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Zone 3 Apple tree recommendations for deer

I LOVE Chestnut crabs. They are my favorite apple. I am planning to graft some onto apple seedlings to try to get a big tree. I had a HUGE crab apple treat which I suspect was a Whitney grafted onto a domestic apple seedling. In Aug 2011, a hurricane took that tree down along with my absolute all-time favorite apple tree, a huge tree although not anywhere near as large as my Astrachan pictured upthread - which I named the Ravenwood apple after my farm. I had been trying for years to identify the tree and was planning to propagate it when the storm came in and pulled it down. Luckily, I found a man in MO who was able to propagate the tree via late summer budding onto B118 stock. Now, I am happy to report that I have have 5 baby trees growing and thriving and which originated from budwood taken from the downed tree. Here is a photo taken the day after the storm when the big tree when down upload_2014-9-18_21-20-56.jpeg
 
Sandbur, That is a nice looking B118 - are you going to graft onto it.
 
I don't know how you found this forum Lois but I sure am glad you are here. I love the history you know behind the apples varieties and how they taste and are colored. Welcome, Wade
 
Welcome to the board Lois. That's a beautiful Red Astrachan tree you have there. Sorry to see the pic of your "mystery tree" laying on her side, but am happy to hear that you got some budwood off of her to keep her going.

Rick
 
Lois E Brenneman FNP said:
I believe applecrab is used for apples which are at least 2 inches around and crab apple is for those less than 2 inches. An apple is 3 or more inches around. The Kerr is an applecrab, the Dolgo is a crab and Haralson is an apple proper.

Yikes those rootrappers are expensive!. I hope you guys are not paying $5.49 each for them. You can buy 5 and 7 gallon nursery pots wholesale for much less and then use them many times over. I am paying approximately $40 and $72 per sleeve for 5 gal and 7 gal respectively with roughly 40 count each. Much, much less for smaller pots. I buy the stakes for the tree cages wholesale as well although that is tricky because freight is so expensive on the stakes. I just bought 500 stakes for 72 cents each with $150 freight charge. That comes to about a buck a stake. My usual wholesaler kept raising the price until this year he wanted almost $3.00 per stake hence I dropped him. The one thing I can't buy whole sale is the wire for the cages because I can't afford the freight. For me, anyway, the problem problem with the 7 gal problem is that I, as a woman, can't lift them (I have to drag them) but I can easily handle the 5 gal pots. For the 7 gallon pots, I have to rely on my husband who can lift them easily. I have seen him grab two at a time - one in each hand. I would guess that most of the people who are hunting and looking to set up food plots are men so I don't think the 7 gallon pots should be a problem in that case.
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The benefits of using roottrappers is far greater than using plastic nursery pots. In most cases you will get a far better rootstystem on your tree, and you wont have roots circling in the bottom of the pot. This is a fact.

No, they are not cheap.
 
smsmith said:
As for cage wire, you may want to look into cement wire. If you have a Menard's close by they are usually the cheapest. It will likely require your husband to load it in a pickup (its heavy), and it isn't as easy to work with as welded wire....but it can be had for about 60% of what welded wire costs. It is usually on sale a few times each year, just watch the sale flyers.

.
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We like to wait for the sale. $75 for 150'. When you find it for that price, stock up!

CameraZOOM-20140405114435698.jpg
 
Rick, thanks for the post. Miss the old tree but the babies are doing fine - five of them. The man who budded the wood kept four and I gave two away. Indeed, I wish I knew how to propagate via budding. All of my attempts have failed. I can graft just fine. Ironically, the man who budded the tree has a huge nursery and he is man in his 70s. He advised me that he does not know how to graft - just bud! That seems almost incomprehensible to me. I am going to try some bark grafting onto some older trees to see if I can get the hang of it. It looks easy enough. One video I watched described the guy as using exterior wood glue. Someone else said he used plumber's toilet sealant. Another used grafting was. Has anyone here bark grafted with success? If so what did you use to seal the graft? I have only done cleft grafts thus far and I use parafilm with great success but that would not work for larger bark grafts

Wade, the stories and history come from spending far too much time in the internet and in books reading about apples and not doing other work which should be getting done! As I go look at various forums where people talk about food plots - usually for hunting purposes - it seems I have a lot in common with these folks and there is much to talk about when it comes to trees and wildlife. I don't hunt myself nor does my husband, however, he is very big on gun collecting and target shooting. He is also a NRA member. I do allow limited deer hunting on the farm - no bird hunting or predator hunting. I need all the predators I can get to keep the rabbits in check. I need way more coyotes and grey foxes around here than I now have - too many rabbits. Just when you have a good family of grey foxes established and gobbling up the destructive rabbits (who eat tree bark and kill your trees) they (the foxes) disappear over the winter. I don't know what happens to them but they appear very sporadically some summers and then they are gone, the next spring. Maybe they are getting hunted which is really a shame because I really need them around. When the foxes are here they really take care of business so to speak - much more effectively then do the coyotes. Bears disappear, as well, although they are far less useful as predators. Actually, a few wolves would be a nice touch around here - bet THEY would keep the deer in check even with one paw tied behind their back. Don't see anything like that happening anytime soon. We DO have puma, however. It is a big "secret" around these parts but the folks around here believe they were released into the area by the fish and wildlife folks who deny doing so. Folks, including me, have actually seen them, however, so it is pretty hard to deny that they aren't around. When you have lots of plants and trees as we do, deer are a real problem. Don't you guys way up north have some wolves? How does it work out?

Sanbur, nice trees - they are looking good.
 
glad he is in the NRA. I am a life member.

wolves- you do not want them in most areas. They do reduce coyote numbers and that allows red fox numbers to grow. BUT they are hard on livestock, as well as carrying off some dogs form people's yards. One wolf was recently trapped and put down near Grand Marais for killing dogs.

Too many deer are not a problem around here. smsmith told me he thinks I could grow apples without any protection from deer. We have hunted a whole season on our farm and have seen only one deer.
 
Crazy Ed, That' a nice supply of wire there! I am a big believer in buying in bulk. The pickups sure to come in handy on that count. For driving day to day, I like suburbans but we keep an old pickup available for the sort of thing you mention. As for the root trappers, I can see where they would get a nice root growth. They say that trees become "pot bound" in large pots but my experience has been otherwise. In 2008 I bought a whole lot of trees wholesale thinking I was going to sell them in a nursery-type operation. It didn't happen that way so I had lots of trees on hand. We put them all in pots - hey what else can you do with them and even ordered more in subsequent years. Well, come 2013 and 2014 lots of them got planted after sitting in 7 gal pots for what 6 years or so and they are doing fine - no root problems. I am sure the root trappers are better on that count but I could never afford them. I buy literally hundreds upon hundreds of pots. We put in anywhere between 50 to 70 trees a year - lots of them ponderosa pine for the back acres. I could not afford that many root trappers. This year I going to try a batch of ponderosa pine from seed. Usually, I get them at 18-24 inch size from Lawyer Nursery - typically 50 or so per year. We like the Montana variety but they are getting harder and harder to come by. I was able to get 50 reserved for delivery next spring. Ponderosa pine are not native to PA but they are doing great here none-the-less. In fact, they are doing way better than our native eastern white pine which is getting mauled by the white pine weevil.
 
smsmith said:
The best thing for controlling deer is a well trained and efficient deer hunter Lois ;)
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We must have lots of them in our area!
 
Sandbur, if you come down here in PA, you will see deer everywhere. It is worse in NJ where we used to live. There would be HUGE herds of them everywhere. I'd drive home from work on rural roads and they would be everywhere - people slamming into them on the roads - ruining their cars - constantly. There is not quite as many here where we now live in PA but there is enough of them, for sure. One summer, I decided I was going to take a little swim in the pond. Well for some reason, this ticked off the local deer on my farm - a bunch of them gathered around. Next thing I know, this huge buck is snorting at me and tapping the ground. I thought he was going to charge me. I am guessing it was "his" pond and I was trespassing. Just between you and me, I think they are real cute but they do wreak havoc on the place. I could never shoot one, myself, but I would eat the meat if someone gave it to me. It is one of those things in life. From what I gather, the coyote are not doing much. I don't think they can pull down a deer. I think they are not big enough. They are also very shy relative to the grey fox. The grey fox will come right up to the house and take whatever rabbits it wants. They don't care if you are around or not. Not so with the coyotes. They hang out in the very back acres and they seem to me to be scared of their own shadow. We have beef farmers across the street so wolves would not fly around here but from my perspective they would be just fine. I keep my cats inside anyway and I don't let the dog run loose. Poor dog, she is 13-14 now and has to be helped to stand up. Once you lift her to her feet she is fine and then begins to grub for food! Seems to me like NRA membership is a way of stating what is one's position on gun control in a very public way. It also seems to me that a whole lot of these victims of home invaders might be alive today if somebody had a gun handy. My husband keeps his loaded inside the draw of the nightstand. I don't know how to use any firearms so I leave that all up to my husband.
 
smsmith, yeah but if you are not hunters, yourself, then the next best thing is the canine predators. Not taking away from anyone's skill as a hunter, but truth-be-told, I think the big canines do a better job, all things considered. For them, it is life or death. They don't have the supermarket as a backup like we all do. For people like us, who don't like to hunt but also don't like all the destruction which the deer bring about those "big dogs" solve the problem nicely. Needless to say, the beef farmers across the street would not share these sentiments. For all I know maybe they are the ones killing "my" foxes every winter. I don't know. Is it legal to hunt fox? How about coyotes?
 
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smsmith, I do let a few people on every year to deer hunt. No turkey hunting and no predator hunting, however. Like I said, I need all the wild canines I can get. It is not just the deer that destroy trees.
 
Here are some bark grafts super easy, I use toilet bowl wax



 
leex, that is great! Nice! I am going to give it a try. Toilet bowl wax .............hmmmmm. Will get a hold of some and give it a try. Is that better than Elmer's exterior wood glue. Is that the wax or the callous which I am seeing? I am referring to the rust brown stuff. That is one nice graft! Thanks for posting it.
 
smsmith - hmmmm!!! raptor perches. Tell me about them. Never heard of them before. How do they work? How do we build them?
 
Lois E Brenneman FNP said:
leex, that is great! Nice! I am going to give it a try. Toilet bowl wax .............hmmmmm. Will get a hold of some and give it a try. Is that better than Elmer's exterior wood glue. Is that the wax or the callous which I am seeing? I am referring to the rust brown stuff. That is one nice graft! Thanks for posting it.
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Yep rust looking stuff is the wax you can see a big gob of it on the flat part of the understock. I love using the wax, I just put it on with a butter knife. I would think the glue would be to messy and runny
 
leex, Wow! way to go! I am psyched to give it a try. That is a really nice job you did!
kabic, thanks for the links. Will check them out. "Anyone" who eats rabbits, mice and voles is right by me.
 
Loss have you ever tried aluminum window screen around your trees?, that's what most of us use for rodent protection and it works great
 
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