I have a newly planted apple tree, about 3 years old that I set out this last spring. I wrapped the bark with a protective cover made out of tree-sap to protect it from sunscald, but some 'helpful' soul in the family unwrapped the tree and it scalded so badly that the entire top is dead. It is grafted onto a rootstock to semi-dwarf it, and a tiny bit of the grafted top lived to produce a side shoot this summer. I left it alone, hoping to train it as a new trunk as if it were a new whip, however, then some helpful soul locked a deer INTO the garden for the weekend I was gone and sure enough, the deer denuded the poor little whip and pruned off the tip I had hoped to train into a leader. Can anyone offer me advice/hope for this thing? It's too late to plant a replacement, and it does have a good root system developing, and I'm loathe to lose a $30 tree anyway. It was a HaralRed, in zone 3.

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), August 26, 2000