My little hill. ( Jokingly started refereing to it as "Invasive Acres" )

[Electrodigical]

Decided to start a thread here just to have all my photos together. I'll probably quote older posts from elsewhere to update.
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Sept 5, 2025
Went up this weekend and was devastated. Looks like I killed two on my apple trees. One of them I knew I probably did. Last time up I was in a brush cutting frenzy, sweat soaked and going mad from the bugs, whacking everything in sight that was overhanging the access trail. Did a heck of a job on it before I realized it was an apple tree. (had almost no leaves on it as it was)

The other one really hurt and I don't know what happened. I cleared all round it. Cut other trees to open up the sky, pruned some dead limbs the apple tree itself, even did a small practice graft from one of the other trees. Came back this weekend to find the leaves gone from 90% of the tree. One or two apples hanging on. The only chemicals I had around was glyphosate and I don't think I was anywhere near it with it. (I spray it all around the other apple trees with no ill effect). Confused and angry, hoping it might recover in the spring but I don't think so.

Last weekend I went up to turkey hunt and to do some clearing. Despite getting rained on 3 of the 4 days, it was a rather successful turkey hunt. No, I didn't shoot one, but I heard and saw them. Didn't even hear any last year. Hadn't seen any in 5 years? I heard gobbles every day, even if they were a long way off. Saw birds on two day, and called and interacted with males two days. Called one in and nearly got a shot, but the woods were just too dense. But all in all that's a really successful turkey season for us. (4 days being my season).

One of the other big pleasant surprises though was that the two apple trees I swore I killed (and a third I thought was dead), have all come back. (even the one I practically cut in half had a bit a buds blooming at the top.) Two of them were in pretty sad shape, but the one that upset me the most was fully healthy. But it must be over the shock and has come around.



I started to "release" two others last year, one of which I was pretty sure was gone. But it too has some life showing. Need to continue getting it some sun. Also found two more on the property still alive (there's a couple of drown out ones), need to get them some open sky as well. All I need is time.

 

[Electrodigical]

In the background of that picture above you can see my "baby forest" and acres of brush honeysuckle. 50 yards high by 240 yards wide. I call it baby, and I've even mentioned it here as being a sea of 3/4" to 3" trees. But it's not, that's just in my head. Most are much larger some are as big 5-6" now, though there are some dense patches of thinner stuff. Most of my life this was all grass and briars that later had started filling in with saplings. I guess in my head it still is. It's only when I get there that i'm reminded "oh yeah, this is actual woods."


(the "baby forest" is just one section of the property)

 

[Electrodigical]

^ Here's a shot, just a little farther down the trail... in 2005.


That's more like what my brain wants to tell me it looks like.

 

[356]

I can related to your statement, “my brain wants to tell me it looks like.” I am experiencing that around our pond, as the few 3/4” saplings have become 3” trees—lots of them.

Does your state have a cost share program that might incentivize returning this to early successional growth or other wildlife/pollinator supporting habitat?

 

[Electrodigical]

incentivize returning this to early successional growth or other wildlife/pollinator supporting habitat?

I wouldn't know, but if they did I probably wouldn't qualify where I am. Directly across the road there's 1k or so acres of recently logged state forest, so there's certainly no shortage of it in the area.

 

[Electrodigical]

"It's too late"

This is the problem with being so far away and having limited travel opportunities. I got up to the hill this weekend with a list of things I hoped to accomplish. Nope. When there's weeks to months between visits, things don't work out.

April, Easter weekend. Plot is empty, other than some of last year's clover. No weeds to spray, besides, it kept raining.



Later in the month, more clover, not much else. Couldn't spray if I wanted, keeps raining.



May 3, turkey hunting. Clover coming in well. Happy. Raining.

 

[Electrodigical]

June 6th.... explosion of native plants and grass. What the hell happened?



The back end of the trail is a carpet of the native stuff, in a month it's sprouted and over shadowed the clover. You can't even see it.






Raining, raining, raining. Torrential downpour on me while I was trying to move leaves. No point in trying to spray them. :(

 

[Electrodigical]

The next day, more rain. In the afternoon it cleared up. Looked nice, blue sky. I wanted to do some hack and squirt, plus I figured I'd seed the bare spots. Not ideal, but time's running out. So I did. That night, more rain.

Pretty sure a lot of the seed washed away. I think maybe I should plant rice.
(note, this was hours after it stopped raining, the water's just working it's way down the mountain)



Caught some "local" weather. Man said it had rained or snowed at least once, every weekend since November 17th.

Pretty sure my H&S got washed away as well. So the next morning I did them over once again! Oh boy!

 

[BenA]

Looks like a good carpet of jewelweed. Deer should like that. I feel your pain. I'm 10.5 hours away from my place. I don't do my own food plots other than broadcasting some seed in areas where disturbance has happened. I have a farmer that does mine in exchange for him keeping crops. He puts in corn and my food plot. I concentrate on getting rid of trees or species of plants I don't want. FSI can be done in several ways. Some aren't ideal. If you have to compete with rain, you may want to just cut and then focus on the regrowth on the next trip. Who knows, you may get some good native species like that jewelweed. Something never seems to workout just right, so pivot to something else.

 

[Electrodigical]

These water hole pics have gotten gears turning.... "Maybe I should make an ideal turkey dusting spot!" (like I haven't got enough problems)

 

[Electrodigical]

I've gotten more turkeys on cam this spring than I have 12+ years combined.

 

[Electrodigical]

Everything is going to go to hell in the next couple months at work, so I was able to squeeze in one last trip for now. Four whole days too! Of course I brought my dad with me, spending as much time as I can with him and happy for it, of course this makes the trips very unproductive work wise. Basically I squeezed a day and a half's work into four days, but I know some day soon I'll wish I still had that problem.

The work plan for this trip was to solely focus on releasing 5 apple trees. If anything else got done it would be a bonus. And just like everything else I plan for up there, the plan lasted about 20 minutes. Another memory vs reality issue. It would have taken me four days straight just to do the one spot correctly. And right off the bat things went sideways. The second large tree I was cutting went squirrely. Looong story short, she ended up twisting and falling the worst possible direction, right on the tree I was trying to "save". And one of the few trees with apples on it.

Did lots of damage, broke a few limbs, pushed it WAY over, but I think it will live. What was supposed to be a tree cut and left to rot, ended up being a tree blocking the intersection of two "roads", so it had to be cut up and removed. That eat up about two days worth of free time.

After I started cutting it up I thought "oh, I should take a picture", not that there's anything to see.




In the end, this little area worked out okay, at least for these two trees. There are a couple others close by I couldn't help. I realized there's no way to do what I planned. I'd need a tree felling crew to do it and several days. lol

Some spots I planned to dig into deep with the chainsaw, but I couldn't even get near them, the brush around them was so big and thick. In the end, I sprayed a lot of brush with weed killer, and did hack and squirt on a bunch of trees I felt were far enough away to be safe. It's going to have to be that way or not at all. I guess next trip, or next year I'll see how it's improved. Other up side, I found lots more apple trees than I realized. I had five trees in mind. Then I realized there were seven. I think I came up with ten actual "trees". I also found a few more saplings growing here and there in random places. Some in the open, but most in the "woods", so they're not going to get any light without days worth of work. I also killed at least one, maybe two. Chopping and spraying brush honeysuckle only to realize there's a small apple tree sapling in the middle of the mess when it's too late. I'm apparently quite skilled at this.

 

[Electrodigical]

Information age, and I'm in the dark. No cell service up there and no Tv in the summer. So no weather report.
So I spent all saturday spraying only to have it rain for many hours straight saturday night. Again. Just like last time. And the time before that and before that etc etc.

 

[Electrodigical]

The little hill top micro plot.... looks like my hack and squirt needs a refresh. I recently expanded into a whole additional section of of trees, but looking at the results of last year, it seems there's quite a few that still have some life at the top.