Has anyone ever whitewashed their trees? I have a suspicion that mine were damaged last year by dehydration in March when the sun was shining and the ground was frozen. They seemed to not show any damage up until then, and temps were warmer than January for sure. I am planning on keeping them protected longer this year but might try painting one, or half of one, to see if it helps any.

I had a couple of trees with a split bark (& separated from trunk wood) on the south-west side in the deep cold weather when the afternoon sun and the sun reflection from snow heats up the south-west part of the bark. I have not whitewashed the trunks yet but use a temporary cover of cardboard around the bottom two or three feet of trunk to avoid sun heat.
So far it has worked.

That sounds like a good solution. The problem with whitewashing is the weather has to be warm for it to dry.

I could have just not noticed the damage until later. I checked the weather history and saw it went down to 8f in January.

Worse comes to worse home depot sells the corrugated plastic drain stuff .
Slit it and slip over trunk to keep sun off.
Whitewash in warmer months.

I seem to remember reading somewhere (perhaps Ray Given's site) that whitewashing was problematic, but I don't remember why.

On the benefit side... has anybody used a whitewash as a base for Tanglefoot?

~james