After the Storm: Tree Shelter Maintenance
With a little maintenance, tree shelters can keep doing their job to help newly-planted trees. Photo: Kristen Koch, Penn State
Storms with high winds, changing temperatures, rain, snow, and ice can all cause property damage. These weather elements can also create problems for young tree plantings along streams as a riparian buffer or upland as a reforestation project. Trees and the tree shelters they are planted in are susceptible to getting knocked over for various reasons: weather being primary.
Precipitation that causes the soil to become saturated makes it easy for stakes to get pushed over. High winds can easily push over stakes that are loose in the soil or starting to rot. Freezing and thawing of the soil can push the stake up so it becomes loose. Snow and ice can add weight to an already leaning tree shelter, causing it to fall over even further and bury it once on the ground. Storm damage to tree plantings can occur any time of year but is more common in winter when all of these factors can play a role within the same storm.
Knocked-over trees are at risk of snapping their trunks, getting eaten by rodents and other mammals, getting trampled, and can begin growing at awkward angles if left too long. For this reason, it is important to stand up and straighten tree shelters as soon after as possible. Grab a mallet or hammer, extra stakes, and zip ties, and walk through the buffer. Knocked-over tree shelters are easy to spot, but you can also use this time to do preventative maintenance. Give upright stakes a gentle push as you walk past to judge whether the stake is still solidly in the ground or could use a few hits with the mallet. Double check that all zip ties are still around the stake and secure. If soils were recently saturated, knocked-over stakes might still be intact and can simply be straightened and re-pounded into the ground. Oftentimes, though, shelters are on the ground because the stake has snapped or rotted and needs to be replaced.
Tree shelter maintenance is incredibly important to the overall success of a tree planting. Over time, if trees knocked over from storms are ignored, the minor damage from each storm event adds up, and large percentages of the planting can be lost. If stakes were installed solidly at the time of planting after-storm maintenance will be most important during years 2-4. During this time, trees are still too small to stand up under the weight of the tree shelter and the stakes have had time to start rotting and/or become loose from wind, freezing and thawing, and changing soil saturation levels. Once the trees have developed a thick enough trunk, after-storm maintenance will significantly decrease.
