Hi Glen, i've been toying with some concepts like you have due to a tree of mine that did not ripen it wood on time. I have found that if you water a tree too late into the summer there will be too much green, water-rich wood that is destroyed by frost/freezing. What i plan to do for my tree which is about 6 feet tall is to match two plastic garbage cans mouth to mouth (so to speak!) and use drill holes and wire to hold them firmly together. Then cut out a nice size circle out of the bottom of one of them to slip the whole thing over a tree. I may use a metal fence post pounded in right by these cans to hold it in place to defeat winds from knocking them over. You may even consider filling this contraption with sawdust or leaves for added insulation, but first be sure to wrap the trunk with lots of aluminum foil so the rodents won't chew all your bark off, girdling the tree.

Wishing you the best in your quest! I have wracked my brain for what i have come up with! LOL

Just found another method on another webpage which I am pasting here:

One method is to build a fighouse like A. J. Bullard of Mt. Olive, North Carolina has done to protect some of his varieties which are grafted onto a very hardy in-ground Celeste. He built a winter fighouse by setting pressure-treated posts in the ground around his tree. As winter approaches he attaches plywood to the posts to form walls and a roof. Additional protection is given by several 55-gallon drums stationed in the fighouse and filled with water. The water in the drums stores an enormous amount of heat energy that is released as temperatures fall below freezing. The energy released moderates temperatures in the fighouse. Even at temperatures near 0° F, the fighouse's temperature stays in the mid-twenties. [Do not try this in Minnesota. This will work only where warm and cold spells alternate during the winter and average temperatures are well above 32° F.]

I would think that in Manitoba you could also install a couple of coffee mug warmers (or an old coffee maker) inside such a structure to give you additional freeze protection. Light bulbs work too, but have a bad habit of burning out just when you need them the most!

Thank you for replying, Grapenut. I like your Garbage can idea. I may try that, as long as my tree isnÂt too wide but I guess I could always carefully bend the branches (or bundle them together with string?) while placing the plastic garbage can over the tree. I agree that the important thing is that itÂs sturdy and wonÂt tumble in the wind.

I donÂt think IÂll need heat, I have found that ginkgo is somewhat hardy here, but protecting it definitely makes the difference. My experiment so far is that the unprotected ginkgo suffers extreme damage and dies after a few years while the protected one suffers a lot less. As the tree is slow growing, each inch of growth is precious. The tree supposedly gets hardier with age, so my hope is that one day I wonÂt have to protect it (that and if global warming kicks in, lol.)

Anyways, good luck with your experiment as well, keep in touch,

Glen

Along the ideas of using water, I recall reading about the ancient farmers in South America (the Mayans maybe?) that used to live on the Andes mountains so they had a short growing season. One of the ways they extended the season was to build an irrigation system that alternated between ridges and trenches full of flowing water. Now I was thinking, why couldn't that work here with a little help from modern tech? Hook up a pump and set it up so the running water flows around the base of the plant, it would have to be heated if it freezes in your area but if you put a cover over the plant enclosing it the water should keep the ground warm and the evaporation would keep the enclosure fairly warm. What do you think?

So the garbage can idea, as good as it is, didnÂt work. The tree is just too big. In the end I got some big cardboard pieces from Home Depot and made my own box. I reinforced the inside corners of the box with wood slats stapled onto the cardboard (staple guns are fun!). This also added a bit of weight and stability to the structure. After putting it around the tree, I built a lid for the Âbox and covered it up. My only worry was that it might topple in a huge wind, so I pounded four tent stakes into the ground and then took rope/bungee cord and have it going over the structure. Now my worry is that if the rope is too tight it might collapse the structure over time, but I tried not to overdo the tightness. Anyways, I guess I worry too much.