Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Chestnut other trees for wildlife

"Sounds like a great project!

What hybrids are you planting? I've got a Concordia oak or two, some Bur's, DCO's, and quite a few Sawtooths that I've planted. Also lots of pear, apple, and persimmon's. It's addicting like pond habitat is."

I have planted some Bur X Swamp White Hybrid (Quercus macrocarpa X Quercus bicolor) in some of my lower, wetter ground. Three of those have reached 8' tall in 3 years.

I have also planted some English X White Hybrid (Quercus robur X Quercus alba) that have grown fairly well.

Lastly, I have planted some Bur X Gambel Hybrid (Quercus macrocarpa X Quercus gambelii) that are supposed to be more drought resistant. However, most of those have failed to thrive. I did plant them in some of my worst (sandiest) soil conditions where I wanted to try for some oak trees. That poor soil did result in less available water and more damage from the darn pocket gophers.

The geology changes quite a bit from my property to your property. My property is all sand and siltstone as the parent material for my soils. I suspect you may have some limestone outcrops on your property?

Maybe some of the hybrid oak options will perform really well at your place if you match them to your soil types! You also get more water than I do.


P.S. I did plant two pure Swamp White Oaks (Quercus bicolor) in two depressions that stay damp most of the year. One of them produced tiny acorns in Year 5 or 6? Those depressions did go dry during the drought, but those trees were well-established by then and have survived the drought with no problems with my periodic hand watering.


P.P.S. Certainly agree with you on the tree addiction! We both reside in Kansas where there is generally a tree deficit. Once we live at our property, I am definitely going to add more trees for the long term benefits for both the humans and the wildlife.

That's a good mix of oaks!
Yes, stone outcroppings and limestone just under the soil in most spots. No sand, quite a bit of clay.
We're right on a line for rain. Lots of rain east of us, little rain to the west. Sometimes the rain shifts one way or the other for a season or two. ie - one year we get a part of the rains that are headed east and the next year we get almost none of those rains. I've watched a lot of lightening to the east of us this year but the ponds and creeks are pretty dang low!

These tree tubes are great. Use the black plastic and keep weed growth away from the trees for the first few years. Cut the plastic away from inside the tube to let any condensation run down and water the tree. 60" & 72" really help protect the trees from the deer.

https://www.treepro.com/products/miracle-tube-tree-grow-tube?variant=42512560423061

I use the biggest diameter I can get, usually the 4 3/4" size. The optimal free netting for the top keeps birds from nesting inside.

I have used the same tree tubes as esshup and have also liked the results.

I did NOT put on the netting, but have never found a dead bird after lifting the tube for pruning and weeding. However, I have had several tubes with wasps and wasp nests inside. I then put on the netting, but the wasps just kept using the vent holes.


P.S. I have twice found a black widow spider on my trees inside the tubes. My property in Kansas is NOT within the mapped geographic range of the southern black widow or the northern black widow. The saplings that sheltered a black widow were from different nurseries. I suspect I am actually in the range of the southern black widow. If they are common in your area, maybe keep an eye out while tending to your saplings within a tree tube.

I find black widows and scorpions on a regular basis. The youngest got stung on the lip while in bed. Creepy crawlies!

Update: Last years' effort planting nuts seeds was pretty much a complete bust.

The trees I transplanted from year before seeds have some trees above the tubes. Suspect could have had a very high survival rate if had watered. Have pond nearby but never had the time.

Have harvested several hundred chestnuts, tested to see which would float, soaked in bleach / water 1/ 10 solution for one minute. Sorted out about 230 of the best and planted them in 5 gl buckets with sand today. Also planted about 150 apple seeds, maybe 40 pecans, and maybe 200 black walnuts. Didn't soak the apple, pecan, or walnut.

Now send guessing myself about pecan and walnut. The seeds were from last year and sat in unheated shed since harvest in buckets. Will they not sprout? Will they immediately sprout (and then die before dig up buckets in spring)? Also, realized totally forgot about cherry seeds...

Hope to get a lot of starts going well to transplant next fall. Hope to rent a big trackhoe to do a lot of work clearing some potential planting spots next summer.

May take a drive to northern Indiana to pick up a bunch more of the tree tubes but will try the 3/4" electrical pvc conduit for stakes.

Rangersdedge,

When I was in my twenties I used to graft trees for additional income and to make new friends. One of the things I learned is that pecans and walnuts not spoiled by a weevil always sprouted in spring. All they need is good contact with soil. Just using the heel of your boot to press them into the place you want them to grow is all it take to have a tree growing there. Usually I would plant 3 and then cull the slowest growing by mid summer. Nuts planted in-situ always produced trees with a better earlier start and by age two were 2 to 4 times the size of transplants. Transplanting sets a tree back and it takes time to take off again. IME many transplants are lost where most of the in-situ nut plantings survived. It is helpful to mulch with cardboard in that first year too ... just to reduce competition from grass and conserve moisture.

Back then I had a keen interest in growing chestnuts and tried to nurture transplants but they always died despite frequent watering. The soil probably wasn't best suited for chestnuts but I think they might have benefitted from in-situ planting. Anyways, hope your have good success with your plantings next year.

P.S. It is important to plant nuts in the fall ... you probably know that ... but just in case or for the benefit of others who may not.

I’ve propagated roses from cuttings a long time ago. Tried it again last year but every one of them died.

Will try again this year. One rose I’m particularly interested in. My grandmother planted it over 50 years ago. It’s at a house I own that my grandson and his wife are living in. Last year, everything was going well until an unbelievable hot spell set in for a couple of months. Also tried starting some climbing roses with the same results.

I’ve never tried any of the planting medium tubes, or special fertilizer concoctions. Do you guys recommend them?

Wow Ranger, sounds like you have doing some awesome tree labors on your farm.

The most surprising "tree planting" result on our property, was that my highest survival rates occurred where my saplings were in close competition with other trees!

I cleared some large areas and planted trees, but also had many areas where I planted some trees and said I would do the clearing later. Well "later" never happened due to other projects and problems. However, some of my best growing trees are in the shade of established invasive trees, and are near or within the drip canopy such that the established trees should have stolen the water from my newly planted trees. (Despite my installed drip irrigation systems and truck watering, the amount of water available to my new trees has certainly been a survival factor due to our lower rainfall geographic area.)

I believe:

1.) Prairie grass may steal water more effectively than the roots of trees. (I do use weed fabric and mulch right around the trees.)

2.) Some shade is actually beneficial for new trees that experience very hot and dry summers. (I have heavily shaded trees that have done well.)

3.) My farm is subject to very windy conditions. Wind breaks from surrounding trees help the health of my trees after they start significant branching above the top of the 5' tree tubes.

I don't know if my observations are universal, or just true to the specific conditions on my farm. (If I said something stupid, then perhaps the better "tree people" on the forum can correct.)

However, I typed up this long response to optimize your hard work in tree clearing. It might be easier on your budget AND better for your new tree plantings to just make some smaller clearings in your existing forest to start your new slow-growing trees like oaks and chestnuts ASAP. I would consider felling all of the trees that might fall on your newly planted trees - if you felled them later. Make a burn pile and get rid of the debris next year when it is dry enough - and your newly planted tree are still within their tubes.

I think(?) growing in smaller clearings of the right size might actually help your new trees. You can then use the trackhoe to clear big swaths as needed any time in the future.

(You could even make very small clearings if you are good at using your wedges and dropping trees right where you want them with your chainsaw.)

Hope that gives you a few more planting areas and ideas for this fall! I also like jpsdad's "numbers" method since planting seeds is so much easier than transplanting. If you have lots of healthy acorns and seeds available, just "overplant" the heck out of them. Maybe put a cheap construction flag by them so you can easily find your best saplings in the spring. Then you can do the time and effort to put tubes on your best ones. Come back in five years and thin your weak trees in areas where you have too many survivors.

Good luck on your tree projects! Can't wait to see how beautiful your property is 40 years from now.

Thanks! I have been reviewing a bunch of books on property mgt for whitetails and etc. lately. Figure 5 to 10 years until retirement. Probably 15 to 20 to live. Want to get things in good shape for future. Figure land etc is a resource. Might as well maximize its potential as much as possible for the future whether I'll see the full benefits or not.

Have a bunch more walnuts, apple seeds, cherry seeds, and will have more pecans. I may direct seed a bunch too.

Heck, if you keep working that hard on your property ... you will be so buff that you will probably live another 50 years!

Maybe so. Diggin that hole to bury the four 5 gallon buckets convinced me that people probably didn't bury their dead in a 6 ft hole long 3 feet wide and 6 feet down back in the old days before backhoes and good equipment. I dug that hole using three different steel shovels and a hammer drill with an auger on it and it still took a while digging about a 4 x 4 x 4 hole. Ground is hard around here right now. Have a lot of ideas for property improvements- will just take time, money, and hard work.

Bought about 500 2 gallon plastic pots from a local nursery. Planning to dig up the buckets Sunday. See if I need the pots. Don't quite know what to hope for. Want more trees; but will be a lot of work to pot, care for, and transplant.

I do pecans. Soak them for about a month. Then put them in a flower pot or 5 gallon bucket with the pointy end up. Eliminate all but the best one. Transplant when it is growing well. Best to put it in a low area where water drains to and stands.

I have some soaking now.

Dave do you get the same type of pecan or do they revert back to native?

Back to native But I have a couple of natives that put out larger nuts than most.

We planted chestnut trees and can’t water them enough to keep them alive during this ongoing drought. Also lost pecan trees from snowpockalipse a few years back

I ordered another 10-pack of Dunstan Chestnut trees this week. They should ship sometime the 2nd week of April.

I need to replace a few that I killed by over watering, and add a few new ones to fill out my grove.

After that I figured out why some of the trees were suffering I bought a couple dozen 20 gallon tree watering bags.
Those worked well for me last year. Filled them twice a week during the heat of summer, which was enough to keep
the surrounding soil nicely moist.

I need to get out there in the next few days, pull the grow tubes off, remove the dead leaves from last season, then
reset the tubes and install the watering bags. We should be swimming in mud right now but it seems the drought
here isn't quite over. If it doesn't start raining soon I'll be ready.

Just North of Oklahoma City is getting pounded right now.

I think chestnuts are very susceptible to having water-logged roots.

I planted a row of chestnuts in a depression at our farm, because we get even less rain than you guys do in Misery.

Unfortunately, the next spring was very wet and our ground was soggy for five months. Only one chestnut survived, and it was at the end of the row on slightly higher ground.

I had even run the roto-tiller behind the tractor and made wide bowls before planting to really make the chestnuts drought resistant. I was kind of proud of my work on that project ... and my hubris clearly resulted in excess rains!

Do you order bare rooted trees or in pots like Wally World sells for $34 each

I found 2 of the soaking pecans that have split and are starting to put out what resembles a root. Going to put them in pots to see if they make it.

Generally, about 10% of the nuts are fertile/root and, of those, about 25% turn into a tree. Of those, a couple don’t die from my neglect.

I’ll plant them, assuming they live, below my leaky dam where the soil stays moist. I have found that most “wild” pecan trees occur in low areas where water collects.

The chestnut trees I've been buying are bare-root.
Wallymarts carries the potted trees from the same nursery that I buy from, but not within 150 miles of where I live.

Dug up the four buckets of seeds. Ugh! That was work! Even more when you start in the wrong spot! ;-)

I have planted about 140 sprouted chestnut seeds into 2 gl pots, about 15 or so apples, and maybe a dozen walnuts. None of the pecans have sprouted so far. Not many of the walnuts have.

I've noticed that chestnuts with the sand clumped around them don't sprout. It seems like the ones that do sprout are the ones the sand doesn't stick to. Don't know how many of the ones in the tubes made it through the winter. The soil is very hard Clay- which chestnuts apparently don't like; but...