Your easiest tree(s) to grow with low maintenance

I do want to qualify in my above post that Japanese Beetles are a problem with any apple - DR or not. Same with Chestnut.

But they don't bother my pears or persimmons.
 
Bumping thread to see if anyone has changes to their lists or new members want to chime in. I will add that Galloway pears (from the wildlife group) have really started taking off for us this growing season. No fruit yet but great structure and height.
 
Here in Northern Michigan, Burgamble and DCO grow best with fast growth, drought resistance, and hardening for the winter.
Chestnuts are easy, but typically have some winter die off, especially on young trees.
They all take longer to mature with the shorter growing season.
 
elderberry, stick a cutting in the ground and it more than likely turns into a shrub that the deer keep eaten down.(as long as its planted where it gets enough moisture.
hybrid willow and poplar for cover and replenishing supply of browse during winter months, grows like a weed
kieffer pear, protect them and walk away.(protect from coons, deer, are varmits)
mulberry, they are spread naturally here and are kept almost in a bush like stage with the browsing they suffer. If they do get past where the deer can reach I try to hinge but its about a 50/50 success rate as they tend to break off.

I got some sawtooth from the LLC and hopefully I have the success that has been seen on this thread.
 
I've also had good luck so far with all the fruit trees/shrubs you listed. Haven't tried the cover trees yet. The LLC's sawtooth acorns are top notch
 
Bumping thread to see if anyone has changes to their lists or new members want to chime in. I will add that Galloway pears (from the wildlife group) have really started taking off for us this growing season. No fruit yet but great structure and height.
Easiest trees to grow? The ones that are already there.

At first glance on my property, I thought I had practically nothing for deer other than oak and some too tall too thin evergreens. Then I got to work identifying what I had, and I've found lots more with established roots, proper site selection (by nature), and proper zone selection (also by nature). With a little chainsaw work, you can "plant" lots of large trees by simply injecting some sunlight.

I know this is off topic somewhat, but I spent many days and dollars over many years to try to force things into the landscape that just weren't fit for my conditions. When it comes to trees and shrubs, I now stick to a philosophy of, "if it was meant to grow there, it'd be growing there." It's eliminated tree costs, the labor of planting and maintaining, and made habitat work much more fun for me.
 
How bout some pics for the fun of it? I spend a few days after hunting and before feet of snow arrive to broadcast sun with my chainsaw. Been at it three years, and I'm convinced now more than ever it's the right thing. Lots found at my place.

I used to spend hundreds of dollars each year and precious cool spring habitat days planting non-native and poor site-matched conifers. I have hundreds of native and natural balsam firs per acre that are anywhere from 4 inches to 6 feet tall. It's amazing how they begin to pump out dense growth as soon as they get some sun.
balsam 2.jpg

balsams.jpg
If you can see all those pink flags in the center of the picture, I found a thicket of chokecherry when spring scouting for blooming soft mast species. I was hoping for apples and juneberry, but mostly have chokecherry in abundance. I have 4 (yes only 4) juneberry that I've found, but they are under close supervision and in the sun now. Thankfully, they're tall enough to avoid tip browsing.
choke 1.jpg
I knocked out the overstory that same weekend and these things pumped out good fruit that same season.
choke 2.jpg

I have bur oak up the wazoo. Most of my bur oak is mature, and I would guess at risk of starting to come down. I also have thousands of foot tall trees, but likely hundreds of trees that are 6-12' tall now. So far I haven't had to target them for liberation, I just keep getting them as a co-product of thinning work to create bedding.
oak and fir.jpg

Planted dogwood does not survive browsing. I've tried multiple times. Only way to keep it alive is to put it in a cage. However, knock down an acre, and leave those trunks and tops scattered about, and the native dogwoods are surviving. My hope is if I keep opening up a couple acres each year, I'll get ahead of the deer in terms of browse pressure.
dogwood.JPG

One of my liberated bur oaks leafed out after being in full sun for the first season.
oak 10.JPG

This was pure luck. This is an arrowood viburnum thicket that was in the way of my bow stand. It had red osier dogwood mixed in that I wanted to protect, so I hinged all the AVb with my silky at about waist height to keep the deer back. At the time, I didn't know it was AVb. It never pushed out a single fruit. After I cut the pi$$ out of it, it started kicking out fruit like I'd never seen.
arrowwood viburnum.jpg


This is one of my very first spots I cut. It was small because I wanted to test the idea on my land and see how it'd respond. This was mid summer the first growing season since being cut open.
bs1.jpg

There were black spruce in there that also pushed huge growth with some radiation.
bs2.JPG


bs3.JPG

That's how I plant trees.

#Sunlight. Jeffery Epstein didn't kill himself.
 
Around here, I don’t think you could kill a dco if you tried! Nothing I’ve planted even comes close. I’m hoping for similar results from Allegheny chinquapins.
DCO's grow native for me as well as Chinkapin. They do very well. A. Chinquapin barely survive on my place but does great on buckdeer1's place.

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How bout some pics for the fun of it? I spend a few days after hunting and before feet of snow arrive to broadcast sun with my chainsaw. Been at it three years, and I'm convinced now more than ever it's the right thing. Lots found at my place.

I used to spend hundreds of dollars each year and precious cool spring habitat days planting non-native and poor site-matched conifers. I have hundreds of native and natural balsam firs per acre that are anywhere from 4 inches to 6 feet tall. It's amazing how they begin to pump out dense growth as soon as they get some sun.
View attachment 17571.

I didn’t look more into it because I don’t have them, but I think Balsam firs are more in tune with each other through their mycorrhizal networks than most trees.
I say this because I’ll bet that on top of the new sunlight, tons of sugars and nutrients are pumped into the saplings from the cut tree’s roots and other surrounding adult firs.
They want to fill that new gap in the canopy with another one of their own species as quickly as possible. I think that’s why mycorrhizae favor sapling growth over assisting adult trees - they want to ensure that their preferred host tree continues to dominate in the next generation


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I like hickory because the deer here love the nuts and the big old hickory trees make a great backdrop for either ground sitting or ladder stands. And they grow on their own here.
Poplar is also a favorite tree especially when a major part of a stand is cut. The fallen tree when cut in the winter feeds the deer well. The resulting root sprouts said to be 8,000 to 15,000 per acre grow quickly (never counted them but there could be that many) and the deer browse the root sprouts heavily even when nearby beans are green.
And of course native apples and pears are just icing on the cake.
 
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