Gravel Road
5 year old buck +
Wow, those look amazing. Wish I would have ordered a 6 pack of the Turning Points! Oh well only a year and a half until I can order more
Apples,apples and more apples
- Thread starter Chainsaw
- Start date
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
Don't feel bad Gravel Road. Three is plenty enough to determine if the Turning Point apple tree is a fit for your property. There is only one producing Turning Point apple tree here although more are in the works. Really though, one can be enough to meet hunting goals. Have been tasting Turning Point apples throughout the month and the deer have been keeping up with the drops. The taste of each TP apple tested this month have all had a mild apple taste and a mild amount of sweetness with zero tart to it. Ones tested in a previous February had a nice zing to them. However judging from this year alone it is not a people eating apple as each one picked this month have all been hard and very dry. Whether that is due to the drought or not I do not know.Wow, those look amazing. Wish I would have ordered a 6 pack of the Turning Points! Oh well only a year and a half until I can order more
Pulled a camera card while tasting Turning Point apples and apparently the dryness is acceptable to the deer. In fact they are passing other apples to get to the Turning Point Apple Tree. Turning Point is not in a normal daytime feeding location for the bucks here but apparently this buck finds the location acceptable and the TP apples worth the risk of being out during the day or maybe he is just doing early searching for the many does that regularly visit this tree.
While this younger buck waits until just after sunset.
Whether the older buck is coming for the Turning Point apples or the does that come for the apples, one tree can do the trick just fine and three could really draw a lot of deer in. Good luck this season. Our rifle season begins today but conditions are not so great, maybe tomorrow.
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
There has been a lot of discussion and heightened interest in planting crab apple tree varieties for deer. Some of the disease resistant crabapple varieties coupled with recommended rootstocks reportedly produce good quantities of apples at a much earlier age than the few disease resistant orchard type apples available. I’m on the older age of the planting trees spectrum so the quicker producing aspect of some crabapples is important to me. Still though growing disease resistant trees from orchard type scions is ongoing here but on a much smaller scale than the crabapples. If I were a young sixty or fifty or less a full thirty or so percent of my tree growing efforts would be aimed towards growing orchard type trees.
The pictures below of full sized orchard type trees taken on our property yesterday Nov. 7 are trees my wife and I planted many years ago. They are full sized orchard type apples and they receive significant deer attention during October, November and December.
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While a good number of our wild crabapples did and are still supplying a large amount of apples in our worst or second worst drought in thirty years these planted orchard type trees did ok also. The bullet pictured for size is a 7mm.
The pictures below of full sized orchard type trees taken on our property yesterday Nov. 7 are trees my wife and I planted many years ago. They are full sized orchard type apples and they receive significant deer attention during October, November and December.
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While a good number of our wild crabapples did and are still supplying a large amount of apples in our worst or second worst drought in thirty years these planted orchard type trees did ok also. The bullet pictured for size is a 7mm.
Gravel Road
5 year old buck +
Looks fantastic! With all the weed cover, the deer must feel pretty safe while they eat apples.
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
Chainsaw ... looks great.
What orchard style apple trees would you recommend?
I am on the edge of zone 4/5. I have a couple of cortland and liberty to help with the franklin ciders. Looking for other full size apples that hand well.
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
Thanks Gravel Road. The deer are safe eating there; they haven’t had to worry about us there to date but the coyotes bother them a lot. We feel that apple trees help keep the deer on the property during the day and thus aid in getting the deer to older ages. We try to mow about half of the area each year, just enough to keep the briars and buckthorn at bay and allow us to go in and pick a few apples for dehrydating for tree stand snacks.
Lots of you have no doubt done this but for those of you that haven’t it is a super easy snack to make . The KitchenAid tool skins the Apple and cuts it into a spiral, then one cut with a knife and into the dehrydator it goes. Once dried a little cinnamon is sprinkled on them and they ready to take to the stand. They are quiet to eat, tasty and gives off a great Apple scent. They are however very addicting!
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Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
We originally planted 150 trees, ten each of fifteen varieties chosen for their late ripening dates and resistance to Cedar Apple Rust. The deer ate them all to the ground within a week. The nursery replacEd the trees and an eight ft. Fence was erected before planting the replacements. Twenty-five or so (three varieties) survived and thrived. One is the Enterprise Apple. The other two are unknown but Liberty is one of them but I can’t tell which one it is.The records are somewhere and someday I may stumble onto them.
I will have enough scions from them this year to trade for whatever you have on your property that you like. The three Varieties have survived temps to minus 35, resisted very heavy CAR, and fully resisted a fireblight infestation. Some dropped apples all the way well into January last year. Note: there could be four or five varieties but three really stand out. All of them however were very slow to fruit. They had an apple here and there from age six or so but they were in the ten year range when they starting producing noticeable quantities. Though they are never sprayed most of the apples are in great shape and quite human edible and the deer love them.
Wish I had a list of what worked but record Keeping was poorly done here back then.And for me the names don’t really matter as nameless or not only scions from the very best performers are cut for grafting.
For recommendations as to varieties that work in your area , you can definitely call Ryan at Blue Hills Wildlife Nursery. He has a handle on what works where and he is very enthusiastic in sharing his vast apple tree knowledge. And though I have only known him for almost one year, I fully trust everything he tells me about apples as how he sees it.
chummer
5 year old buck +
Dave, I can’t find a answer but I would love to know why you can grow Liberty and Enterprise and I can’t. Mine grow great and then during first winter their bark splits and falls off. I can only conclude it has something to do with the snow pack. I have tried multiple rootstocks for both with same results. Any ideas? Side note, I have hunted every weekend with my daughter and we have had a great time living camp life. No bucks yet but there are a few around. We mostly just sit and talk the whole time, we did do a 6 hour sit Saturday which I was impressed she made it that long.
Gravel Road
5 year old buck +
Oh yeah, those apple slices with cinnamon look awesome! Might have to get the wife a kitchen aide attachment for a present-lol. Is it best to remove the skin, or can you leave it on?
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
The skin is left on and the Kitchen Aide attachment takes it off completely on perfectly shaped apples and most of the skin on odd shaped apples. However some people cut the apple up and leave all the skin on. Definitely buy your wife the attachment and as a bonus get her twenty or so trees to go along with it. It is great to feed the deer but it is also a lot of fun to pick the apples and turn them into delicious treats.
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
Sounds great Jeremy. Hunting is tough right now with swirling winds. It will get good again as temps cool down and winds become more stable and we’ll get together. And I think it is that five ft. Snowpack that hangs into April that evidently Enterprise and Liberty can’t take. Having five ft.of snow so packed that one can walk on top of it is something that not many people have on their property especially in April. Due to our heavy CAR here and extra cold temperatures there are many apple trees that won’t thrive here. And due to your snowpack you have even less. It’s just how it is.
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Buckly
5 year old buck +
I remember being in Old Forge one time driving down what I thought was a road. It wasn’t It was a snowmobile trail A rod put down to check for depth under the truck was about 5 ft. So packed you could drive a 15 ton truck over it. Made me nervous As if you broke through you wouldn’t be getting out anytime soon.
Troubles Trees
5 year old buck +
I learn by asking questions so I apologize if this is a noob question bud.
CAR is a cosmetic disease that effects the appearance of apples and leaves on apple trees. Does it effect the taste of the apples and does it effect the apples appeal to deer or do they still gobble them up?
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
Troubles trees, thank you for your question, all questions are valuable and help all of us to understand more about our properties. Each tree variety handles CAR differently. Some trees have so much leaf damage some years that the leaves do Not function and zero apples are produced. On the other end of the spectrum some trees just show a few spots on their leaves or none and consistently produce tons of great apples. Here all Apples get eaten up. I have seen though in one case on a property about eight miles away where apples were still lying on the ground in the springtime. The deer apparently did not want them. I don’t think that it was a CAR event but rather just an extremely poor tasting Apple.
So I have never seen a deer not eat a apple due to CAR affects but I have seen where trees produced a few to zero apples some years due to CAR affects and there are a few trees that are hardly impacted if at all by CAR year after year even though they have high exposure to it.
Troubles Trees
5 year old buck +
Good information to know, thank you for the reply Chainsaw!
River-X
5 year old buck +
It has taken me all week to read through this thread from start to finish in my free time. Im sure glad I did though! I have tinkered with apple trees since buying my first property. Had virtually no success with 4' whips for the first three years due to my skills, mother nature and deer damage.
I eventually got a small orchard established, but i cheated. A local tree nursery had pulled and temporarily "replanted" a bunch of apple trees for landscape purposes ( tree spade removal and then lined up and root balls covered in huge piles of wood chips for the selling season). I had the company out to plant a few ornamental pears in the yard and had asked the owner if he sold apple trees that bear fruit and he said yes.
Towards late summer he had a large quantity of apple trees still on the lot with no interested buyers and he called me and asked if I would be interested in some for $200 each, installed. I told him I had to think about it. He called me three more times, once each week following the original offer. I wasnt really interested with the initial price, but by the last phone call he offered me the same trees for $50 each installed, so I said "SOLD, bring em out".
They came with two skid steers and two trailers, one with trees and the other with wood chips and within two hours I had an orchard.
I ended up with 21 trees, three varieties, all with 3" or larger diameter trunks for $1050.00
He said if I didnt buy them he would have shredded them since they cost too much to put back and care for them until next spring or something.
I eventually got a small orchard established, but i cheated. A local tree nursery had pulled and temporarily "replanted" a bunch of apple trees for landscape purposes ( tree spade removal and then lined up and root balls covered in huge piles of wood chips for the selling season). I had the company out to plant a few ornamental pears in the yard and had asked the owner if he sold apple trees that bear fruit and he said yes.
Towards late summer he had a large quantity of apple trees still on the lot with no interested buyers and he called me and asked if I would be interested in some for $200 each, installed. I told him I had to think about it. He called me three more times, once each week following the original offer. I wasnt really interested with the initial price, but by the last phone call he offered me the same trees for $50 each installed, so I said "SOLD, bring em out".
They came with two skid steers and two trailers, one with trees and the other with wood chips and within two hours I had an orchard.
I ended up with 21 trees, three varieties, all with 3" or larger diameter trunks for $1050.00
He said if I didnt buy them he would have shredded them since they cost too much to put back and care for them until next spring or something.
River-X
5 year old buck +
Sorry about the long story, but thought I would share it. Anyways, this thread has me fired up to retry my hand at actually growing apple trees again.
Question for Chainsaw...were you growing the seeds in the jugs to use as rootstock for later grafting? I was always under the impression that trees grown from seed are "unpredictable" as far as fruit was concerned. But if they grew from seed and put on fruit, as long as the deer ate them they would fill the purpose, correct?? So my question is what are the intentions behind growing the seeds?
Question for Chainsaw...were you growing the seeds in the jugs to use as rootstock for later grafting? I was always under the impression that trees grown from seed are "unpredictable" as far as fruit was concerned. But if they grew from seed and put on fruit, as long as the deer ate them they would fill the purpose, correct?? So my question is what are the intentions behind growing the seeds?
Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
That is a great head start you got there River_x and at what a great price you got them for. Great move! Not a long story at all, enjoyed it much. I grew the seeds in the jugs for two reasons, one to see if jug planting worked well for starting apple seeds here and secondly to use as possible rootstock if I had time to replant them. Trees grown from seeds will have genes from two parents and therefore will be unique in some ways even to each other somewhat. Using them as rootstock would have given the advantage of rootstock that has been bred by trees that have survived here for over sixty years. The fruit would be determined by the cuttings we would have grafted to the rootstock. The few seedlings kept over the summer grew very slowly; for this year and the foreseeable future I will be using purchased seedling rootstock. I'd prefer to grow my own but some jobs are best left to others and that may be one of them.
And the purpose for growing new trees here is two fold with the main reason being to hold apples into fall and drop them starting mid Nov. thru March to both encourage late November apple availability and feed deer apples throughout the winter. A second focus is to grow trees with heavy mid to late November drop to better hold the deer on my property for better late season hunting and so that more will have a chance to make it to their next year. Growing additional apples for here that drop in October is not needed because there are are already well over twenty-five hundred apple trees doing that each fall. If I didn't have those trees already growing apples for October drop it would be beneficial to grow trees that dropped in October as well. So your question is partially correct, if the deer ate them they would have filled a need but aren't actually needed here during October at this time.
Here a buck is heading to an apple tree that has just a few apples left. Late season deer activity like this make it all worthwhile. (Note; clock is set at summer time still.) (Second note: That one tree still holding may not have been enough to get this buck to spend his daylight time here this late in the hunting season. It is more likely the combined affect of all of the apple trees pictured in aggregate that have been dropping apples since mid summer.)
Good luck with you orchard and am looking forward to hearing about your future apple tree adventures.
And the purpose for growing new trees here is two fold with the main reason being to hold apples into fall and drop them starting mid Nov. thru March to both encourage late November apple availability and feed deer apples throughout the winter. A second focus is to grow trees with heavy mid to late November drop to better hold the deer on my property for better late season hunting and so that more will have a chance to make it to their next year. Growing additional apples for here that drop in October is not needed because there are are already well over twenty-five hundred apple trees doing that each fall. If I didn't have those trees already growing apples for October drop it would be beneficial to grow trees that dropped in October as well. So your question is partially correct, if the deer ate them they would have filled a need but aren't actually needed here during October at this time.
Here a buck is heading to an apple tree that has just a few apples left. Late season deer activity like this make it all worthwhile. (Note; clock is set at summer time still.) (Second note: That one tree still holding may not have been enough to get this buck to spend his daylight time here this late in the hunting season. It is more likely the combined affect of all of the apple trees pictured in aggregate that have been dropping apples since mid summer.)
Good luck with you orchard and am looking forward to hearing about your future apple tree adventures.
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Chainsaw
5 year old buck +
That is a good question Roy; I don't know the answer but I too enjoy seeing loaded apple tree pictures. And we can add to that pictures of apple trees in bloom and bucks visiting those same trees in the fall. The 2021 hunting season here was a great one and apples contributed to it immensely. Being one of the poorest apple years this immediate area has seen in the last thirty years, most properties did not carry many or any apples through November. Here on this property less than one percent of the apple trees carried good fruit into and through November. From what I heard other area properties also had less than one percent of their trees hitting normal production. Not surprisingly it was pretty much the same one percent of trees here that kept producing as in the other drought year we had a few years back. This put us at a significant advantage in this area given that one percent of 3,000 total trees compared to most properties with a total of fifty or less trees left us with a pretty sizeable apple crop relative to others. The resident deer were visible on the property throughout the ten weeks or so of hunting season. Additionally there were some traveling deer from other properties that visited our apples as well. Picture wise the number one single camera daytime picture taking spot on the entire property was one setup watching deer approach a particular clump of apple trees. Only one tree in the clump has apples on it and it is just to the left outside of the picture edge. Here are a few pictures from that number one camera spot;
There were enough pictures taken by this clump of apple trees to post all day long but those on this forum can "get it" from just these few pictures. Needless to say I am hyped to do some serious apple tree planting this spring. Began collecting scions three days ago. Collecting scions was slow going because all of the trees we collected from had not ever been trimmed. Though good scion wood was scarce, enough scion wood was cut from all but one tree to at least graft some trees. On one particular tree though there was not one graft-able scion on it. That tree had been dropping thru November and December and is still loaded but that is a post for another day.
There were enough pictures taken by this clump of apple trees to post all day long but those on this forum can "get it" from just these few pictures. Needless to say I am hyped to do some serious apple tree planting this spring. Began collecting scions three days ago. Collecting scions was slow going because all of the trees we collected from had not ever been trimmed. Though good scion wood was scarce, enough scion wood was cut from all but one tree to at least graft some trees. On one particular tree though there was not one graft-able scion on it. That tree had been dropping thru November and December and is still loaded but that is a post for another day.
