tree tube.

3.  Don't ever count a tree out.  Instead of deciding this tree wouldn't make it because 90% of it had died back and was lying flat on the ground and partly covered in fire ants, I yanked off the tube, pruned it back to an appropriate place on the stem and re-tubed the tree.  Even though it looked like a crashed up junk yard of a tree above ground, it had a 3 year old Ferrari engine below ground that was waiting to be unleashed. By pruning the tree and standing it back up right, I gave the tree the go ahead to put the pedal to the medal and go as fast as it wants too.

4.  You will notice the lack of vegetation around this tree.  As I mentioned earlier, I ignored this tree for almost an entire year but I had sprayed glyphosate around all these trees 2 and 3 years ago which has kept all competing vegetation away from the trees.  You can even see in the upper picture the sprayed circles around each tree.  If I had not done this, this tree very well could have perished as the grasses and weeds would have smelled the blood in the water and swamped the tree robbing it of nutrients and water which ultimately would have pushed it right over the edge.  Herbaceous weed control in paramount.

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Revolutionary Weedmat for Tree Tubes

Tree Protection Supply is thrilled to announce the addition on a revolutionary weed mat product to the US market for the first time ever.  The Irripan presents itself as a weed mat, a rain collector, a soil moisture recycler, a competing weed killer and a light reflector.  This is definitely not your father's weed mat.  Actually it is not even your neighbor's weed mat!

All other weed mats that exist on the market today do kill weeds and only slow the evaporation of water from the soil.  That is it.  No other features.

Irripan collects water, recycles soil moisture and kills competing weeds

The Irripan operates just as a traditional weed mat will in that it shades out competing weeds and allows the planting to grow with no competition for soil moisture and nutrients, but from there it goes in an entirely different direction.  The concave shape of the Irripan collects and funnels rain to the tree.  The following chart demonstrates that the Irripan allows on average 3.3 times more rain collection capability vs no Irripan:

You can see that these were not huge rain events.  The average rain event during this data collection was 0.20" with the smallest rain event being 0.09" and the largest of 0.44".

The weather pattern during these rains was extremely isolated rain showers as demonstrated below for the 0.14" event:

This is a typical summer time weather pattern in that the rain is so isolated, one property can get rain and the adjacent property stays dry.  The Irripan allows for you to capitalize on every rain event no matter how small. You can imagine how fast that 0.14 inches of rain would disappear due to competing vegetation and the fact that it fell during the warmest part of the day at around 4pm.  Weeds and evaporation would steal that water faster than Usain Bold runs the 100m dash.

This is where the soil moisture recycling comes into play.  The raised feature of the Irripan allows water to evaporate, but it re condenses on the underside of the pan and is funneled back to the tree.  So now you have more water collection and an extremely small amount of the water that is collected is lost due to evaporation or weeds.

The bright surface of the Irripan also reflects light back to the tree which further increases the growth benefit gained.  A planting in an Irripan is now collecting more water, losing less water and receiving more light.

Can you see how the Irripan's features build on each other to muliply water, light and prevention of weed competion levels to provide superior performance for your planting unlike anything that has come to the market to date.

Visit our Irripan weedmat product page for pricing and further information

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Let Tree Tubes Remove The Hate From Your Life

I get a lot of phone calls from people who are about to spend, at times, some pretty serious money on tree tubes, stakes, weed mats and fertilizer for their trees they are planting for the deer.  And in the very next sentence they say "I just hate those deer."  I myself have even said the same thing about them devouring my warm and cool season food plots (more on how to prevent this problem very soon), but I started thinking.  Why do we spend all this time and money managing for something that we want around?  That is why you plant food plots, plant wildlife trees to produce more mast, even thin, burn, possibly understory release your timber all to promote larger deer that you claim to hate??

We don't really hate deer.  We love them. We dream about them.  We brag about certain deer we see on our properties, but we do hate what they can do to a newly planted tree or a 3 year old tree that is just starting to stretch its legs and produce mast in the next year or two.  By using tree tubes, you can eliminate the damage done by deer to your trees, stop re-planting trees, losing valuable years of growth and mast production potential and get back to what we all love to do.

So the equation is mathematically correct in that hate multiplied by tree tubes is equal to zero damage.  And zero damage to your trees allows you to rekindle that love lost.

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What is coming in the tree tube world for TPS

We will be launching quite a few new products this January. New tree tubes, stakes, weed mats, deer fencing, fertilizers and a new exciting tree stem protector. We are growing and are so excited that you have chosen us as your source of tree tubes and accessories.

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Bur Oak Progress and how we should rethink our landscape trees

On our home page at www.treeprotectionsupply.com, you will see a flash slideshow of a bur oak that I planted last winter. At the time of planting it was recorded at 28" tall.  At the end of June, I snapped these photos of it emerging from the top of the 4 ft tree tube and I took some more photos of the tree here at the end of August to show it is well on its way to becoming my new awesome side yard tree.

As you can see too that the tree has emerged from the tube in great shape, with huge leaves and a sturdy stem.

I would like to note that this tree has been growing out in the open within 15 feet of the street that gets a good bit of foot traffic from neighbors walking and biking and they have never even noticed the tree tube sitting there until a tree popped out of the top.  This shows that these tubes can be used in an urban environment to promote a tree that will, in the long-term, be much healthier than a b and b tree that everyone puts in because they want a tree immediately.  If we all can have a little patience and grow our trees ourselves from smaller planting stock, we will all be paid back in spades with healthier trees.  Also think of the cost and carbon footprint a b and b tree uses.  They use more land, irrigation, chemicals, equipment, people, and money to grow these trees than a seedling nursery and at the end of the day the tree looses a great portion of its root system when it is dug up.  Now think of all the irrigation you have to spend to water the tree to keep it alive while it tries to recover from the shock of the transplant.  I have never watered this seedling or done anything to it since the day I planted it and put a tree tube on it.  This world and our lives is fast paced enough.  How about we just slow down and watch the trees grow for a moment.  I would say stop and smell the roses, but they have thorns and can be a lot of work to grow.  Plant a seedling, tree tube it, and actually enjoy seeing your work grow everyday.

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Breaking news — Epic Drought not seen by trees in tree tubes.

First off, what a crazy winter, spring, and summer it has been here at TPS. We have so much news and information to share in coming blog posts so check back soon to catch up on all of our goings ons.

With that, I wanted to share some feedback we are getting from customers that planted trees and installed tubes on most, all or some percentage of their project and are now enduring an epic drought that is now covering approximately 64% of our nation. The bad news is the trees that are not in tubes have either died or are so stressed that they may not fully recover to become a tree worth keeping, but the GREAT NEWS is that the trees inside the tubes are doing well and growing despite some areas only receiving less than a half inch of rain per month and weeks of 100+ degree days. These results have prompted customers to already begin to re-order in the middle of summer to try and save what trees they have left as the the old saying “the proof is in the pudding” definitely holds true here.

While we don’t sell actual pudding, we sure have been selling a lot of proof this year and if seeing is believing, then we have created some serious believers and we hope you decide to see what the fuss is all about. Check our our tree tubes and which tube might work best for you drought stricken trees.

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Introducing our new scrap stake. We can make these into 4 or 6 foot stakes for a discount at tree protection supply. Saves money and can save your planting project in a single bound!

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Tubex Combitube Tree Tube with pvc stake