What was wrong with the trunk to begin with?

Hi fortisi876,
This post was a continuation answering the post you made concerning the field mice eating the bark from the entire base of your fig tree.

I placed a reply into the post you made concerning your damaged fig trees in hopes that you may do as I did and get your wounded tree back on track again.
I'll paste bellow what I had written before address to you
in the possibly that you did not read it.
Here it is:

fortisi876 Don't cut the tree down
Posted by pezzuti9 z5 PA (My Page) on Mon, Apr 2, 07 at 13:46

I had the same thing happen to all the trees I had stored in my garage the beginig of last growing season. I was ready to chop it up as well but then as I mentioned in earlier posts I saved all of my trees.
Use one of the limbs that had the lower section eaten by the rodents. Cut it off at the trunk of the tree. Then proceed with a sharp razor blade knife to score as wide a section of bark that the limb will allow. Make sure you score it long enough to breach the area that was eaten through at the base of the tree.

Carefully peel that strip of bark off the branch. If possible cut two strips from the same branch then discarded it or stick the branch in some dirt and treat it as a cutting.

The next step is to scrape carefully with the utility knife above and below where the rodents chewed the bark off a little wider than your patch strip taken from the branch bark. Just remove the (important) bark down to the green colored wood. A real light hand is needed doing this.
On the very bottom you may have to dig some of the dirt away from the base of the tree and wipe it clean with a damp cloth. That is so the tape you use will stick to the tree trunk.

Now use just plain scotch tape to hold the bark strip sections exactly where you want them placed. After you have attached the two strips of bark with the scotch tape then seal it all up with any type of tape that has good holding power and will take the weather.

I left my trees taped up all through the spring and into most of the summer. After I removed the tape from around the trees I was surprised to see that they had all sealed over with new bark. In fact there where even some very young new roots coming out from the area I covered.

I hope you see this in time and give it a try. My trees where just uncovered a little while ago and are fine and last season with the taped up patches I had many figs on each tree. Did not seem to affect the tree a bit.

Good luck

Lou Ne., PA

Thnx for the explanation Lou!

Unfortunately I caught it after hacking my tree down! Oh well! It would of been nice to see if I could of successfully nursed them back to good health.

fortisi876 I know what it feels like because I threw one whole large tree away just after I saw the damage. It was a Peters Honey that I liked very much. The idea I described to you was after I tried spraying the other wounded trees with white spray paint. That didn't work either because the nozzle was fouled up on the can. That explains the white paint marks on the tub the figs are in.
It was after that the idea came to me to try out that repair job. Like I mentioned I never thought it would work because the job those varmints did on my trees was extensive.

Lou NE., PA