Recreating a Deer Woods

[shedder]

15 years ago I was into grouse hunting and finding the apple orchards that define the best of the experience. I searched 2 counties and found lots by looking up where old farms were on photos and maps. I got good at spotting them and some were in unexpected places. About the only thing, I remember confusing them with was Bebb willow. I still do on occasion.

I was surprised to see in a local mag that an apple research center near here has 100 types of native Asian apples plus all the ones in Cornell, NY.
The biodiversity of native Asian apples would be a good thing for deer, I assume. Some reach 60 feet and can handle forest conditions.

Do you have much damage from bears and coons? Around here Varying hares and mice do a lot of damage to the trunks.

 

[Chainsaw]

Shedder I enjoyed your post. This will be bragging a bit to a fellow grouse hunter but I will anyway. From April thru November the very first sounds I hear from bed when I wake up in the morning are drumming grouse. That to me is so special. And then the first smell of the morning in the fall are apples.

On apple tree height we have some that may reach thirty-five feet but nothing 60 ft.I don't think. I shall recheck that come spring though. Lots of 60 Ft. trees would be great as it would enable our apples to be be able to collect sun in more areas of the property while shading out invasives. Still some of the original genes of the Asian apples are in all of our wild apples today-no doubt. Every tree here has it's own unique characteristics and apples. The only disease I have witnessed to date on the wild apples here is cedar apple rust.

There normally are zero bears on the property so no bear damage. Surprisingly there has been no noticeable mouse damage and no rabbit damage whatsoever. We only have cotton tails--snowshoe rabbits have a line they don't seem to cross two miles east of us. The only damage we experience comes from high winds, disrespectful farmer renter(only once), bucks rubbing the trunks, too many apples on a tree causing branch breaking and cedar apple rust.

I'm of the opinion that these trees have stood the test of natural selection with no human interference of hybridizing for specific traits which sacrifices other traits important to the health and survival of the apple trees as a species.

This tree is one our earlier trees to ripen along our driveway;

 

[shedder]

I share your passion for apples. They remind of a pool in a river. Each one is different and it is a safe bet that is where a trout will be or a grouse in the case of an apple.

Conditions must be different here compared to your pix. Around here White Spruce invades fields and quickly shades any apples. They grow 2 feet up and out in a year so it is hard to keep ahead of them. All those apples I found 15 years may have been killed by them already. Sometimes the fields come up in alders with apples mixed in.

I did a property check today and casually checked some spots and found apples I didn't know about.

This one is being crowded by poplars. I will have to ring them. This tree never produces much for whatever reason. It has been there for 50+ years.

This one is a few feet away hidden in plain site. It is in a deer hub and I never saw it even though it is beside the trail.

This big tall one to the left of the gray birch i found further in. Never saw it before but I don't check like I used to. I spend most of my time on oaks and chestnuts. I will have to cut this one out.

An old one crowded on the right(east) by fir\spruce. Light will help it.

The gray mess is white spruce ringed 4-5 years ago as an experiment. It is brutal to cut and pile field spruce so ringing was the easy way. I was surprised at how fast it died and fell down. It released a dying apple and helped some nice red oaks.

Hare damage on red oak. They do the same on apples. It is really bad in peak years.

An apple that fell down and came up off the trunk in a wet spot. Loggers went around it which was good. I pruned it a bit but wonder if I should reduce it to a single stem.

I first heard of the low diversity of apples in M. Poulan's book, “The Botany of Desire". It has an excellent apple chapter. Worth reading.

 

[shedder]

http://eatonrapidsjoe.blogspot.ca/2017/01/apple-trees-with-wet-feet.html

A web friend's wet apple project.

 

[Chainsaw]

I like your post Shedder showing your apple trees hiding among the timber. Wild AND free apples are a major boost to this property. Your post adds to this thread substantially; hopefully other people will say hey maybe I have apples I hadn't noticed. After releasing over 2,000 apple trees on this property one would think I knew where every tree was. With logging over the last three years I would mark ahead of the loggers all apple trees so they could avoid them; You wouldn't believe how many I found that I had never noticed before.

All of the apples in your pictures look to be great candidates for release. Regarding the one that fell down and has multiple stems;it will no doubt need thinning someday. For now though I would consider leaving it be un-pruned until the stems start to hold each other back; then the weakest can be cut of course to allow the strongest more light and nutrients. As you know but others may not realize the apple tree browse is very important to our cold climate deer. If that multiple stemmed tree is in a special spot I might even tube or fence the better stems now.

The tree not producing apples is interesting. I am a wholesale apple tree releaser (releaser not a word but you guys likely know what I mean) so my technical knowledge is only self-taught but here are my unscientific thoughts on it. If it has blossoms and no apples then it either isn't being pollinated or is pod sterile. If there are no other apple trees in the area compatible to the subject tree not being pollinated is possible. Documenting the flower time and planting a crab apple known to flower at that time could do it. Also the tree could be tested for its ability to create apples by you pollinating test blossoms yourself. I'll go over that in a separate post when time permits in time for blossom time.

Thank you for pointing out the book by Poulan. A sample read on his website was very interesting—ordered the book from Amazon this morning. I enjoy reading everything that touches on old apple trees and truly appreciate the reference to it.

It is interesting how your spruce trees and alders are so prolific in your area. Other than what I have planted here there are two ¼ acre stands of spruce and a lone young plant here and there. I saw what you describe regarding spruce in Northern Maine; paths used to get to the best fishing holes would constantly fill in with young spruce. Alders there grew along seemingly every slow drainage and many of its creeks. Here there is only a few alder stands along the drainage's and one field is developing a nice alder stand as well. So yes our properties are very different except for the presence of wild apples.

If your friend doing the wet apple tree propagation would like scions from trees practically growing in water I can provide them in the interest of helping his study. I know of some trees that produce apples that are located in water areas such as he describes. Scions from those could be collected this year. In addition I could check more of my trees that are mostly growing in/near/almost underwater to see which produce apples and then provide scions the year after.

I use 50 lbs as the minimum projected average crop of apples per released tree; it is random low ball guess but it gives me a reason to keep seeking out more trees to release.Some trees produce hundreds of lbs for sure. At 50 lbs. per released tree times 2,000 trees provides 100,000 lbs of food to the wildlife living here most every year.. It is all free except for labor. Its not for everyone but anyone in apple country can see the possibilities are well worth the effort. This does not include the huge amount of browse the deer eat produced by the wild apple trees.

Looking at a small section of one side of this tree it is not a stretch to estimate a few hundred pound of apples are on it so an average of fifty may be very low. I have not been able to find any scientific studies showing the average weight of wild apples produced per tree.

 

[lakngolf]

Wow, what a loaded apple tree. I admire your impressive conservation of these great trees on your property. I don't find any apple trees on my land, but always shocked to see a new loaded persimmon that I had no idea was present.

 

[shedder]

FYI This may be of interest.

You are near Geneva so they may have info or trees of use.

I would like to get some Kazak seeds myself.

Google Kazakhstan apples for pix etc. I was surprised that apples do great in the ID mountains but it makes sense since it mimics their native range.

"In addition, we have over 100 different types of wild apple (Malus sieversii) from Central Asia that were collected by a team of USDA scientists."

918 cultivars in the excel file


http://www.cultivatingdiversity.org/our-apples.html

Here in Kentville, Nova Scotia we have established one of the most diverse collections of apples in the world. Our Apple Biodiversity Collection (ABC) is a collaboration between Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Dalhousie University. Test your knowledge of apple diversity by checking out a list of the named cultivars in the ABC.

We grafted 1309 different apple cultivars to M9 rootstock in triplicate in the summer of 2011. Most of these apple cultivars come from the collection housed by our collaborators in Geneva, New York. But we also included hundreds of advanced breeding lines from Canadian breeding programmes, with a strong emphasis on the cultivars developed over the past 100 years here at the AFHRC in Kentville, Nova Scotia. In addition, we have over 100 different types of wild apple (Malus sieversii) from Central Asia that were collected by a team of USDA scientists.

We not only maintain the ABC in order to preserve apple biodiversity, but we also study the diversity of the apples within it. With this information, we will not only gain fundamental insights into fruit biology, but we will also determine how to use this information to more efficiently breed successful cultivars that require less chemical input.

 

[Chainsaw]

Thanks lakngulf. Releasing apple trees is one of those tasks that just pays back over and over and over again, probably just like your persimmons may do on your property. Releasing apples feed and draw deer for twelve months of the year, create browse and cover for the deer, provide snacks all fall for us and eye candy from spring thru winter and Oh the fragrance it adds to the woods is something special indeed. Here is an example of an apple bent over by heavy snows providing winter browse when the snow is 3 to 5 ft. deep and too packed to dig thru.

Reading up on persimmons Lak it appears it would live here some winters and die off in others so it is not an option for us. In more than one on-line article though Persimmons was referred as the apple tree of south even though it is not an apple of course.

Shedder that's interesting that there is so much apple research ongoing. Checked out your link as well as the site for the Geneva NY apple research centers. The depth of their knowledge and study being put forth is amazing. With the exception of possibly some crab apple trees to possibly improve pollination I probably won't plant more trees as I still am far behind in saving those already in place and that is my biggest payback in terms of apple tree effort.

A "small" apple related task that is drawing me in though is to come up with some sort of measurement to determine the level of pollination and apple production the trees here enjoy. Maybe no improvement is needed or maybe apple production could be improved substantially---I really don't know without measuring where it is today. If anyone has done that on their property or knows of someone that has please chime in. It would be great to hear from someone who has already done it. Meanwhile I'll check with some of our local talent as well as online to see how others have measured this. And a call to Cornell may yield some methodologies as well.

 

[Chummer]

Do you have bee hives around? I would think that would be your biggest hurdle with pollination is getting a bee to the millions of blossoms you have.

 

[Chainsaw]

Do you have bee hives around? I would think that would be your biggest hurdle with pollination is getting a bee to the millions of blossoms you have.

Good question Chummer; there are beehives on different farms in town but I don't know if these trees benefit at all from them.
I did see on Wikipedia this afternoon that well pollinated apples will have 7 to 10 seeds in them and the apples will not be small and misshapen. It will be easy enough to count seeds on some of the apples from trees still holding. For those that don't hold I'll need to wait until fall to check them. Likely it would be a meaningful measurement to test for apple seed germination rates for the apples here as well.

 

[Chummer]

That is interesting. We had a very good apple crop this year but most of the apples we cut up only had 3-4 seeds with one of them being twice as big as the rest. I figured the apple was putting its energy into one dominate seed. Not sure how that would relate back to pollination.

 

[Triple C]

Chainsaw...Such diversity on this forum when it comes to habitat and your property thread just drives the point home. I simply can't imagine so many wild apple trees. Crabapples are native down here and most properties have them growing wild. We don't have, or maybe I should say we've never found a crabapple, much less apple trees growing on our property. As you noted in your comments above, persimmons are very widespread down here. We do release those but if they're young, you have no idea if your releasing a male or a female.

At any rate, I'm trying to catch up on a bunch of these property tour threads. Seems life is busier than ever with lots of travel for me. Days simply turn into weeks then months. Enjoying the ride-along on your thread!

 

[shedder]

"Researchers have shown that honey bees selectively feed on apple flowers of the most predominant color in an orchard (whether white, pink or red), skipping trees having flowers of a different color."

https://www.qdma.com/crabapples-deer-pick-winner/

Good info above I didn't know or forgot about.
I have also heard that game prefers red apples over yellow. I have seen yellow apples laying in piles on the ground myself. Some apples seem to be ignored.


Below, links of interest?

http://habitat-talk.com/index.php?t...s-yet-to-be-discovered-in-your-backyard.7019/

http://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/apples-pears/chance-seedling-nets-new-bittersharp-apple/

 

[Chainsaw]

I remember being so busy Triple C. It was all good and sometimes I even miss it, not too often though.
Our deer here are enjoying an easy winter so far. ON Feb. 1 the deer and other critters were out and about where normally they would be pretty much holed up/snowed in by January 15. The month started with an actual sunrise that we could see versus the usual clouds of late. On and off later in the afternoon the snow belt rose up and threatened us only to drop down and head back towards Chummers' property. This post is a pictorial of some of the deer and critters seen on the property February 01, 2017.
We awoke to full sun while only a mile away there were likely whiteout conditions.

Two deer were spotted knapping just in from our driveway plot.

The one on the left was watching me.

While the one to the right watched with just her ears.

An eagle was seen resting after chowing on a deer kill. It wasn't happy with me documenting the moment but it looked just fine.



It has always been tradition to get pretty excited to see the first robin of the year; On Feb. 01 it was the largest and earliest robin sighting I have ever witnessed. They flew in jumping trees in groups of ten to twenty moving along steadily for about forty minutes. There was no way to guess at how many had come by.


Finally 6 deer stood in the lower yard half on alert as Anne was using the Paslode framing nail gun in the sun room.There were two groups and I took pics of the closest.


Another thirteen deer moved out into the sun Room food plot in the evening but were too far to photograph. So ended a perfect day. The deer look excellent for this time of year. I hope that huge flock of robins figure out they came a little early and have headed back south.

And now it's FEB. 3 and we are in the snow band fully. You can hardly see out the door as the snow is adding up as it comes down full force and is likely to pass belly deep within the hour. Easy pickings for the deer are about over for now.

 

[Chainsaw]

My computer is not reaching the links Shedder, thanks for sending though, they look valid just a gliche here--will check out later. On colors of apples I would be more apt to figure deer here eat the yellow ones first more often than the red ones first. And though some apples will sit on the ground for a while at times they all eventually have their day as the preferred pile on the property. They pretty much all get eaten here. The result that no apples are ignored indefinitely here could have more to do with deer population differences than apple differences.[/QUOTE]

 

[Elkaddict]

Dave, as usual I enjoyed your pics. I saw a flock of robins in our back yard last week downstate and was a bit surprised. They usually don't show up for another month or so. Do you see them regularly this time of year?

 

[Chainsaw]

Dave, as usual I enjoyed your pics. I saw a flock of robins in our back yard last week downstate and was a bit surprised. They usually don't show up for another month or so. Do you see them regularly this time of year?

Tom, this is the first time I have seen them here in February let alone on the first of February.

 

[shedder]

The gray mess is white spruce ringed 4-5 years ago as an experiment. It is brutal to cut and pile field spruce so ringing was the easy way. I was surprised at how fast it died and fell down. It released a dying apple and helped some nice red oaks.

The dying apple went from struggling in 2012 to this in 2015 after ringing the spruce next to it.

I tried to find an apple that was a great example of one overshaded but I have so many pix I can't find it, yet.

 

[Chainsaw]

The dying apple went from struggling to this in 2015 after ringing the spruce next to it.

I tried to find an apple that was a great example of one overshaded but I have some many pix I can't find it, yet.

That is a very good example Shedder of what one can expect from simply releasing an apple tree;Its also true that sometimes you get more but this is a conservative expectation for most apple tree releases. On my MFO Cornell woods walks I see people planting apple trees and not bothering to release the ones they have. For those of us lucky enough to have wild apple trees on our property releasing them is the fastest way to having apple crops for the deer on our property.

 

[Chummer]

Bad news on those robins Dave. My guess is they started north as they always do but didn't hit any snow in the mid Atlantic and kept coming. I hope they know enough to turn around. I had the same thing happen last year with blue birds at my house. Had a large flock show up then we had a couple days of -25 and they disappeared. I had a feeling the flock died. I didn't have any in my house last year either. Snow patterns the last two years are playing havoc on the critters.