Rabbit Damage and Fruit Tree Survival

Q. I took a three-week vacation in February and when I returned my 25-year-old fig tree had been eaten all the way around the trunk about 18 inches off the ground. I put Elmer’ s glue and tree wrap on to save and it leafed out and produced great figs. What will happen to this tree? What should I do?

A. If rabbits ate the trunk of this tree in a complete circle around the trunk, it’s a goner. Let it sucker from the bottom and start a new tree from the suckers. The suckers will produce a main crop of figs next year and in two years it will be back in production.

Winter rabbit damage

            Rabbits usually go for smaller diameter wood during the wintertime when there’s nothing else to eat. Where rabbits are problem, remove the limbs from about 2 feet off the ground and protect the trunk with chicken wire. Use a 3-foot-long piece of chicken wire that is 2 feet in width and encircle the trunk with it. This helps keep the rabbits at bay.

Chicken surrounding new fruit trees when rabbits are a problem is good winter protection.

            How soon the tree will die depends on how deeply the rabbit ate. There are two thin cylinders of “wood” just under the bark responsible for taking water up the tree, called the xylem, and the other for moving sugars from leaves to theroots for storage, phloem. If the rabbit ate through both completely, the tree will die next year. If the rabbit ate only the outer cylinder, then it will take about three or four years to die.

            Figs are usually grown on their own roots so suckers growing from the trunk or roots will be true to the type of fig tree. The suckers will produce fruit identical to the fruit you’ve been harvesting for 25 years. Select one to three of the strongest suckers and remove the others. These suckers will form the new tree and they will grow rapidly because of the surviving extensive root system.