Fruit trees

Thinking of planting some fruit trees this year. No idea where to purchase and exactly what to plant. I would assume apple trees

Check with Gertens.

Plum and pear are my personal favorites. Find a variety that don’t need a pollinator.

The wife makes plum jelly and plum schnapps. So good.

I’m assuming this is for wildlife property enhancement, not personal consumption.

I cruise the scratch and dent aisles for bargains. Last year in the late summer, I scored a bunch of apple and crabapple trees at Menards on end of season clearance plus 11% off, so I got decent sized trees for $12 each. I also found some nice crabapples at Gertens in the scratch and dent area for $20, but that was a nice big tree.

But here’s the problem in most of Minnesota. If you buy it and plant it, you HAVE to protect it or the deer will browse it down to nothing. Unless you buy 10 foot high trees, the deer will eat any art pf a tree they can reach. IMO you’re just throwing away good money if you don’t protect the trees because with fruit trees especially, I doubt 10% would survive unprotected. So my “$12” trees really cost $12 plus about $50 a tree to put a full 6-foot high woven wire cage around each tree.

As far as variety, I went with the shotgun approach and planted as many varieties of zone-hardy apples and crabapples as I could get. IMO, for wildlife trees, what you want is high volume producers. Forget “dwarf” trees, I went for full size, full flavor trees because size is not an issue, I’m not short of space and I’m not going to pick fruit.

Also, top tip. Keep all receipts and tags for all trees! Menards and Gertens has a 1-year warranty but you MUST have the original receipt, tag, and you must bring back the dead tree. I brought back 3 trees that died and got new ones this year.

Grouse

my pear trees did well last season, I believe they were Bartlet. Bought them at Bachmans

Yep these would be for wildlife and planted in north central Minnesota

As far as caging the off, I assume you are putting some stakes in a couple deer away from the tree and wrapping the wire around?

This is good info however like Grouse says it may be difficult to protect them.
Depending on how often you can take care of the trees and how many you plant, fox urine, and dog poop keeps deer away.

https://extension.umn.edu/find-plants/fruit

Nitrodog wrote:

As far as caging the off, I assume you are putting some stakes in a couple deer away from the tree and wrapping the wire around?

I’ll snap a picture when I’m at the farm tomorrow, but basically yes.

I bought 4 six-foot T fence posts for each tree and pounded them in so that they anchored a six-foot high wolven wire circle that surrounds each tree. The tree trunks also must be rabbit protected with a PVC tube.

I think total cost was somewhere around $30-some dollars per tree in materials, but my plan here is get the current line of trees growing and up well above deer height, then just put in trunk protection posts and reuse the wire fence and long posts on the next 6 trees and so forth.

So far, my only losses were winter killed trees, none lost because of animal browsing.

Grouse

Here’s a couple of pictures of my current setup for protecting apple trees.

I figured out the radius should be just less than 4 feet, so each circle uses about 25 linear feet of wire fence. You want to allow for some overlap to fasten the fence together.

Don’t make the mistake I made and wire the fence ends together. Use something that can easily be removed in case you need to get inside the fence to prune, fertilize, or add a new rabbit protector. I ended up just using zip ties and I cut them every time I need to get inside the fence. 4 ties does it.

I don’t think this requires a super heavy duty wire because I think deer are afraid of getting tangled in wire, so I’ve never had one even try to push into the fence. In retrospect, I probably could have gone with lighter steel wire and saved a few bucks, but it’s hard to find the combination of 6-foot fence height AND lighter wire.

Grouse

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Thanks for the help

Bit off topic…..
We have a security light on the peak of the house. It lights up our Apple tree’s and has become fun sitting in the dark in the kitchen watching the Deer come up and feed on the Apples.