Red Osier Dogwood

JDunham

Active Member
I thought I would start taking my camera with me when I am out and about on the properties my friends and I own and have done habitat improvement projects on. This is a slow time of year and I figured I would add some reference material for people looking to try different things.
I went out today to bring in a Double Bull blind that I have been unsuccessfully trying to shoot a late season archery doe from. Rain is coming and I am done for the year. Bisecting my two food plots is a travel corridor I have planted with Red Osier Dogwood bare roots and a dibble bar. This is an area that was wet and a pain to plant as a food plot, so I decided to let it go and create a thicket/travel corridor the deer would use to cross the large field between the two plots. This is in front of a shooting house and I thought it would funnel deer right in front of the shooting house. The corridor is probably 8 years in the making. I planted 200-400 barefoot ROD a year for about 4-5 years, only takes a few hours to plant a couple hundred with the dibble bar. The deer hammered them the first 2-3 years and they could not get ahead of the browse pressure. I did absolutely nothing to protect them. A person could get good results in 4 years I think by protecting the shrubs and eliminating competing weeds. The browsing didn't kill them, they just couldn't get above the weeds because they were browsed back every year.
Somewhere around year four the deer couldn't keep up with everything I had in the ground and some started to shoot up. I took a backpack sprayer that spring and sprayed around a bunch of them and that really helped, they really took off. I haven't done anything to them since and they are continuing to get bigger. Deer frequently use this corridor and will hang out in it for long periods of time. The pictures don't really show all the shrubs, there are a lot more smaller ones there that don't show up in the pictures. Snow has knocked down much of the grass and goldenrod. This was an open spot, the whole corridor is full of these and you can just see the tops above the goldenrod in the background. You can see they browse the heck out of the ROD. These are picky deer that are well fed, this is next to a 2 acre clover plot and 3 acres of standing corn. Gives you an idea how important browse is and how much they like the ROD. They are a great shrub for deer.





 
That information and series of pics cant be found anywhere else. Thanks for posting.
You dibbled in a lot of ROD! Enough that you have overcome the food plot problem and created a food/screen success. :cool:
 
That is a beautiful sight. Red Osier dogwood is a great plant for us deer lovers. Congratulations on creating such a mass of it. Coupled with other deer loved plants it makes for a great wintering/early spring area.
 
Very descriptive and informative. I had read a little bit before on ROD but never really noticed that it didn't mind wet areas. Hmmm, the wheels are turning now and I have some areas where this will fill in nicely. It might even be viable to replace some wet areas that are just prairie cord grass now. Thanks!
 
Wow, great native browse food plots. And pretty also, a bonus. May have to try these.
 
I am not sure if they ship out of state or not, they are nice to deal with though and send very nice bareroots. The shrubs pictured are between 4 and 8 years olds. Keep in mind those shrubs pictured have all been browsed anywhere from moderate to heavy. I can't really say which are which in the picture as I just kept filling holes in my thicket with new bare roots every spring. I can say you would be pretty close to that size in 4 years if you protected them and eliminated grass and weed competition. I didn't put a ton of effort into these after the actual planting. I put a couple around my fathers house foundation that definitely looked like these after 4 years, actually much better than these. Those were fenced from deer and had no weeds or grass around them. Once they get established that first year they will take off if they aren't over browsed or competing with weeds.
I will say this, if doing it again and trying to get things going in a timely fashion, I would protect them with some kind of tube for first 1-2 years and spray around them 1-2 times in spring and maybe summer with a backpack sprayer. You would be where this thicket is or ahead with that extra effort put forth in 4 years I think. The deer will absolutely browse these. The deer on this property have soybeans, clover and corn surrounding this thicket and I couldn't find a shrub in there that wasn't browsed when I took the pictures. Once they get about this size the deer can't keep them knocked down.
 
How thick would you plant them? Is it worth using landscaping cloth to keep the weeds at bay early on?
 
Landscape cloth would definitely help them. The weeds slow them down for sure. I planted one, walked 5-6 steps and planted another. I did about the same distance between rows. I was initially just going for volume, hoping to outplant the deer. If protecting them I would be comfortable spacing them a bit farther. They grow pretty quick and make good cover. These are bare plants in the dead of winter, they fill in nice with leaves and berrys.
 
Many years ago I was in a bow club in WI, and we made deer drives to push deer to standers. Our best drives were in what we called "Red Brush". Deer bed in Red Osier Dogwood and they browse it. Red Osier Dogwood thickets hold deer and Red Osier Dogwood provides sanctuary when deer feel pressure.

Have you seen more deer since you planted cover through your food plot?
 
Nice looking stand - I like it with the goldenrod and teasel in your pics. We aren't too far from you - Red Osier Dogwood is prolific here in wetter areas - the deer do browse it very hard on our farm as well. Have you taken dormant cuttings from yours and transplanted more elsewhere yet?
 
I haven't done much with cuttings yet but I have been thinking about playing with some cuttings from these next year. I walked this field last week and was surprised how many small dogwoods are starting to pop up. There really are no openings that at least don't have small ROD plants starting, so I wouldn't bother planting anymore in this field. This field looks like the ROD is going to really start turning into a thicket.
 
I planted 5 this spring as a test to see how they do in my area. I tubed 3 and matted 2. So far with only a few weeks growth on them, the tubes are growing taller while the non-tubed are branching out. These are all planted in a low deer traffic area of my farm (for now!) so hopefully browse pressure is low to start off.
 
What would be the best way to protect new bareroots? Weedmat and small cages?
Any protection you give them will help if you have medium to high deer densities. Weed protection is also a plus. They will grow without them but it will be slower. I usually planted 200-250 a year hoping the deer wouldn't get them all. The deer kept them browsed back until the 3-4th year and there were too many for the deer to keep them all browsed back. They started really growing then. Weed control and cages will speed things up.
 
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