Please post how you winterize your Inground plants and how successful it was. This will be my first year winter protecting and I'm looking for good ideas. Thanks!

Last fall,
Waited for the first freeze,
folded the branches close to the trunk,
wrapped the tree with geotextile,
dug a trench, laid the tree in it,
put another textile to know where it is in the spring
an covered with soil,

no problem in zone 5,
with hardy chicago

next year, i'll be visting home depot and buying some foam pipe insulations. just put them around trunk and branches and tape them loosely. i seen a picture here somewhere.. not sure how good that will be but our winter here is mild and it seems to work in korea.

We tie the branches up, stuff the branches full of dry leaves, then cover with one layer of blankets and one of tarps. Works well, but can be labor intensive.

The guy across the street has made a box out of firring strips and those 8'X4' blue insulation foam that appears to just screw together. My mother-in-law's tree is way too big for that, but when mine are a little larger I may go that route.

Still my favorite idea sent to me by a forum member:

Jon,

What's on top of that rig? I guess they dont need air circulation?

I bunch together the branches and tie them up.  I then surround the fig with a wire cage and pack it with straw. Then I surround the cage with card board boxes (open up an flatten).  I then again pack it with straw.  Finally I cover the entire thing with visqueen.  Done

Prune back branches tie them up as best as possible. then i put on heavy mulch ring on root area. stuff openings with leaves or straw. and cover with plastic barrels that have been cut to size. put cinder block on top to keep from blowing over. on my larger trees same method except instead of barrel or drum i wrap them in old carpet (from the trash) then a plastic tarp and cover the top with tree pot and cinder block or tie the pot on so it does not blow away. smaller potted trees go into the heated (to 32 degrees) and insulated fig storage room on the side of my garage. last year first time had trees gurdled by field mice so this year moth balls will be added to trunk area on all trees.

slingha,

The insulation wrapping protects from cold, and the rest was designed to protect the insulation from moisture intrusion. Wood sides, with a plastic wrap.

I bought a product called a "shrub jacket".  I tie up the branches, place the shrub jacket (essentially glorified burlap with some rain resistance) around it, and stuff it with leaves from the fall.  All of my first-year in-ground trees survived though some suffered some dieback, I think due to some late freezes after a very warm early spring.  

Of course, I also mulched a very small one very heavily and didn't offer any other protection, and it also survived (though it froze back almost to the base where the mulch was protecting it).  It was my experiment.  If we get a winter with temps around zero, that'll be the real test.

Has anyone given any thought to using a concrete tube wrapped in burlap?

Dave brings up a good point: if you have a decent number of trees, you want a good balance of protection versus prep time.  Another consideration is storage of protection materials.  My shrub jackets pack up pretty small and the leaves I use as insulation will simply go on a compost pile or become mulch at the end of the winter.  If you have 10+ trees, buying and storing barrels or other large bulky protection materials may be impractical and unsightly (though I do like the plastic barrel concept for ease of application).

I've never seen any studies on the effectiveness of one protection method versus another.  That'd be interesting to see.

What I do it tie all the branches up first, then wrap with burlap or a product called better than burlap, both seem to work the same for me.  I will then drive stakes around the tree, 4 of them.   I then put soil around the base of the tree or coconut coir to mulch the base.  I will then wrap the stakes with burlap, this leaves my space to shove leaves  or straw into, I go about 8-12 inches thick on this then I tie the stakes at the top together to form a "Tee-pee".  I then wrap bubble insulation around the whole thing twice and cover with a tarp, there is a hole at the top to let air out and then I put a bucket on top to keep water out.

I do also put a box of rodent poison inside the whole thing before I start, so far no problems but one neighbour lost all his to mice last year. 

Hopefully I remember to take pictures when I do it this year, but so far on newly planted trees, I loose about 6 inches or so of the tender growth. but it's not too bad, even the 1 gallon tree that was only about 5 months old that I planted last year survived half way up the soil line and I didn't protect it as well, it has since bee moved to another house of someone who likes that fig.

My cousin in the Fun Center of Ohio says his cousin throws a blanket over the in-ground tree, ties it down and runs a light bulb to it.

Has anyone tried the cellulose insulation, its just recycled paper (85-87%) then they add 'natural additives" to it  It's supposed to repel rodents and have a r value for 3.8 per inch of thicknees.  For 8-10 dollars a 25 lbs bag I am thinking this might be a good idea for me to use on my trees and I was wondering if anyone had tried it or had any issues with it before.

My tree protection last year...
- add a couple of inches of shredded leaves around the base for protection of roots
- some pruning and bundling of limbs with string
- wrap with old carpet held on by a rope with opening left at top
- wrap with a white tarp, again a small opening at the top. 
- bucket placed over the top 
On a couple of occasions in the early Spring on days that I knew were going to be warm I took the bucket off the so the heat could escape.  I think a white colored tarp also helps keep the temperature on warm sunny days from getting too high.  I also had some mothballs in a container at the base of the tree for rodent protection.

Steve

Ive never tried this before but what if you tie back the tree like you would do normally and go to like a salvation army or used clothing etc and get a couple of used goose down feather skiing type jackets put them around the tree and zip them up and just find a way to keep them from slipping down the tree zip tie or rope etc ?? Let the bottom one hang so you can cover with dirt and pull the arms up and zip tie to the tree and then slide the next on over the arms and so on until you get to the top. There water and wind resistant with insulation allready installed

Here's the way I did my Hardy Chicago this year.   Last year all I did was put a trash can on top and it died down to 6-8".   This year I wanted a little more protection so I can have a taller plant next year.   I may put a blue tarp over it as well to keep the inside from warming up.

Here is what it looked like in May 2012 and July 2012.   Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of what it looked like in the winter being covered by the 30 gallon green plastic trash can, but you can imagine it.   There was a 6-12" gap between the lip of the can to the ground too.   I probably got lucky due to the mild winter we had, but I didn't want to take the chance this year.

All my other trees are in pots and are going inside for the winter.

Good luck.