Going all Natural/Native?

[Catscratch]

Nope - to get the native weeds and the like mother nature did it all by herself. My tall grasses where drilled and the rows that where to be indian and big-blue failed - so I essentially I have rows of switchgrass with lots of golden rod, marestail, ragweeds and all sorts of stuff mixed in. In the areas I didn't plant the grasses - mother nature simply did her thing after I turned and leveled the soil. These are both in areas that had previously been RR corn or RR beans so I was concerned about how depleted the seed bank would be......I had nothing to worry about. Now don't get me wrong - I don't have all the primo wildflowers and stuff like that, but it isn't just grass either.

My opinion is that your going to struggle turning pasture into cover without removing the existing pasture grasses AND the cows. I realize that may not be what you want to hear, but the pasture grasses create a lot of competition. The cows will eat whatever they want, so if they want to eat your tall grasses, they will. If they want to eat native weeds that come up...they will. The combination I fear would lead to a lot of frustration on your part. I understand the financial impact - so you may be best served to look into CRP type contracts that will pay you an annual rental rate for the land enrolled in the program. They have different ones and they can have various restrictions as well - so talk to a local FSA/NRCS folks and see what your options might be. I also know that pasture acres tend to limit how many head you have.... Its a balance and only you can determine what that balance needs to be. Most of us at the end of the day have bills to pay and mouths to feed. CRP was a decent solution for me, although it was limited, it was better than what I had.

Doesn't CRP have to take crop ground out of production? I remember thinking that program would be a good idea to retain some income and improve hunting at the same time, but most of my place wouldn't quality due to never having crops on it.

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[Catscratch]

Going "native" to reduce the workload is not really feasible IMHO. Years ago I decided to allow a large percentage of my property to revert to cover. It was mostly mowed hayfields when I bought it and after several years, I just stopped keeping it cut. Early on, those areas became mostly Goldenrod which became a real hot spot during the chase phase of the rut. Does would hide in it like rabbits to escape bothersome bucks.
Then, little by little, desirable species started showing up. Black and raspberry, crab apple, pokeweed, hawthorn, are among the food and cover that was naturally occurring. Deer were in it constantly.
But then came the undesirables...in the beginning it was grapevines out of control. Great cover, but they began to smother everything else.
Then came the Oriental Bittersweet, Privet and now the latest is Mile-A-Minute. None of these are native and they are consuming the trees and shrubs that I want. I still have great cover and deer do browse the undesirable stuff to some extent. But I battle the crap or it'll spread across my entire property and smother the valuable mast trees that I spent so much time and money to establish. I spend more time, money and chemicals fighting that stuff than you can imagine. And I'm slowly losing the battle. It would be far worse if I quit fighting, so I can't bring myself to stop. Someday I'll be too old to continue the fight and I'll have to surrender to the invaders.
So, my advice is that if you want to leave some areas to revert to a "natural" state, be aware that things you may not want will eventually move in. You might want to isolate those areas to be able to continue getting a machine in for maintenance and containment.

Great point! Invasive are something I fight all the time! Johnsongrass is controlled with cattle and gly, locust, and lesbideza get attacked with chemicals, and a variety of other things pop up from time to time to battle with. I can see what you are saying about if your place becomes to unruly to get in there and do work. Any number of things could take over and cause a monoculture that isn't worth a damn. I'll certainly keep that in mind.

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[Catscratch]

One key is maintaining early successional habitat as part of the picture. Fire is a great tool for that. You can delay the onset of a canopy for quite a while, but eventually nature cycles. A good plan will include multidecadal timbering rotation plan so that you have different section in different stages of succession. With this approach food plots become truly supplemental as they should be rather than a primary food source. It takes a lot of time to implement a broad habitat plan. Our food plots were an emergency room type intervention when we first bought the farm. It was a fast expanding program. As the big picture habitat plan is coming online, many food plots will slowly be converted to wildlife openings with permaculture (native or otherwise).

Thanks,

jack

This is ultimately what I'm after. I love to plot but love habitat to. I find myself learning and studying noncrop plants pretty intently. Hundreds of thousands of acres out here is mostly grass with some brush and cover in the creek bottoms and draws. Crop dusters hit chunks of land spraying broadleafs to kill weeds and trees (anything that isn't grass). I look at our place and and foresee an island of diversity.

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[yoderjac]

Doesn't CRP have to take crop ground out of production? I remember thinking that program would be a good idea to retain some income and improve hunting at the same time, but most of my place wouldn't quality due to never having crops on it.

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USDA has other programs beside CRP. We were enrolled in the EQUIP program a few years ago and it worked well. They have another one that we are looking at right now that is more oriented to maintaining best practices. It can be applied to crop, timber, or other land.

Cat,

Most of us don't subscribe to the KISS approach when we should.

It's been said several times over the years it's better to plant , pamper and protect 5-6 apple trees than to plant 100 and not take care of them. That adage goes a long ways with other habitat work.

If you don't have the time , take a look around at what you do have and see if you can improve it. Maybe release some younger oaks from competition. Maybe toss acorns like JBird said.

Just remember to keep it simple and don't stress.

I'm not sure fully buy the concept that less with better care is a better approach. It really depends on your objectives. If your objective is attracting deer to a specific spot for hunting, your approach works well. However, for QDM I think scale is required. If your objective is to improve the local herd as measured by body weight and antler size, you need to have influence over enough land to have an impact. If you let young bucks walk but your buck's home range extends significantly on to neighboring properties where young bucks are shot, you will not be able to get enough age for improved antler size. By the same token, if you improve the food quality on a few acres but your deer's home range extends well off your land you have less impact on the herd.

Also keep in mind that the food plots we plant are usually a fraction of a deer's diet even if the entire home range is encompassed by your property. A good rule of thumb is that in order to have a measureable difference in body weight or antler size, you need to put quality food on about 1% of the range. While home ranges vary with habitat, 1,000 acres is a fairly good average. So that translates into 10 acres of food. The impact becomes significant at 3% (30 acres) and probably hits the law of diminishing returns after about 5% (50 acres).

While a few well maintained apple trees can produce a lot of apples, the amount of food they produce is not on the same scale. This is not to say they can't be part of the equation. I'm starting to incorporate them myself. However, I think when the objective is improving herd health, increasing volume and selecting species that require little if any maintenance is key.

Having said that, if you take it to extremes it can backfire. I tried pushing the limits by starting trees indoors in the winter and planting them from 18s directly in the spring in high volume with no protection (less attractive species for browse, persimmons and the like). I had very little success. By transplanting them into 1 gal and planting them later in the spring, the success rates went up. However, keeping them for one season with two container transplants 18s to 1 gal to 3 gal RB2s and planting them in the fall offered much higher success rates with much larger trees much faster. Obviously, the longer I keep trees and the larger the containers the higher the cost in money and time and the fewer I can plant each year.

So, I think it is a balance. I want to plant enough volume of low maintenance trees to have a measureable impact but I don't want the volume so high that the success rate in the field drops too much.

I think the best investment of my time is up front in selecting species that will perform well with little if any maintenance. That is the driver behind native/naturalized species. They are well adapted, but not the only species I'm willing to consider.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Jack,

Did you read the part where Cat, was sick of spending all the time protecting the babitat work he's doing. In his case less, but, better maintained is better.

Yes I did, but again it depends on objective. Fewer but high maintenance trees can be a lot of work but of little value if herd health is the objective. High volumes of low maintenance trees require an initial investment of time but don't have the on-going maintenance cost. If the objective is simply attraction for hunting, I think your advice of fewer high quality well maintained trees is spot on.

Another thing to consider is how the habitat work is being done. For example planting trees, native or otherwise is a high up-front cost activity and the benefits are generally not realized for many years. One thing we did recently was a commercial thinning of pine, a clear-cut of some low quality hardwoods, put in firebreaks, sprayed herbicide, and conducted controlled burns. It was a lot of work, but most of the work for us was planning and coordinating. The timber was sold for a significant profit. The firebreaks, herbicide application, and controlled burns were contracted out. The USDA EQUIP program covers most of the cost of these activities. We did have a small out of pocket expense but it was small. These were sizable. There was over 100 acres of pines thinned and about 20 of hardwoods clear-cut. The opening of the pine canopy along with burning the ground debris let sunlight hit the forest floor and produced more quality deer food than all of for food plots and tree plantings combined. This was very low cost and low physical labor habitat improvement with large scale near-term benefits. The clear-cuts will become bedding areas in the longer run maintained by fire.

I compare this to planting trees or some of the hinge cutting I've done and the physical labor involved for those activities was much greater just like food plots and the benefits were small by comparison.

Not everyone is in a situation that can use this strategy. I'm just saying that the underlying objectives drive the approaches and techniques we use.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

I'll focus on habitat and let those who prefer to focus on me do so... :rolleyes:

NH, You are absolutely right. Folks who are fortunate enough to have agriculture cover the feeding aspect can benefit a lot from a few well maintained trees. I wasn't suggesting that Cat do anything. I was referring to the broader point. I realize you were providing specific advice to Cat. I was keeping in mind that there are many who read for each of us that post. I wasn't suggesting your advice for Cat was not appropriate but that I don't buy the general concept of less better maintained is a better approach in general. I don't know enough about Cat's situation to give him specific advice.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Jack,

50+ well maintained apple trees equals 500 bushel of apples. What are you going to do with them? If you let them drop and rot you create a haven for yellow jackets , disease, and other pests. You can hope the deer eat them all. Make cider and clean them up which takes a lot more time and time spent in the orchard in the fall isn't probably a great idea from a deer hunting perspective. You could hope for bear to come and help and then you create more problems. Those 50 apple trees spread out over an acre or two are harder to hunt than a few as well. I see a lot of people starting their orchards on a grand scale without realizing the work and time that is needed on them. Learned that from Ben many years ago.

I'll never have 50+ well maintained apple trees. My move toward permaculture focuses on low long-term maintenance. Apples were fairly low on my list because of the maintenance. My first and biggest bang for the buck effort was persimmons. They grow native on my property. Bark grafting female scions from many named and unnamed varieties with various drop times to male trees will increase my soft mast production over a much longer time at a low cost with almost zero long-term maintenance. '

Apples are fairly low on my list, but I've just started with them. Again, minimal maintenance is my objective. I started growing crabapples from seed. I've grafted a few of these to disease resistant varieties like Arkansas black and Black Twig. Most I'll just let go and see what I get. I've also grafted a couple DR varieties to M111 to compare the difference. In all cases, I don't plan to spray or prune trees much. I may do an initial pruning for general form but I won't be doing anything for the trees in the long-term. That is one reason I'm leaning heavily toward crabs when it comes to apples.

As for planting strategy, my strategy is to have small wildlife openings 1/4 - 1/2 acres. These are placed strategically across the farm relative to bedding areas so either the plot or travel route can be hunted. Each plot will contain clusters of different tree species. I may have a cluster of apples, a cluster of pawpaw, a cluster of Allegheny Chinquapin, and a cluster of persimmons in the same plot. This is just an example. I'm also working with Jujube, chestnut, Seguin, DCO, Filbert, and I'll probably add more types. I'll mow the clover base as needed. My intention is to keep some form of food in each plot as close to year rounds as possible.

Maya and others have convinced me that I can get some benefit from well selected varieties of apples without regular maintenance once they are established so I've started adding them to my list. While this approach seems to be well suited for my situation, it is not likely a fit for all. I'm in zone 7a on a farm that is primarily in pines. I have close to 20 acres of food plots today. Both the cost and time are probably not sustainable for me in the long run. I'm also asking myself how quickly BCC of my land will diminish if I suddenly stop my efforts. The permaculture approach allows it to change at a slow rate allowing the herd to adapt. If I stop my current food plots the food value will diminish more quickly. The mast trees I'm using are well suited for my zone but may not be an option for folks in other locations.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Boll Weevil]

Thought I had a plan for the apple trees going in the ground this week but after reading this, I'm not quite as certain. Still thinking about spreading them out across the farm in pairs rather that a single orchard. My goal is more to provide additional food sources across a larger area to more deer (scale), rather than drawing them to a specific hunting location.

 

[Tap]

Thought I had a plan for the apple trees going in the ground this week but after reading this, I'm not quite as certain. Still thinking about spreading them out across the farm in pairs rather that a single orchard. My goal is more to provide additional food sources across a larger area to more deer (scale), rather than drawing them to a specific hunting location.

There is a school of thought that there is a benefit to spreading plots and mast in small pockets because it tends to keep bucks busy checking them out. Large, single food sources are quickly checked for does and bucks may move on to other properties.
Intricate layouts of food plots requires a buck to run around checking them...on your property. The idea is to keep them active within your property and not on the neighbor's place.

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[Tap]

There is a school of thought that there is a benefit to spreading plots and mast in small pockets because it tends to keep bucks busy checking them out. Large, single food sources are quickly checked for does and bucks may move on to other properties.
Intricate layouts of food plots requires a buck to run around checking them...on your property. The idea is to keep them active within your property and not on the neighbor's place.

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And I will add to that... some dominant does are very territorial and don't tolerate other family groups hanging around. There is sound reasoning for separation and screening of feeding areas. The same can be said for bedding areas. Small pockets of food sources that aren't within sight of each other and bedding areas spreads the herd, making the most of your acreage.

Another reason for spreading fruit trees is it guards against patchy frost pockets.

For what we do as deer hunters and managers, I can't see much of a reason to have a single orchard of 21 trees over 3 separate orchards of 7 trees.

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[j-bird]

Doesn't CRP have to take crop ground out of production? I remember thinking that program would be a good idea to retain some income and improve hunting at the same time, but most of my place wouldn't quality due to never having crops on it.

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I know I have seen some projects related to livestock pasture - it never hurts to ask......worse thing they can do is say "no".

 

[Catscratch]

I know I have seen some projects related to livestock pasture - it never hurts to ask......worse thing they can do is say "no".

I'll have to run into town and ask some questions one of these days.
Thanks.

 

[Bc4abc]

I've only been at this a year and a half and already I can see the folly in babying all these trees ..I've planted apple, pear, persimmon, crab, chestnuts, put in 4 food plots and rid the land of invasive AU. I also grew 20 trees from seed at home and will be transplanting them this winter. I've only lost three trees but at what cost? the amount of watering, babying, worry and cost, to keep them going during a mini drought and to keep deer and bear from tearing them up is crazy and drastically took time away from other projects...(my property is 1 1/2 hours away)
Changes in philosophy that i have made going forward are as follows:
1. I have made the decision to not plant any more apple or peach trees as they are to disease prone and finicky to grow and even if they do great, a late frost can wipe out your efforts for a whole season. Will focus on Pear and persimmon from now on.
2. trees that i plant will go in the ground with at most a tube around them and let the chips fall where they may...no watering, cages or babying. Let mother nature decide who makes it.
3. I will be doing a lot of direct seeding and one year old seedlings from the state forestry dept, (cheap!) put in the ground with a dibble bar, walk away, and see what happens.
4. extra time acquired from spending less time on trees will be spent on efforts to get my perennial food plots solid and lush and building bedding / nesting cover.....most bang for your effort.

 

[yoderjac]

I've only been at this a year and a half and already I can see the folly in babying all these trees ..I've planted apple, pear, persimmon, crab, chestnuts, put in 4 food plots and rid the land of invasive AU. I also grew 20 trees from seed at home and will be transplanting them this winter. I've only lost three trees but at what cost? the amount of watering, babying, worry and cost, to keep them going during a mini drought and to keep deer and bear from tearing them up is crazy and drastically took time away from other projects...(my property is 1 1/2 hours away)
Changes in philosophy that i have made going forward are as follows:
1. I have made the decision to not plant any more apple or peach trees as they are to disease prone and finicky to grow and even if they do great, a late frost can wipe out your efforts for a whole season. Will focus on Pear and persimmon from now on.
2. trees that i plant will go in the ground with at most a tube around them and let the chips fall where they may...no watering, cages or babying. Let mother nature decide who makes it.
3. I will be doing a lot of direct seeding and one year old seedlings from the state forestry dept, (cheap!) put in the ground with a dibble bar, walk away, and see what happens.
4. extra time acquired from spending less time on trees will be spent on efforts to get my perennial food plots solid and lush and building bedding / nesting cover.....most bang for your effort.

Very interesting. We seem to be going in opposite directions. I used to have lush food plots. I'm finding ugly food plots with less attention are just as effective with much less effort. I've been putting that time into growing and planting mast trees. The idea being that it is a lot of work up front now when I'm young, but the low maintenance trees I've selected will get no maintenance as they mature and produce. My biggest bang for the buck tree effort was grafting native persimmons. As for growing trees, I started with most of my focus being on volume and almost none on protection. With a few years under my belt, while volume is still important to meet my objective, I've taken more of a balanced position planting fewer bigger trees with more effort and protection per tree. Because of the maintenance, apples were low on my list of tree, however, Maya and others have convinced me that with smart variety selection and heavy reliance on crabapples, they can produce wildlife quality fruit without all the long-term maintenance we associate with apples in general. I'm still a bit skeptical, but I've recently added apples to my plan. My long-term plan is to reduce food plots and begin to look at and maintain many of them as wildlife openings with some mast trees in them.

It is funny how different folks with different situations find different paths that work best for them.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Tap]

I've only been at this a year and a half and already I can see the folly in babying all these trees ..I've planted apple, pear, persimmon, crab, chestnuts, put in 4 food plots and rid the land of invasive AU. I also grew 20 trees from seed at home and will be transplanting them this winter. I've only lost three trees but at what cost? the amount of watering, babying, worry and cost, to keep them going during a mini drought and to keep deer and bear from tearing them up is crazy and drastically took time away from other projects...(my property is 1 1/2 hours away)
Changes in philosophy that i have made going forward are as follows:
1. I have made the decision to not plant any more apple or peach trees as they are to disease prone and finicky to grow and even if they do great, a late frost can wipe out your efforts for a whole season. Will focus on Pear and persimmon from now on.
2. trees that i plant will go in the ground with at most a tube around them and let the chips fall where they may...no watering, cages or babying. Let mother nature decide who makes it.
3. I will be doing a lot of direct seeding and one year old seedlings from the state forestry dept, (cheap!) put in the ground with a dibble bar, walk away, and see what happens.
4. extra time acquired from spending less time on trees will be spent on efforts to get my perennial food plots solid and lush and building bedding / nesting cover.....most bang for your effort.

I tend to lean more towards Yoder's approach. I'm finding that if I'm going to put a tree in the ground, it needs to be done right or not at all.
I've planted quite a few fruit trees, evergreens, and shrubs over the years with good intentions of coming back the next day, or week, or month, to put weed barrier down and cage them. And very often, I never got to it and the trees failed because of 3 reasons...buck damage, browse damage and/or being outcompeted by weeds and such.
My next approach was to protect newly planted trees with tubes. I really haven't had great luck with that, either. I've lost many trees in tubes to mouse damage. The little SOBs get in the tubes, make nests and gird the tree.
IMO, plant only the number of trees that you can handle doing it properly, and complete the job immediately instead of waiting 'till you get a "Round Tuitt".

 

[yoderjac]

And to put a finer point on what I'm doing, it is kind of a hybrid approach for volume and care. I'm starting planting nuts and seeds as usual. I'm selecting the best plants from 18s and transplanting them to 1 gal RB2s (as many as I have containers). I'm now culling anything that doesn't make it into 1 gals. I'm then selecting the fastest growing trees from the 1 gals in late spring or early summer and transplanting them to 3 gals (as many as I have containers). For most of the 3 gals, I'm providing protection and weed mats, depending on the kind of tree. I'm considering the 1 gals as my "duds". I'm still planting them but with no protection or weed mats. If they make it great, if not, so be it.

As for protection, I still don't have a good feel for the sweet spot and it is changing. I know planting from 18s is not worth the time. Our deer densities are changing as is our habitat as we pursue our program. Trees that need protection one year may do just fine with no protection the next. Each year, I'm trying to judge based on our deer numbers and habitat how much protection each tree species needs. The only trees I'm fully protecting with cages are pome (apples and pears).

So, I'm not fully in the volume camp or the few trees with everything done right camp. I'm hovering between them.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[TreeDaddy]

I am in both camps

I thoroughly enjoy going container route and currently have a beer fridge full of acorns, chestnuts,persimmon seeds,etc to start next spring

I also can't resist driving around town collecting all sorts of acorns to direct seed

surveyor flags are "TreeDaddy duct tape" and I have hundreds scattered around the property

follow 2 rules:

1) keep planting
2) no complaining

bill

 

[Bowsnbucks]

My philosophy for tree planting is varied - depending on the tree variety and the BIG need to have some survive in certain locations. If we need cover badly in an area, I'll cage some trees like spruce, hawthorn, & fir so deer can't browse them and they get growing with no set-backs. But in other areas where the need for cover isn't as great, I just plant numbers and let the chips fall for those trees.

As for apple, crab, and pear trees - if we don't cage them.......... they're goners. Why spend money and time planting only to have them get clobbered ?? Makes no sense to me. I'd rather do the planting once - correctly - and be done with it. Weed barrier cloth, screening the trunks, cages, and pea-sized gravel covering the cloth has been a " once-and-done " solution for our location. Other than throwing down some fertilizer and a few sprays, we just sit back and watch the progress !! :)

 

[Catscratch]

I guess I'm in both camps too. I'm having a blast planting crabs, apples, and pears. Every one of those gets a cage, screen, and water when they need it. I'm only doing 5-8 a yr of those so doing it right isn't an issue. It won't be long before the first one's I planted won't need as much care as the new one's and the efforts will shift.
I planted 46 Sawtooth and 12 Chestnuts one day this fall. I caged some of them but didn't have the time and resources to do all of them. These are trees that I grew from seed, transplanted to bigger pots, and basically babied them for most of a yr. It stresses me out that these trees will most likely be eaten. If I had planted 200 cedar tree seeds and walked away I probably wouldn't stressed at all if some of them didn't make it.
I'm going to have to cut down on the trees I care about and redirect that energy into stuff that can survive on it's own.

 

[TreeDaddy]

My one thing I have learned this fall......."Acorns rule"

My protein stations seeing little use and fall plots look picturesque

My wife killed 4.5 yo 10pt . His little belly full of water oak,willow oak acorns in various stage of digestion

No "green" foliage i could discern

bill
PS we don't hunt protein stations. They are used for surveys, and supplemental nutrition