You could paint them. Mine are located in a spot that gets no sun whatsoever all winter, so I just leave mine (north side of the house). I just put hardware cloth around them. You could pile snow around them, but that would be a lot of work and you need to watch out for voles.

Mark,

Keep in mind trunk wraps or painting will not protect the cherry trees from extremely low temperature freeze damage. If the temps fall below the range it take to kill wood, the tree wraps won't help.

Tree wraps and painting do help prevent sun scald and southwest injury.

thx for help. My trees are supposed to be OK for Zone 4 and I'm on the southern edge of ZOne 4 so hopefully with good care they will be fine.

I have a few sweet cherry plants in Zone 5a and have experienced bark splitting in early spring when the snow is still on the ground. The split is almost always on the south or southwest side. Now I just mak esure that the sun would not shine directly on the trunk on the south & southwest side.

thx. mine are also mostly sweet cherry so I'll go forward with the trunk wraps.

Isn't the issue when something like a very cold January day (subzero high temps/common in WI most winters) with full sun and good snowcover. The sun reflects off the snow hitting the brown trunk, warming it to temps above freezing...Either a cloud comes by, dropping the temp back below 0F or the sun sets and the temps plummet again, causing the temp of the trunk to freeze solid? I think it goes something like that. I'm sure there is research out there on this sort of thing. Maybe i'll do some digging.

trunk wraps could help only with southern injury...focus ur work on protecting trunks against boarers (thus by usind a chloropiryphos ethyl spray on trunk at postharvest and before bud break in spring...pay attention on phytophtra desease as well...