how many apple trees?

[JoshAnderson]

how many apple trees do i really need? i see some people planting a ton of trees and with my land i dont have any real big openings i have about 6-7 acres of food plots so would 4-6 apple trees be enough?

 

[chickenlittle]

Josh, what do you want the apple trees to do for you? Or another way to ask, when do you want apples on the ground for deer? The number of trees and number of varieties to plant depends on what your goals are.

 

[JoshAnderson]

Josh, what do you want the apple trees to do for you? Or another way to ask, when do you want apples on the ground for deer? The number of trees and number of varieties to plant depends on what your goals are.

ideally id like them to drop in October to kind of supplement my food plots, and just in case if for some reason i cant put plots in one year i still have some food. because there isnt alot of food around. there is one soybean feild 3 miles away and another one probably 4-5 miles away and thats it and the neighbors kind of do food plots but one like 1/2 of rye.

 

[JoshAnderson]

Where are you located? Apple drop time varies by location

very northwestern minnesota like 10 miles from canada

 

[JoshAnderson]

So either zone 3a or 3b. The further west you are the likelier you'd be 3b.

That will limit the number of apple varieties you can grow. Any orchards in the area?

i dont think anyone has an orchard around.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Stu - Would Dolgo crab and maybe apples such as Norland, Haralson, Parkland, or Prairie Magic grow up where Josh Anderson is from ?? All those apples are rated extremely hardy to zone 3. Maybe even Kerr - apple / crab cross. It's a cross between Dolgo and Haralson. You know the climate up that way.

 

[Powder]

By no means am I an expert but I think you should do what you are comfortable with. After all this is a hobby! If the area is only big enough for a couple trees, then do that. If your budget only allows for a certain number, do that. As much as we all want it done yesterday growing trees is not something that happens overnight. Make sure that whatever you plant has what it needs to be pollinated or it won't matter how many you plant. You can always add more in the future as time, space and budget allow.

 

[Charman03]

A lot of us started just wanting a "few" trees. Goodluck with that lol. Once you start it's hard to stop. I foresee a few acres of orchard in your future

 

[Buckly]

how many apple trees do i really need? i see some people planting a ton of trees and with my land i dont have any real big openings i have about 6-7 acres of food plots so would 4-6 apple trees be enough?

I have 4 plots with 6 apple trees in each, 1 plot has 10 and another has 12 apple trees in it. Oh by the way, I also have another 150 or so mature apples scattered about the 120 acres. There's another 100 across the road. Did I mention I'm planting some more next year. I have apples on the ground from July to February. The deer will eat every last apple from these trees.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Josh - Like Charman said at post #13 - once you start ........ your hooked. Stu, Aerospacefarmer, Crazy Ed and others were saying the same thing a few years back on here. I planned on about 12 new trees at most when I started ( and posting on here ). I'm at 67 trees as I type this !! Call me sucker. :oops: :) You'll become an addict too. You'll get to daydreaming about what new apples to try and where to plant them.

 

[Buckly]

In the area I'm in we have about 80 per square mile. On my particular 120 I have at present 5 doe groups and about 10 different yearling bucks, 1 two year old and 1 mature buck. Usually once the rut kicks in all the yearlings will disperse and 5 or 6 new will arrive and usually another 2-3 older bucks move in. Although some years I've had as many as 6 move in. The doe groups seem to remain pretty stable.

 

[Buckly]

And I'm envious of the Midwest guys! LOL. There were many years of brown it's down around here, drive and blast I called it. Fortunately neighbors are being more selective now even with liberal tags, and a lot of the old timers are gone. It's definitely a different atmosphere and people also understand that land is expensive to own and not just for people to ram around on other peoples property. There have always been apples here and I'm sure well over a hundred years. The climate is just about perfect for apples also. I think it really helps hold the deer. Corn is real good also but once it's harvested the apples rule and the deer can't get enough.

 

[H20fwler]

how many apple trees do i really need? i see some people planting a ton of trees and with my land i dont have any real big openings i have about 6-7 acres of food plots so would 4-6 apple trees be enough?

Sure.

I try and plant like others here, I want them to drop fruit from Sept-Dec or later so look into varieties that grow well in your area. Protecting your trees from mice/voles/rabbits/deer is a bigger expense than the trees but well worth it. It's addictive planting them and a great off season thing to mess around with...I also recommend pear trees.

 

[yoderjac]

ideally id like them to drop in October to kind of supplement my food plots, and just in case if for some reason i cant put plots in one year i still have some food. because there isnt alot of food around. there is one soybean feild 3 miles away and another one probably 4-5 miles away and thats it and the neighbors kind of do food plots but one like 1/2 of rye.

I'd first step back and look at broader objectives. When you talk about feeding deer, it sound like you may have thoughts of providing measureable benefit to the health of the local herd. Presuming you are listing the only quality foods in the area, I doubt you are working with enough acreage for this. Unless you are unusually gifted we a lot of high quality native foods you didn't list, in-season attraction is probably a more realistic objective than feeding deer.

(This is not to say that converting 6 acres to quality foods don't benefit the herd. It does. It just won't have enough impact to measure the difference in terms of body weight or antler growth. To have a measureable impact on the local herd you need to convert about 1% of the home range of a deer to quality food and at 3% that impact becomes significant. Home ranges vary a bit across the country depending on habitat, but 1,000 acres is probably an average rough estimate. That would be 10-30 acres of quality food).

If I'm incorrect with my assumptions about your situation and you really are trying to feed deer, a few apple trees won't come close to compensating for 6-7 acres of food plots.

I am working toward moving toward a mast tree based permaculture and reducing food plots. The idea is to have wildlife openings with mast producing trees that have a nominal clover base infiltrated by native weeds. I'm looking for low long-term maintenance with a wide variety of mast dropping all throughout the year. I won't eliminate food plots but reduce my acreage. Apples were pretty low on my list because of the maintenance requirements for good production. A tree taking up resources but not producing a volume of fruit won't offset what I could produce with a food plot. By the same token a tree which produces volume but requires a lot of maintenance time won't achieve my goal of permaculture. I'm just now adding a few disease resistant apple varieties and crabs.

If you goal really is attraction for hunting, the number of trees may depend on your deer density. The apples from a few trees will be a great attractant but may not last long. There are lots of other mast producing trees besides apples. As others have said, consider what trees might be the best fit for your environment. I'm not in your area, so I'll leave the suggestions on specific trees or varieties to others. I'm just trying to encourage you to step back and think about things from a bigger perspective.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

A mature apple tree well taken care of will produce 10+ bushel of apples each year. A pickup full us around 15 bushel so do the math.

It's better to plant 5 or 6 trees and take care of them well tge. To plant 70 and not take care of them.

When you do the math, and look at the resources consumed, availability of the food, nutritional quality of the food and all aspects, most mast producing trees won't compete with ag crops. Think about a perennial clover plot. It can produce high quality forage for more months of the year than any tree. Also, deer are browsers not grazers. Production that doesn't end up in the stomach of a deer may be beneficial to other wildlife but does not improve the quality of the local herd. We also need to consider the competition for food when we are dealing with a broadly attractive resource that has a relatively short availability period. The bear you mention are a good example, not only of competition for food, but also of damage to trees.

Don't get me wrong, I'm headed toward more mast producing trees as permaculture to reduce food plots. Apples will likely be in the mix (just starting with them now). I'm not arguing against using apples as part of a feeding program. I'm making the case that if I don't have time to plant a crop, will I really have time to keep high maintenance trees highly productive? Regardless of production, trees are resource expensive (sun, water, etc.). Depending on location, there are other trees that will reliably produce mast with little or no maintenance. I'm suggesting the OP step back and look at the bigger picture of what he is trying to accomplish and ask himself if apple trees are really a solution to promote his objective and if so, to carefully consider the varieties he is choosing.

You are quite right that a well maintained apple tree can have great production.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Please identify a single other mast producing species that will survive in zone 3a or 3b, that will produce hundreds of lbs. of mast in 5-10 years, and that will live for decades.

Oak for one.

 

[Neahawg]

Great thing about apple trees is depending on the varieties you choose you can have apple from June through November.

 

[MA VT Flatlander]

Plant a group of 3 to 6 trees right in a pinch point in front of your tree stand if you can. Apple trees can be a heart breaker.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

It all depends on our locations. What will work for me may not work where another person is located. Zone 3 guys have a whole different set of rules to play by than zone 5 or higher, that's for sure. Guys with sandy soil must take that condition into account. Hot, dry areas have another set of conditions to deal with. One size doesn't fit all.

I agree with Stu on apples and crabs being good for somewhat early mast production and the longevity of their production. Oak trees are notoriously slow growers compared to other mast trees. Guys from southern states maybe can get better oak growth from longer growing seasons, but northern states - oaks are slow to produce. Once they get going, though, oaks are long-term mast trees. But depending on the oak species, they don't produce every year.

IMO - the best recipe for all-year food sources is a mix of food plots ( with a variety of plants of varying duration ), soft and hard mast trees, and browse species to cover the whole year. Combine those items with good cover, and you should have the deer happy.

At my camp, we have planted 67 apples, crabs, and pears for soft mast. The reasons for that many are - we have bears and figure to lose a few to damage, we wanted to have a good mix for pollination, cover early to late bloomers / droppers, and just to see which ones prosper in our location. Plus we have the room. It's certainly not to impress anyone. The varieties we picked to plant are 90% DR trees, with a few just " experiments ". Beyond the first 5 or 6 years, we won't go crazy spraying all of them either, maybe just a few for eating. That's why we chose DR varieties in the first place. From all I've read and been told by university professors, the first 5 to 7 years are the most critical for good tree establishment and health. That's our game plan.

 

[Catscratch]

Very few oaks survive in 3a/3b. Burr would be about it, and you sure aren't going to get hundreds of lbs. of mast out of one in a decade or less. Burr also starts dropping in late August and is about done by mid-September.

I'm always amazed at how differently trees react to different zones. My Burr's aren't even close to dropping yet, green as can be.

I am addicted to planting stuff, but have had to approach fruit trees differently than I "want" to. I'm buying a few each yr and keeping the number less than I'm willing to take care of. What I want is 100+ trees, but I don't have time or resources to handle that many.