YES... I had a sour cherry that almost died from voles. They really did a number on it. It ended up growing (they didn't ring it completely) and it healed up pretty well over the next 2 years... I did end up getting rid of it because of the spot I had it planted in.

My personal opinion is to protect everything. We just get too much snowcover and those voles love that.

I have the bark chewing voles here- and in 6 years haven't had a cherry chewed yet. Plums neither. Everything else including pine trees have been chewed though.

Same here, never seen them on cherry, pin cherry and pie cherry I have.

They chewed up a couple of young sweet cherries last winter. One completely. The other one was chewed about a foot above the graft union atop the snow during the depths of winter (I guess it could have been a rabbit, but never saw tracks, did see tunnels) and it regrew.

Sounds like they will do it occasionally, but not by preference.

I hadn't even thought of the plums! they are new this year too. I suppose the safe route is to protect everything....but with all the stone fruit we put in this year it does add up to some time.

Still it just takes one hungry/bored rodent to really do a number on a young tree.

In twenty+ years of growing all the major fruit species I never had anything but minor rodent damage on anything but apricots (just once, 1 tree, 1 site) occasionally pears and frequently apples until last year when I lost a nectarine and pluot. Last year I saw major damage on a couple of quite old apple trees- one about 20 years the other only about 5 while in the past it was always young trees.

The damage I have seen has been from both pine and meadow voles as well as rabbits (last year was all meadow voles). My conclusion is that you never know.

I still will only mechanically protect apples and count on trapping out the voles to protect the rest. This continues to work for me and the trees I lost last year were in an area where I didn't do trapping.

In case anyone here thinks i'm full of it:

{{gwi:57493}}

That is a sour cherry and that is vole damage.

when thinking about protection.. the variable that you can not nail down is the harshness of winter ...

if its a bad one.. in the eyes of a vole in this case ... then they will go after anything to survive ...

i suggest you protect simply to reduce worry ... and let them get a bit bigger ... mature trees can take a lot more damage.. especially after forming a real bark ...

but tender babes ... they most likely need help ... in other words ... if you dont do it.. where will you be.. complaining all next year ... lol ...

ken

I know this is old thread, but wanted to comment. I have a large row (57) of fairly big (8 years old) sour cherries. voles never touched before but chewed about 50 this past winter. The chew marks definitely indicate voles and not rabbit. i have lost about 70 young apple trees to voles about 10 years ago