That sucks! All of our trees have a 2 foot circle of gopher wire around them for protection. Voles are serious pests above ground, and gophers below. We plant all trees in gopher baskets and protect the trunks from the voles with gopher wire on top. I am so mad at the destruction, I'm not opposed to barbed wire rings on top of that!

It's war! Be sure you leave a human scent around the tree. Pee!! Most animals fear that scent!

Suzi

If they girdled below green tissue all the way around all you can do is try bridge grafts next spring. It is surprising that they've already done so much damage and it suggests to me that your vole population is out of control. Are you growing your trees in meadow? Vole damage is usually a winter and early spring issue for me.

Trees that are not yet girdled can be protected with plastic tree wraps designed for the purpose. AMLEO.COM carries the cheap white ones that work fine for me.

Bridge grafting in spring wouldn't work, top would be already dried up by then. You need to do some vole control and protect trunks, especially when small.

Konrad, I think if the trees are dormant the tops will not only make it through winter but at least start to leaf out in spring- probably will completely leaf out and than dry up a month later or so if a bridge isn't sending something to the roots. A girdled tree sends water up but no carbos down, I think.

What is the difference between being girdled in Nov or late Dec?

I'm talking by experience, perhaps climate is somewhat different here, [very dry] a complete girdled tree would dry up in a matter of two to three month.
I've never seen leafing out a complete girdled tree,..lost about 50 trees this spring, none had any life in them.
Since these were rootstock,..I dug dirt away around the stem and most grew back from the bottom.

Konrad, were those apples? It is dry here in the winter, as far as humidity, but you get a whole lot colder. I've had girdled trees last two seasons.

I have used rubber electric tape to wrap nearly completely girdled trees in an effort to prevent drying out while they heal. It didn't hurt and trees with the tiniest band of green managed to heal- might have anyway.

Thank you for your thoughts. We got some of those tree guards and installed a bunch this evening. I set out bait stations with poison. I was surprised at the damage this early. There are a lot of voles in that field. I guess we will see what we can do come March. Thanks, Ted

HM, are you referring to these corrugated tree guards that AM Leonard sells? My fall tree order just shipped and I need to order some asap. Looking for something cheap and effective, thanks, Chris.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tree guards

I'm talking about the cheap white plastic self wrapping ones, not the ones in the photo, although I suppose they'd work. The ones I'm talking about come in 5 packs and cost about a buck apiece.

>>Konrad, were those apples?Apples and some on apricots, the small trees suffer the most because it doesn't take much for voles to chew all the way around. Most winters we have 7 month of snow, ...too long to see the damage and do anything.

I have yet to see a picture of complete girdled tree bridge grafted and growing, lots of bridge graft pictures but these were not completely girdled,..if that's the case why bridge grafting,.. no need to do anything.

It seems, even when trees are dormant, there is still some constant sap pressure in the trunk, when girdled, the top trunk looses vital energy/umpf and after many month nothing can be done anymore to restore this.

There has to be a limited time frame from the damage to the repare,..was there any research done on this?

I have personally seen a tree bridge grafted in which the center of the original tree was gone, rotted out. It had 3 or 4 "stilts" holding it up. Each of the bridges was its own trunk.
This evening I dug out a completely girdled tree and brought it home to run some grafting experiments on it. These are quite small trees, planted last spring. Thanks.

Pot it up and and graft indoor in about 2 weeks when the tree starts to push, this should work.

Please remember to not mulch right around the trunk of a tree. Those in the frozen snowy north are going to be a little more vulnerable to snow piles, which may make voles want to camp out there and eat the tree trunk. If I lived in the frozen snowy north, I might try to clear out snow away from trunks so hawks and owls would watch the area to prevent voles from camping and eating trunks.

John S
PDX OR

I've never made a successful bridge graft myself with trees completely girdled and trees with any cambium bridge will generally heal themselves. I wrap them with plastic in some way to reduce evaporation at wound site which is a contradiction of proscribed methods of healing tree wounds but those methods are based on research not involving girdling wounds.

Black rubber electric tape may help wounds heal with early heating of site as well as stopping evaporation of water heading up tree- but without proper research of this situation, who knows? Anecdotally it seems to work better than nothing for me.

I know I'm late to the party, but in case anyone finds this article, I'm here to tell you that I've successfully bridge grafted vole-girdled apple trees - trees that were girdled in November 2013, no less.

We had heavy snow early here in the lake-effect snowbelt of west Michigan, which allowed voles to invade my nursery via tunnels in the snow. We had 30" of snowcover, rendering the 24" plastic guards useless. I had about 20 3-to-5-year-old trees that were completely girdled (and many survivors with a barber-pole spiral up the trunk, where they gnawed away in the expansion space of the plastic guard).

About half of the victims were on Bud9, most of the rest on EMLA1111. All the damage was done to the scion, so, in the case of the Bud9 trees, I simply cut below the damage, and cleft-grafted scions from the top of the tree in mid-April. All took, and did well.

For the EMLA111; I had spare 111 rootstocks I was stooling, and took some of the larger ones (1/4" caliper), and bridge grafted 5 trees. The rest, I cut back and re-grafted. Again, in mid-April (while the trees were still dormant).

Of the trees I bridge grafted, two did not take (one was a Sargent crabapple; that might have been a compatibility issue, the other a Smokehouse), and 3 did.

I bark grafted two new rootstocks per tree, buried the roots, and wrapped the graft in parafilm (which weathered off by August). I rubbed off any new growth from the rootstocks, and that was it. It was a last-ditch effort, and frankly I'm surprised by the 60% success rate.

That's just a long-winded way of saying that it can be done. Give it a shot, it might work. Otherwise, harvest scions and try again.

Interesting...have you got some pictures to show us that bark graft.

For me, a totally girdled tree, [bark gone down to the wood].. best way to safe the tree/cultivar is by cutting scion wood and graft in spring on trunk below and or new stock, [which I have plenty]...or top graft older trees.