Landscape cloth and pumice mulch for medium/ small trees. Snow supports will be added around and over conifers with dense or sensitive foliage to prevent breakage.
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Deciduous trees will be buried right over trunks and branches that I don't want to lose to mice. Later, when it's consistently freezing daytime temps. It's been working well but only because it's cold enough that it stays frozen all winter, in warmer areas you'd probably see decay of twigs and branches by springtime.
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Bigger stuff in bigger containers gets placed together and covered with wood chips. The wood chips are inoculated with edible fungi. They don't get cleaned up in spring but raked under benches where they grow mushrooms, turn to soil quickly due to fungal activity and provide good scratching, bug and worm hunting grounds for the chickens. Spruce usually go around the perimeter, they are the ones that can handle the coldest temps of all I believe. Pics show wood chips placed between trees, more trees added, then more trees, more chips. I've got a ways to go yet. Mulch is wet enough that it will freeze solid and not be a tempting bedding material/spot for rodents.
I know of some people in pretty nasty climates who bury trees in pea gravel beds that are part of their landscaping, seems to work well for them.
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