Opinions on fertilizing trees?

[Swamp Pygmy]

I was thinking about fertilizing a few trees to make them more appealing.

I then read last night on a QDMA site that sunlight is the main factor in mast production, not fertilizing. They said due to acorn mast varying there has never been any concrete proof it helps at all. That makes sense but isn't that just one factor?

I mean tomatoes grown in full sunlight will obviously be better too. But they also are also obviously better when fertilized. Considering the article also stated "save the money you'd use on trees and use it in your food plots" made me really think it was just product placement. They are QDMA after all.

Any tradgangers have personal experience fertilizing oak or persimmon trees? Do you think it makes sweeter mast? Did deer come to it as opposed to other trees?

[Pat B]

I've never seen a need to fertilize trees in the wild. They recycle almost everything they need from the leaves(theirs and others) that break down around their root ball anyway. Clearing out competition would be more beneficial. Most of their feeder roots are just below the ground level and usually inside the drip edge of the tree.
   With some trees, like persimmons, you will have to determine the male trees from the female.  Only the female produces fruit but you need the males as pollinators. Where I hunt, the persimmons that bear usually bear every year and some years better that others. Never had a reason to fert them either.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

It does help the tree and the mast. Get some of the tree spikes and put them around the tree. Making sure you place them at the drip line. You can get away with 4, but on fruit trees place 8.

Also Pat makes some good points.

[Jerry Jeffer]

Food from trees is out of reach from deer most of the year. Mast only lasts a couple of weeks for feeding deer and then its gone. Well managed food plots will provide for the deer through out the year.  Clearing some smaller trees out so the bigger trees can do better might be some thing to think about. Considering what to put your time and money into isn't a bad idea. Just my 2 cents worth of food for thought.

[Jack Whitmire Jr]

The little place I have ( 30 acres ) has a varity of hard mast and some soft mast like persimmons. If you take a chain saw in and open up around a fruit tree ( persimmon ) , you do 2 things . The first being more sunlight to the tree , the second being cover and browse. I fertilize 11 differnt persimmon trees every year with 10-10-10, does it do any good, well it seeems to. I'm in a forest management plan ( more to lower my taxes than anything )that allows me the input from a state forester , he says it will help in fruit production and root growth. I took a buck from the persimmons this fall. I think it helps with the fruit production.

Jack

[Dartwick]

2 issues here.

One is mast on trees is cyclic. Nuts are produced every year to a degree, but trees communicate with chemicals to synchronize so they can have the largest productions in the same years - this means that on the major production years the animals cant eat most of the nuts.

You just have to accept this.


As for light vs fertilizer. It comes down to a limiting factor. If the tree has as much light as it can make use of then fertilizer could help - but not nitrogen  which will promote foliage rather than mast.
But in a forest trees are almost always short of the light they could use.

[ronnyg]

in the past,fertilizing briars and honeysuckle, has paid off as natural food plots, the deer seem to be drawn to the nutruients in the darker green growth

[Swamp Pygmy]

Thanks but I think most folks missed my point here.

I'm not concerned with making a larger mast, or making them produce every year, and certainly not fertilizing a grove of oaks. Thinning them out isn't an option.

What I mean is if you have 10 White Oaks all dropping acorns at the same time, but only one was fertilized. Will the White Oak you fertilized for a year or two have more appetizing mast than the ones you didn't.

Like if you've ever grown a tomato with no attention and next year grown one with ferts, the tomatoes aren't just bigger. They taste better.

I've heard people claim deer will go to the fertilized oak over the unferted ones. I was just curious on peoples experience if they have done it.

[Forester]

Dartwick has a very good point.  Which factor is limiting?  Also, mast/fruit quantity production is more dependent upon tree crown size than nutrients provided in fertilizer form.  Mast/fruit quality or sweetness may be slightly improved with fertilizer if your fertilizer addresses the limiting nutrient.  If you have soil sample results and apply fertilizer according to the deficiencies shown, and the needs of that species fruit production, then you may see some results. There are many environmental factors that affect mast production in quantity, timing and quality and as mentioned above fertilizer often will promote vegetative growth before mast/fruit.

Don't underestimate QDMA.  With so many supporters and advertisers in the food plot business trying to sell to the targeted market of QDMA members it is easy to get the impression that they are all about food plots and big bucks.  That was my opinion also until I truly investigated and started to meet some of the organization leaders.  I have found the QDMA founders and staff to be serious professional wildlife biologists that are focused on balanced deer herds and healthy habitat.  Each time I hear them speak or read materials from QDMA I have been given the message that balanced herd and habitat should be based upon natural forage and native vegetation.  They quite openly state that food plots are secondary and supplemental tools in management that should be used after deer numbers are in line with well managed habitat.

In summary, as a forester I agree with the silvicultural aspects of improving tree crowns and growing space to promote more/better mast.  If you have limited resources and are managing habitat then your fertilizers would show more results if applied to an herbaceous food source (food plot or natural).  However, the application of small to moderate amounts of a general 10-10-10 fertilizer should not hurt your tree(s).  If you would like to try it I wish you good luck and hope that you see positive results. Let us know if you do see a difference between your sweetened and unsweetened trees.

[NightHawk]

yes fertilizing trees is good. most ol timers used to do it. from what I understand it makes the nuts (acorns) sweeter and plumper than the others. I fertilize trees that are closest to my treestand placement

[Jedimaster]

I've done it.  I don't know any accurate way to measure how much it improves anything but it only cost a couple of bucks for a sack of fertilizer.  One thing is for sure, it won't hurt.  Fertilize around the drip line.  

It has been my experience that deer are drawn to the more heavily fertilized plants in my garden.  That is fact not conjecture.  Same plant, same garden one side heavy on the fertilizer and the deer eat them selectively.  Don't know if that will equate to anything in the wild but again it's only a couple of dollars and sure can't hurt.

[rappstar]

i have two 1 acre food plots in the middle of my hunting area which is pretty much all white oak and post oak timber.  when dozing for the plots, i left about 6 healthy white oaks in each of the food plots to provide a little shade.  

i put a lot of fertilizer on the plots to get the clover to grow.  Two tons of pelletized lime have been applied to the areas as well.  so in theory, the soil conditions in my plots are better than in the surrounding timber.

i can't tell or see the difference.  the deer didn't hit the trees in the plots first or clean them up before moving on.  The acorn size was similar to the whiteoak acorns down the ridge that didn't get fertilizer.  so i really don't know if the deer would prefer hitting the acorns in the plots vs. eating acorns back in the woods.

[DEATHMASTER]

By putting the lime you changed the PH of the soil so the clover grew better but took away from the oaks. The ones in the woods are probably in staging areas and they move on to another thing to eat,ie clover. variety is what a deer needs.

I have put fertilizer stakes or 10-10-10 in holes  around the drip line of hickory nut trees and have noticed much larger nuts from those trees. Some as large as quarters. The ones 50 yards away are the size of dimes. All plants use fertilizer in growth.
JMHO,
Tim

[snapper1d]

Here's what I was told by a guy that helped manage a rather large pecan plantation over by the red river here in Arkansas.They start fertilizing the trees every january and does it every month until june and not again til the next january with nothing but ammonia nitrate.He says when you you do this it causes the limbs of trees to get green and heavy and they find of self prune themselves because of the limbs getting heavy and breaking out.On pecan trees the new growth is where all the nuts will be grown.He says if you have a tree that slows on producing that this is what needs to be done.I tried it on some persimmons and it did work for them also.The trees that got the fertilize did have a lots of persimmons and they were good and sweet.The other tree down by the pond had persimmons on it that were horrible and not many of them either.The coons and possums wouldnt even eat them.Man I would got to the good tree and sit around and eat a belly full of those persimmons and they were some kind of good I just had to beat the deer,coons and possums to them.

[Chris Surtees]

Swamp Pygmy...I have done the fertilizing of select trees in a groove before...for me it worked really well...I used the fertilizer stakes being mentioned above and placed about 4 to 8 of them, depending on tree size, around the trees closest to my stand...even though it seemed to work the first year I really noticed the effectiveness around the third year...I think it is most certainly worth the effort and will continue to do it.

Hope this answered you question.

[rappstar]

deathmaster,

how would raising the ph of my soil take away from the oaks?  by increasing the ph, you are essentially allowing the plant to take more nutrient from the soil.

[Bonebuster]

Reading the posts before mine, I still don`t think anyone answered your guestion.

I can tell you that I do believe the deer can tell the difference between fertilized acorns versus non-fertilized.

I have seen a tendency for deer to feed on fertilized acorns many times over non.

I have a friend who bought a piece of land in '88, and towards the back it had three HUGE White oaks. For several years these beautiful trees never produced a single acorn. We put a dozen stakes around the drip edges of these trees, and after a couple years they began to produce.

They are deer magnets during early bow season. These trees are my friends best hunting buddies.

If he thinks it has not rained enough, he will haul a gas powered water pump, and big hoses out there, and pump water from a small pond to give them a drink during the hot summer.

[nd chickenman]

I don't think chemical fertilizers have a place in the woods. Chemical fertilizer is harsh and will kill bacteria and even plants if applied wrong. There is a natural order to the soil in the forest that has been occuring for millions of years, leave well enough alone.My .02

[DEATHMASTER]

rappstar, You are changing the three elements in the P.H.  N.P.K By doing that. By doing a soil test you could tell what is needed to have a nutral P.H. 6.0 . If you have 10 bows 10 guns 10 women some will be used and the rest will be waisted or only good to look at and not used.
Same with your three elements to much of one will cause problems.
A 10-10-10 fertilizer will bost the P.H. n the soil but keep it nutural as nature had it.

[Rick Perry]

"'ve heard people claim deer will go to the fertilized oak over the unferted ones. I was just curious on peoples experience if they have done it"


 I can tell you this  ...... my house is built in the edge of my woods  ....... there is a white oak in my lawn that gets fertilizer when I fertilize my lawn . When the acorns start to fall the deer flock to that tree !!!!! .. Heck my GSD chases em off when I let him out but they keep coming back until the nuts are all cleaned up .

 There has to be something to the fertlizer thing. Why else would the deer walk past thousands of white oak trees on my 200 acre farm . To feed under one where they are constantly harrassed ?????


 But I also agree with chickenman  .............. I dont think fertilizer belongs in the woods ......... we are putting plenty of pollutants on our tillable acres that end up in the streams  ......... we dont need to start doing it in the timbers and buffer zones that are actually acting as filters to keep some of that out of the streams .

 Acorns and deer have been doing just fine for centuries without 12-12-12 . .... JMHO