"Rubinette" was new to me last year, ordered from Raintree nursery. All seemed to be going well until mid-summer when I noticed all the new growth was gone -- there wasn't a lot of it to begin with, but still...it was healthy. I did have fencing around it but lowered it just to be sure the deer weren't craning their necks to reach under there, and I sprayed it with repellant. New growth sprouted then BAM! gone all of a sudden. Couldn't have been the deer this time, maybe rabbits or groundhogs or some other smaller critter, but the repellant should have taken care of that. But nope -- lather, rinse, repeat multiple times over the course of the summer and fall. Frankly, I'm surprised it made it through winter, it just never got a chance to get any meaningful amount of leaf area on it.

But, make it it did -- it came back beautifully with lots of healthy new growth this spring. Then again -- BAM! gone overnight. I noticed that none of my other newly planted apple trees that are sprouting new growth have been bothered (yet...), and neither are any of my other adolescent trees. If it were smaller critters, why wouldn't any of those be bothered?

Then I got to thinking -- it's been ridiculously windy, could the Rubinette be especially prone to breaking/wind damage? Or maybe it's just an uber-tasty, tender treat for the smaller critters who can get under the fencing IDK. Can anyone weigh in on this?