apple trees
 

Anybody ever plant or hunt by apple trees? Was wondering if it would be a good idea to plant a few apple trees?

RE: apple trees
 

We have a few apple trees on our hunting property and both the deer and I love the apples. With a few different varieties of trees the deer start eating apples near the end of summer a there were still a few apples on the trees yesterday.

The trick is to keep the deer from ruining the apple trees while they are young. You have to protect them.

RE: apple trees
 

Ain't that the truth. If you want any bark/bud left, you have to put some decent fencing around each tree. With larger trees they'll nibble off anything they can reach. That has a negative impact on the tree and in some cases that will lead to dead lower branches. The varieties comment is true too and I'll add that depending on conditions during flowering/pollination, you may get some varities that don't produce a thing because pollination was timed with some real bad weather. So having different varieties increases the chance that you will actually get some apples from your stand of trees.

RE: apple trees
 

I recently did some research and choose to plant some apple trees on my property. I planted some that would ripen in early summer, late summer, and late fall. This way I can give them some variety and keep them coming throughout the year.

As for the pollination factor there are several crab apple trees you could use for pollinators. I planted about 30 crab apples for a conservation program on my place. They will really draw in the deer in a few years. They have tree protectors around them, but the deer still browsed them quite a bit this spring.

RE: apple trees
 

There is a good article in Quality Whitetails December 04 magazine. The top 6 they mention are:
Honeycrisp
Liberty
Honeygold
Enterprise
Jonafree
Empire

They also mentioned that the rootstock used should be M7 or M111. Not sure what that exactly means but it has something to do with the being a stronger root system and are in the semi-dwarf class.

The author was Bill Mayo who operates an orchard (Sandy Bay Orchard) in Franklin Vermont.

RE: apple trees
 

M7 and M111 are the rootstock size/type and what determines if the tree is a dwarf/semi-dwarf/full grown. Remember apples are a LONG term investment. Semi-dwarves can produce in about 5 years, but it may take longer. Regular apple trees take much longer. The good thing is they last a long time. I try to plant a few new trees each year. Be open to other options as well though to cover your bases. Crabapples are good too. Pears, persimons, grapes, chestnuts, chinquapins, and plums are all good choices too. I have six mature hybrid chestnut trees and they produce several hundreds of pounds of 2" nuts each, every year. I am planting seedlings at other areas on the farm and the deer pour down the mountain for the two weeks the chestnuts are on the ground. But the trees drop all their nuts in about 3 days so the nuts are only available for about two weeks so other things are needed to have a sustained draw.