Hawthorn,hackberry advice? Expieriences?

Angus 1895

5 year old buck +
Hello
anyone here have been growing hawthorn and or hackberry?
 
I have both on my place naturally hawthorn can make some thickets so it’s ok for cover. Hackberry produces lots of berries that the song birds probably eat. I personally like hackberry as yard trees. The leaves aren’t a huge fall problem they just sort of degrade to nothing quickly. Wildlife value on both in my opinion is low. I wouldn’t plant them I think there are better alternatives.
 
Hackberry is not a bad option. They grow fast, tough/hardy. With a tree tube I have grown some. I usually plant oaks, but quick grower if you take care of them.
 
I have plenty of mature, wild hawthorn along wood edges. Ones by me drop fruit and bare in Sept. Nonfactor for deer but likely favored by song and tweety birds. There are various ones that hold into fall better like washington hawthorn. Think bowsnbucks and some of MI crowd have positive things to say about those.

Tried hackberry in zone 4b almost zone 4a. They couldn't "hack" it. Neither could mulberry
 
In my mind, hackberry is a 'trash' tree. I'd rather have almost anything else except - sweetgum, elm, boxelder, or honeylocust.
Plenty of native cockspur hawthorns here... I've dug a few out of the edge of pastures and grafted mayhaws onto them. Grafted a couple of pears onto cockspur hawthorn back around 2001... still alive, but really dwarfed...only about 8 ft tall.
 
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In my experience, hackberry is next to worthless, along with sweetgum in regards to value to deer. On my place hackberry has a tendency to mono-culture in sapling thickets, choking out native forage.
 
Hackberry makes decent firewood, but that's about it. They are a pain to have in the yard too. Birds eat the berries, then pass them in all the wind breaks and bushes. I usually have to go in with a saw and roundup to kill them 3 or 4 times a year or they overtake the good trees. If you don't use chemical they just grow right back.
 
It probably varies by region, but Washington hawthorn has been a winner for us. Not as a DEER tree necessarily, but as thicker, "limb-y" shorter-growing trees that produce loads of red berries that turkeys, grouse, and other birds love. Here - they draw grouse like magnets. The dense, thorny limbs make great bird nesting cover. Limbs get more dense as the tree grows. Having birds nesting close to our apple trees provides free insect-eaters to keep bad bug numbers down. Deer only seem to browse the new, tender shoots on limb tips (no thorns there) within reach, so I cage them until they're about 7 ft. tall. Once the tops get above deer reach, it's game on. They need lots of sunlight to produce lots of those red berries. The dropped berries sprout new FREE seedlings readily, so you get a thicker patch of them - or you can transplant them to other locations. FWIW.
 
No grouse here, so...
I've been meaning to try high-working some of the cockspur hawthorns at the edge of the woods to pears, just to see how that works, 'cause I know it's compatible with at least some pear varieties... we sold the cows in 2019, so only the wildlife will have access to fruits, and I won't have to worry about cows tearing pear grafts out... 'cuz you could definitely see a 'browse line', as high as the cows could reach, in the 40 ft of woods inside the pasture fences.
 
My small farm 30 acres is gravity irrigated. The irrigation canals leak horribly into a low lying area. I think hackberry might be the ticket for that area of flooding. I plan on using Washington hawthorns for fence line privacy type areas.
 
My small farm 30 acres is gravity irrigated. The irrigation canals leak horribly into a low lying area. I think hackberry might be the ticket for that area of flooding. I plan on using Washington hawthorns for fence line privacy type areas.
Washington hawthorns make a dandy fence once they get growing. Man or beast won't want to walk into those thorns.
 
Does this look like a hawthorn? If so I'm debating grafting a pear onto it just for the heck of it. This is the only one I've noticed on my place. IMG_0654.jpgIMG_0653.jpgIMG_0652.jpg
 
In my experience, hackberry is next to worthless, along with sweetgum in regards to value to deer. On my place hackberry has a tendency to mono-culture in sapling thickets, choking out native forage.
Turkeys like Hackberry. We hinge some, but I actually like them in MN or Iowa. I don’t go out of my way to plant them, as I prefer oaks.
 
My farm is being managed for whitetails only, I do not care about turkeys, so I cut down hackberry trees if I have any at all other use for the space. There are enough around that I’ll never eliminate them, but they are on my “junk” list for deer along with sassafras, elm, hickory, maple and osage orange.


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On my land, beavers like Hackberry too. But that is a entirely different issue/problem. I am a big fan of haws for cover. I like a few Hackberry for diversity but that is about it.
 
I got my hackberry seeds today!

soaking them for 12 hours or so, then I am gonna stratification on some for 30 days. Plant some in my cold room in pots.

what I am hopeful is they can grow in my arid areas along the road where I don’t flood irrigate.

and they can grow where the waste water accumulates and tolerate a alkaline ph.
 
In my area of Minnesota, we see Bur oak, hackberry and Aspen in the same stands. With some ash.

They can grow to be a very large tree!
 
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