apple trees in food plots

[vister]

anyone do this? Im sure this idea will really bring out the foodplot naysayers! is it even legal? i do make my own wine, soooooo??

[BobT]

Why would it bring out the nay-sayers? What is a food plot but an area where you have planted a variety of species for the purpose of providing food for the wildlife, right? Of course we know that's why you plant your food plot.

Apples are just another variety that deer will enjoy. Truth be told, there is a rather small percentage of people that plant a food plot specifically for the wildlife without any hope of gain for the hunting season. Even if you don't hunt the food plot, if you are hunting anywhere near it, you are growing it in part to improve your hunting experience and not just to help the creatures.

So what would be wrong with that?

[B. Amish]

if you plant em, good luck on getting them to grow.

[bigbucks]

I planted 6 a year & a half ago (fall plant) none survived the first winter. I'm still planning to plant some again sooner or later.

[sticknstring]

We planted a bunch of drawf apple trees in our food plot one fall up at our hunting property. Had a drought the next summer and they all died. I'd like to try it again though, just need to figure out a way to irrigate.

[Cheetah]

Fruit trees need a lot of water in general. Your trees might survive if you are next to a pond or small lake. You should do a bunch of reading on keeping apple trees and figure out if they will even have a chance to survive on their own on your land.

[Random guy]

Kind of ironic but won't meusure have to be taken to prevent the deer form eating them before they mature? My guess is tender appple tree shoots are pretty yummy.

[Muskie456]

We planted 16 trees in two differant areas (8 trees each). We mixed the the type of apple trees for cross pollination. We planted Hazens, northerns, sweet 16's and honeycrisps. We lost 4 trees total the first winter and re-planted new ones. They are doing well now. We did build little fences around each tree. It was a lot of work but that is half the fun. The property is located near Walker.

[Bear55]

if you plant em, good luck on getting them to grow.

Get those 6 or 7 footers and put a fence around them. I've been thinking of doing this for a while but those pesky bears are holding me back. We have a couple of apple trees at our shack and once they start producing the bears have their way with them just about every year. Not good if you are a tree. They can survive a bear visit but they take a beating and it takes 2-3 years for them to come back.

[Muskie456]

that is what we put in the 6-7 footers and we also bought them at the end of the season so they were half price.

[buckhunter21]

I dont plant them directly in my food plots but I started putting a few around the edges. Last year I planted around 10 in an area away from my food plots to try an create kind of a small orchard. This year I planted another 10 adding more to the first spot as well as putting a few along the edges of my food plots.

I have only lost 1 tree so far so Im at about a 95% success rate. They are alot more work than just digging a hole and putting a tree in the ground though. You have to fence them in right away and you have to prune them the right way when they are young if you ever plan on taking the fences off of them.

I would suggest going with a semi-dwarf or standard sized tree so you have a taller tree and can get more of the tree out of the deer reach. I also started my first set of branches at about 5 or 6 feet high so they go over the top of my cages and will be out of the deers reach for the most part, anything lower than that the deer will be able to reach and will eat the new growth every year.

I also planted a bunch of different varieties so I would have apples getting ripe at different times of the year, my first tree is supposed to be ripe in late august and my latest one doesnt get ripe until November, so hopefully there will be apples dropping steady for a couple months instead of a huge crop dropping all at once. You also need to get trees that are hardy enough to survive our cold winters and disease resistant trees are nice so you dont have to worry as much about your hard work being taken out by one of the apple tree diseases.

It will probably be at least 4 or 5 years before I start getting any decent crops of apples but Im hoping all the time and effort will be worth it in the end.

[B.S. Bait]

Up here in the Bagley area the state has planted apple tree's in a wildlife area. Along with several crops that alternate yearly between soybeans, corn and alfalfa. I only hunt grouse up there though to many deer hunters. But i do alot of shed hunting there and found about 20 sheds in that area this year. Every time i would go up there i would shake the apples out of the tree's and bingo the next day a shed or two or three. Those buck's really like them apple's!!

One day during rifle season last year a Doe and three fawns came right up in the yard to pick apple's off our tree as we ate our lunch. The guns were right there on the deck less than 20 feet away from those deer. Told my Dad not to move cause the deer are at the tree he didn't even believe it at first until he got turned to see them. Apple trees must be a real deer magnet

hope to plant some on my hunting land. Local greenhouse has 4 honeycrispts for $100 6 to 9 footers this is a good buy i think.

[Archerysniper]

My neighbor is starting a orchard this year,he planted about 100 trees and they are only 200 yards from were I have my food plot so it's a plus for me I didn't have to spend the money or time planting or careing for them all I have to do is take them on the way through my food plot to the orchard. I have planted apple trees but around here it is pure sugar sand and they take alot of water and hard to keep healthy if you neglect them early on,but if you can keep them growing they are deer magnets. I have some old homesteads that I hunt and they all have apple trees on them dynamite spots for deer hunting.

[hockeybc69]

I have a dozen apple trees that were 6-8 ft when I planted them.

Cage them and its not an issue.

[BLACKJACK]

Wire cages are a must around young apple trees or the deer will wreck them. I've been going with the standard apple trees rather than the dwarfs with the theory that they'll grow out of the deers reach. Downside of standard trees is that they take longer to produce fruit, some of my 10 year old trees are just starting to produce.

Make sure that the trees you are buying are zone 4 or even zone 3 up north!!

I generally haul water to my trees the first year, then they're on their own.

I'd like to plant more apple trees, anybody found a source or reasonably priced apple trees, either bare root or potted?

[hockeybc69]

I met a guy on the QDMA forums that isnt far away from me, and he invited me out to show me how to graft apple trees some time. Looking forward to seeing how its done. He said you can save a boatload doing that.

I would prefer larger stock just to get a headstart, but it should be fun to see how to do it.

My only luck on cheaper trees is when they go on clearance in October.

[Bear55]

. Local greenhouse has 4 honeycrispts for $100 6 to 9 footers this is a good buy i think.

That sounds like a good buy to me, I just put two honeyscrisps in my back yard and they got me for $35 a piece.

[vister]

i ended up planting a honeycrisp and a chestnut crabapple. the chestnut [PoorWordUsage] was a potted tree, and just about ready to start blooming, so i may have apples this year! i fenced off the entire area around them, to keep the deer from nibbling even at the branches. i dont think watering them is going to be an issue, as the soil is VERY heavy black soil, with standing water 30 yards away year round.

the only reason i thought of planting apple trees was because the highway near my stand is getting widend this summer. at the bottom of the hill is a lone whitney crab appletree, which the deer absolutely love. and because they are widening the highway, they will be cutting down that very very old whitney crab.

now i'll have apples for ma to bake with, hopefully, apples for me to make wine with, and apples for the critters to munch on. just for the record, both trees are well out of bow range, if anyone was wondering!!

and, i'll bet the only reason they are widening that road is for the dang amish!!

[Archerysniper]

Vister take some of the shoots from that tree since the deer love them apples and start your own trees before it's cut down.

[harvey lee]

We have quite a few crab apple trees on the land we hunt, When they are ready, one can even see the deer on their hind legs getting the higher ones. They love them and only leave the ones they cannot reach. We have one area where the deer also bed down very near the crabapple trees.

They go nuts for them.

[archerystud]

Kind of ironic but won't meusure have to be taken to prevent the deer form eating them before they mature? My guess is tender appple tree shoots are pretty yummy.

I planted 6 of them and did get them to grow but Jonny hit the nail on the head. The dang deer won't leave them alone in the winter. My trees are probably up to about 12 feet tall now and one year they produced a bunch of apples. However, mine aren't nearly as big as those my father planted a couple years later in his own yard. His were smaller to start with they were have been growing about 2 years less.

In a nutshell it will probably be another 5 years before I get a ton of action out of those trees.