Ep. 531: Planting Trees for Wildlife with Bob and Iain Wallace

today in the show, we're talking trees. We're gonna cover everything you need to know to make trees a part of your habitat improvement plan. We're gonna be talking about how trees can help you improve a property for deer and deer hunting, as well as how to make it be beneficial for all sorts of animals and birds and pollinators living in your neck of the woods. We're to explore the services the trees can provide, not just feeding deer mass, but everything else they do for the environment.

We're gonna talk about why they're so impactful, how to choose the most useful and appropriate trees for your goals and for your area. We're gonna talk through what kinds of trees are the best for certain goals. We'll definitely talk a lot about how to choose the right places to plant and the right ways to do that planting itself.

This is really great stuff. We've never spent a really, uh kind of substantial amount of time talking about trees, massed trees, hard massed, soft massed fruit trees, all the many different things these can do for deer and deer hunting. And today I'm really glad we're doing it. And my guests today are two folks have a have a deep and very very interesting connection to trees, chestnut trees in particular.

Now you might not know much about chestnuts trees because they have mostly been wiped off the face of our countinent. But it wasn't always that way. It might not have to stay that way in the future either. You see, our guests are Bob and Ian Wallace of Chestnut Hill Outdoors.

They run a very successful nursery selling trees all across the country, with a particular focus on trees for wildlife, for hunters and land managers, and they've got a tremendous knowledge of this intersection between growing and planting trees and then also meeting the goals that we as hunters and outdoors people have. So that's what they do. But they've got this this really interesting history that I found fascinating

as well. So before we get them on, I want to read you just a little bit about something related to this history and this history of chestnut trees, which is something that they are deeply connected to, and it was talked about in my recent favorite book of the year, The Over Story, which maybe you've heard me ranting and raving about here in recent weeks, but it's it's good stuff, and I thought this would be a really appropriate time to read you a little expert So this is a

little snapshot of the history that preceded Bob and Ian's story, and then when they come on, they're gonna explain how they fit into this. So here's the excerpt. The Killer slips into the country from Asia in the wood of Chinese chestnuts destined for fancy gardens. A tree in the Bronx Zoological Park turns October colors in July, leaves curl and scorched to the hue of cinnamon, rings of orange spots spread across the swollen bark. At the slightest press,

the wood caves in. Within a year, Orange spots flecked chestnuts throughout the bronx the fruiting bodies of a parasite that has already killed its host. Every infection releases a horde of spores on the rain and wind. City gardeners mobilize a counter attack. They lop off infected branches and burn them. They spray trees with a lime and copper sulfate from horse drawn wagons. All they do is spread the spores on the ax as they used to cut

the victims down. A researcher at the New York Botanical Garden identifies the killer as a fungus new to man. He publishes the results and leaves town to beat the summer heat. When he returns a few weeks later, not a chestnut in the city is worth saving. Death races across Connecticut. In Massachusetts, jumping dozens of miles a year, trees succumb by the hundreds of thousands. A country watches,

dumbstruck his New England's priceless chestnuts melt away. The tree of the tanning industry of railroad ties train cars, telegraph poles, fuel fences, houses, barns, fine desks, tables, pianos, crates, paper pulp, and endless free shade and food. The most harvested tree in the country is vanishing. Pennsylvania tries to cut a

buffer hundreds of miles wide across the state. In Virginia, on the northern edge of the country's richest chestnut forest, people call for religious revival to purge the sin behind the plague. America's perfect tree, backbone of entire rural economies, the limber, durable redwood of the East, with three dozen industrial uses. Every fourth tree of a forest stretching two million acres from Maine down to the Gulf, is doomed.

A five year old in Tennessee who sees the first orange spots appear in her magic woods will have nothing left to show her own children except pictures. They'll never see the ripe, full habit of the tree, never know the site and sound and smell of their mother's childhood.

Millions of dead stumps brought suckers that struggle on year after year before dying of an infection that preserved in these very stubborn shoots, will never disappear by the fungus takes everything all the way out to the farthest stands in southern Illinois. Four billion trees in the Native range vanish into myth, aside from a few secret pockets of resistance. The only chestnuts left those the pioneers took far away

the states, beyond the reach of the drifting spores. And so this is where Bob's family comes into play, because his family helped find some of those last survivors and bring them into the future. So that, my friends, is

what we're discussed. We're gonna get this very interesting story, and we're then going to dive into how we can plant trees like this, whether it's chestnuts or apple trees, or oak trees or per simmons, so many other things, and do great things for the wild life that we hope to hunt, that we want to watch, that we want to help, and uh, man, get something out there that's good for our kids and their kids too. So that's the game plan today. I'm excited about it. Bob

and Ian are great guests. I think you're gonna enjoy chatting with them, and so I think let's, uh, let's just get into that story. Now I will give you one quick heads up. We did have some sound quality issues for parts of this one in the beginning, so I'm sorry in advance for the audio inconvenience, but thanks for baron with it. It does get better later in the show. So thanks and here we go. All right here with me now on the show. I've got Ian

and Bob Wallace. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Thank you. Yeah, hey, Mark, thanks for having us on. Yeah, I really appreciate you making the time. I'm I'm on a little bit of a personal tree kick. I've been I've read a couple of books that got me more fascinated with trees than I ever have before. So the last two months or so, I've been just diving really deep into the world of trees and forests and all sorts of stuff. So I'm particularly excited about this one. Given to you guys, history

and your specialty. Um So, I guess with that said, could the two of you, you know, just give me a quick introduction to yourselves and your role today with the nursery. Uh, Ian, do you want to kick things off? Maybe? Yeah? Sure? Um So my name is Ian Waller, I Bob don Um Bob. Uh. Bob founded the nursery with with my mom. I'm dead about gosh forty forty something years ago now, and um my brother and I have taken over operations at this point. Um. And you know, I'll let Bob

kind of explain a little bit of a history of everything. Um. But you know, we as a family have been, um just really involved in in the nursery industry and then all things plants for a really long time. My my great grandfather was Dr. Dunson, who read the Dunston Chestnut

and he was a plant breather. Uh and and so we we have you know, generations of uh just knowledge and there it was in that um, you know, we we find you know, it's a just it's it's crucial to pass that information on to other people because we've in fat you know, trees and plants are of course just a crucial part of our our local ecosystems. Yeah, Bob, what about you can use a little more of that backstory.

So I got involved in chestnuts. My father was a plant leader at the University of Florida, and my mom's dad, his father in law, was a great breeder and he got given some cuttings from an American chestnut tree that had survived in a grove of a hundred acres of dead trees from Ohio. Chestnuts are a really unique tree. They were the most common tree in the eastern hardwood forest and from millennia, and they were incredibly prolific food

producing tree. Chestnuts are high carbohydrates, high in protein, high in water, low and fat. So there really nutritionally like a grain like brown rice that grows on a tree. And if you could imagine what that means if you were a deer or a squirrel or a hog or whatever. It's incredibly valuable food source. And every fall throughout East or North America there was a giant mass crop of just nuns and they literally were in some areas in the Appalachians and in the Northeast a solid forest. It

was the the forest in some areas. And around the turn of the century, a dark fungus from China got accidentally introduced into the United States on trees at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and it was they had brought in justice from China. Justice exists are all over the world in the northern latitudes, and they've been incredibly important as a food source, not just for wildlife, but also for people.

I mean, they're remnants of chestnuts and seven thousand year old Chinese archaeological digs there in all the Native American um archaeological digs in northeastern in the Eastern United States, and they were really important for settlers and for Native Americans. As we all, it's for wildlife, and so it's you know, it's an incredible food source. But this disease was brutal the Chinese the disease of some China. Chinese chestnuts have resistance to it, and but the American chessnut didn't end.

In the space of about thirty years, thirty million acres of forest died in the Eastern United States. I mean, that's easily the largest ecological disaster in American history. And you know, none of us remember it because we weren't alive. I mean, it's just unknown. Now. If you could imagine all the oak trees in the Eastern United States dying

off right now, that's how devastating it would be. And my grandfather was a plant breeder in North Carolina, and he watched the chestnut forest dial around it, and so he a friend of his found a single living tree in this grove of dead trees and took cuttings and

sent it to him. My grandfather, after the blight had had killed off all the chestnuts, had had planted Chinese chestnuts on his farm in North Carolina, and so he hybridized this single living American chestnuts that had some native, you know, natural blight resistance in it with Chinese chestnuts. Chinese chestnut does not have a very good tree form, It's not timberlike like the American and the nut quality

is not quite as good. And so he created this hybrid that was that both had really good nut tree quality and was resistant to chestnut light. And this was in the nineteen fifties and when he retired, he moved to be near my mom's daughter in Alatua, Florida, where the farm is, and he had this grove of chestnut trees on his property and one of the few chests that grows in the eastern United States at the time. And they were white resistant. So we had we took

samples of them, got you know, inoculated with white. They survived the inoculations. Um we did, you know, We sent them around different chestnut researchers to see how blite resistant they were, and they turned out to be a really high quality tree. And so I got out of college and moved to the farm to be uh near my grandparents and started a nursery to be able to grow

chestnut trees. And we were at the time the US was importing millions of dollars of chestnuts for roasting on the open fire, and that was our original market, to try to sell them to orchardess to replace the imported chestnums. And it was a great idea, except when you sell to an orchardess, next year, you've got to find another orchardess because they planted their crops. So the nursery diversified over time. And I was at a at a conference.

I'm a fisherman and I was not a hunter at the time, and I was at a conference talking to a guy about deer repellent because all the orchardess were having offense their orchards off because the deer were literally coming in and cleaning out their entire chestnut harvest. And the guy looked at me and said, you need to sell the people who bleatch us, I mean who want deer, not who want want the chestnuts for harvest, and that

was a lot. How was a light bulb that went on and um, one of my best friends from high school was a professional bass fisherman, saw Griggsby in and

he introduced me to build her for real treat. And at at the time, Mossy Oaks had a little nurseries selling oak trees, and so I went to Bill and Fitch the story and said, hey, look, will you know license with real tree and call it real Tree nursery and sell chesna trees, which is a way better tree for attracting deer than than uh oak trees are because one,

they're sweet too, they don't have any tanning. You know, deer will eat a white oak long before they lead a reddo just acorn because the white oaks are less bitter and chestnuts had no tannon whatsoever, and the deer absolutely love them. So we started selling selling chestnut trees too deer hunters, probably fifteen years ago, and it I think it really changed the concept of food plots in the the entire hunting industry. You know, everybody was planting

Brassica's or plant core and their plant beans. They um a lot of those those plots you had to plow the ground every year, you had to have machinery or work the soil, and you had to replant in the you know, the beauty of a free crop for producing food if you plant one time and you take care of it for a few years, and that investment can last to more years. So you're not just planning for yourself, but you're planning for your for your kids and your grandkids.

And the deer when they learned that there's an orchard producing food, that those teach the funds and those deer come back every single year. And you know, our our orchard, we have a conveyor built of schools that hauls the nuts off as well as the deer. When you come home, there's you know, half a dozen here in the orchard

at the farm during harvests. So it's a it's a pretty amazing attractive and I think, really, you know, we kind of discovered a whole new way to improve your land and and improve your you know, take care of your farm and and improve the wallet on your left. Yeah, now, correctly if I'm wrong, but there are a number of other services. I guess maybe if we think of it that way, that trees can provide on a landscape outside of just food, right, I mean I've heard about the right.

They stabilized tree banks or stream banks if you're planning them by water, They filter drinking water, They helped pollinate different things. Can you speak a little bit about that stuff? Sure, the uh, you know, one of the one of the biggest issues that we're facing. Not to get too political, but the climate change can be reversed by plenty more trees. Trees take up carbon dioxide, they emit oxygen, They enhance

the health of the soil. And their studies around the world where farmers in Africa in an area that all the trees and then cut the lands drying out, um the you know, the crops don't grow well enough. But if they go into plant trees especially you know, even just a long fence rows or scattered throughout the pasture, you know, it creates shade for the livestock, shape for

the wildlife. It create, it creates food sources, and it actually changes the moisture regime of the climate in that area because the trees, you know, hold moisture in the soil. They emit moisture at night through respiration, which is the you know, the backside of photosynthesis and so they um, they breathe out moisture at night, and it's uh, it

really can change your entire farm. And if you're buying you know, old land that's been farmed heavily and the nutrients have been wrung out of the soil from too many crops harvested. If you go in into plant trees, you can completely change that cycle in a very short period of time. There's a lot of research, all a lot of different angles about that. Yeah, fascinating stuff, you know. Another another point to that is that you know, uh, local flora and fauna in a native ecosystem is is

in itself like a living organism. They're all connected significantly to each other. So when you take out native species and you you know, do you know homogenized crops um, it changes that whole the whole ecosystem and not just the the plants, but all of the animals have to change to you know, adapt to that that that local ecosystem. Just like our body, you know, if you take out certain types of um, you know, vitamins and nutrients, we start to not act so healthy and and the same

goes for an ecosystem. And so when you work to um put energy into native trees, native plants, UM, the whole ecosystem benefits from it. You know, from a food perspective, mark like you mentioned, from a pollinator perspective, birds and bees and bugs, um, everything works together. And so from top to bottom um you know, from predators down to prey plugs, micro organisms to you know, the macro species, it's all um. It's all connected. And so you know, planting,

planting trees there's a part of that process. Yeah, that's

a really important point. One of the things that I learned that we weren't just you know, selling trees to people to attract fear that it was a much deeper thing that what maybe you want to call it tree planning or track or therapy, right, but a lot of the people that we sold to they were you know, had office jobs during the week, and and they wanted to get to their farm and to improve their land, and we were one of the vehicles for them to get back in touch with the cycles and the earth. Again.

I mean, hunting has that there's a side the hunting that it's just like fishing or birding or whatever it mean that time sitting in the stand watching the world wake up at dawn. I mean, it's a really important part of the reasons that we get out there and you know, planting trees and you know, improving your land and making it, you know, a better place for the future.

Is it's a really cool process. And that was a thread that went through I swear everybody that comes to the farm to pick up creese, that's part of their goal. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, it's something I can definitely relate to. I have had that same experience where if it weren't for having involvement in starting to work the land and get involved the habitat improvement, I never would have understanded

this incredible depth of of the ecosystem. I guess I had to learn about soil, I had to learn about water and sun and how all these different things work together. And it opens up this entire new window that as a hunter I was never even looking into. I was I was walking through these places trying to just get to where the deer. We're thinking about how I was going to get set up for a shot, and I was ignoring all this other stuff around me. Um, And I feel like taking a step like this, whether it's

you know, doing food plots or in this case, trees. Um, it just takes the blinders off. I think it makes everything so much richer. Um. It's it's hard to beat that as far as I'm concerned. It's really true. The I used to say that the evolution of a hutter was, you know, I want to kill a deer. I want to kill a lot of deer. I want to kill a big deer. And then it gets to I want to grow deer. And it's you know, you're tracking them on your cams. You're watching the bucks as they age.

You're saying, Okay, that one's going to be a shooter. You know that one, I'm gonna wait another year. You know their habits, you know where they're, where they're at on the farm, where they're bedding down. I mean, it's it's really an amazing process of of knowledge, and that's you know, that's an elemental force and being a human for why hundreds of thousands of years, the process of tracking and knowing where all the game is out and everything.

I mean, it's a really really deep, deeply embedded thing in the process of training. Planting trees is just like that. Yeah, So So, Bob, you spoke to this a little bit earlier, but I'd like to um get back to it a little bit more, uh, specifically that being why we would choose trees over a food plot, or why we would choose to add trees to supplement a food plot system. Because right as we all know, food plots are very,

very trendy. Everybody wants to put them in. So if somebody's listening and they have a property that they're starting to manage or they have been, let's assume they either have food plots are thinking of doing food plots, can you give me, like your elevator pitch to this person about why a food plot, tree plan or trees and general should be added to that plan. If you had like, you know, a minute, a minute or two in the elevator with them, pitch them on this real quick. It's

certainly not mutually exclusive at all. If if you've got land and you want to improve it, food plots are tremendous and trees fit into that process really well because you're planning, you know, on the on the edge of your food plot, so you've got access to sun. Um, you know, you're laying out the trees so that you've got shooting lanes. You're um the real benefit though, it's as much economic or ergonomic that you're putting the energy in at the beginning. And I do like to say

trees are like children. If you plan them out and you don't water them, you know, and you ignore them, you're gonna get out of it what you put into them. But if you go out and take care of them for the first three or four years, you're gonna have something that's going to reproduce food year in year out for decades and decades. And I mean it's a it's an inexpensive long term investment in the health of the property.

And they you know, basically the biological mass that it can support by adding all another layer of of food production. Plus you know, chestnuts are as I mentioned before, are a high carbon hydrate energy source and they fall right at the time of the rut, so they are really important and have been for deer are really important resource, you know, when they need the most energy to be

able to chase those around. So it's it's a really critical critical thing and they're you know, they're very evolved together. Well i'd like that, yeah, I would definitely like to add a couple of teen things that I think is just just really cool. I mean, you know, our modern nature provides um and the you know, when you plant um uh you know, your traditional food plot, UM, you're gonna have a window in which if it's gonna grow, and you can decide that window and it's gonna peak

and that's when the nutrition is available. UM. But with with trees, if you strategically uh pick a window of varieties that are going to have nutrition available at different times of year, you can build your food plot to have nutrition available all year round. I mean in the South we can almost legitimately have fruits at almost twelve months of the year. Not quite, but it's here on the farm. Uh In in Olashua week we have uh just about ten months where you can be taken some

tin um. And as you go further north that window decreases. However, you know, you can take varieties that very early spring and early summer start to have fruit like mulberries um.

In the South, you have peaches um that come on in May and then into the summertime you have plums that come on in the native plum species like chickens out plum um and and then throughout the summer, uh you have blackberries, raspberries, and there's blueberries, and then further on into into the fall, then you start to have a lot um a lot to come on. There's hair in per sinmon and then of course the hard mask

like chestnut and oaks UM. And you know those those the deer are naturally dependent on those cycles, right that the way that nature has provided food forever um and it's you know, those those native species will seek out those food sources when they're available, and they also need those food sources at those strategic times for those nutritions UM.

You know, like Bob mentioned fruits uh and and mass trees like checks that have high carbohydrates sugars and fruits, and then in uh in checknut its high carbohydrate, but it also has healthy fats. And then of course right before the winter sets those other hard mass like acorns that have flopped of fats. So it's really important to have a wide variety of trees that can provide nutrients for the whole year, which is a really unique set that UM that planting trees provides that UM, you know,

it's a perfect addition to any food plot. Yeah, and that yeah, that's really true. Um, you can be in. One of the things the nursery can do is help the the planners, help the people plant the trees to come, you know, to pick the right varieties for the area. Right, So the South we have very mild winters, snow, you know, less freezes. Different trees are adapted to different latitudes, different

um areas. The USBA has what's called the chilling map, which is the number of hours underneath five degrees during wintertime. And so there stands the reason that stuff that grows in northern Illinois is not gonna God, you get enough chilling when you planted in southern Georgia. And that's especially true with plant with a lot of the fruit varieties.

That chill wing is uh as a factor in triggering the flowering first thing in the spring, which then ends up very uh you know, varying the flowers turned into fruit. So it's really important to pick the right varieties for your area. And you know, in this idea of being able to plant the sequence so you've always got fruit ripening on your farm. We also went and found things like varieties of simmons that will fruit in August and varieties for simmons that will fruit in November in the summer.

Same thing with pairs, same thing with apples, and so having that, you know, that wide range of cultivars that produced at different times also really helps keep the deer on your property. I mean literally, you can have a five acre backyard and plant enough fruit there that you're gonna pull deer from all over the area, because you know, most areas don't have that amount of food during the summer when there's a lot of vegetation to deer turn of vegetation and eat lots of leaves and grass and

stuff like that. But um, having even a little area, it becomes a magnet, right for every year in the area to come in and see. Yeah, and you know, tell me if you guys have seen this on a wider scale than me. But I've also noticed with things

like um soft mass trees, they're relatively unique in most areas. Right, there's gonna be thousands of acres of corn, and let's talk, you know, agricultural areas will be thousands of acres of corn, thousands of acres of soybeans, But you might be the only game in town that has apples or chestnuts or percions, and so it's you're like the ice cream truck that everybody can only get your place. That's true, and that

is very true. UM. And you know, another kind of point to that is that, um, when you may be a a you may have a unique food source on your property. And that's that's great to have, UM. But I think even more so, you know, I think a lot of people tend to think of a food plot as more of an attractive for a certain time of year, so that you tend get the deer to come to your property for that time, UM, and use it as bait in a sense. And you know that can I think that trees can be used in the same way.

But I think more importantly, if you have varieties that are fruiting all year round, you're gonna have a herd that stage. And you know, as we all know, dear dear, don't they don't there's a very large plot. They tend to stick in in a little bit smaller areas. Um. And if you have nutrition available at all times to see if there, your hurt's going to stay and you're going to have you know it just it's consistent, um, consistent attracting and not even attracting our bait. But it's

just their homes that they've decided to stay on. So the biological furbose carrying capacity, right, if you increase the foods in why you can increase the carrying capacity of your land. And so it's yeah, it's it's it's easy, easy to prove it easy to see. You know, when you're into your own eyes, when you started, you know,

your your crops start producing. Yeah, I think a common um rebuttal to the idea of trees from many people, and this has been something that I've said to myself over the years is man, but it's and take so long for these trees to make a difference. I can't wait ten years or fifteen years or however many years until these suckers work. I just want something now. Um what is your response to that pushback? The best sign the planet tree was was five years ago. It always

has been. To answer your question, mark, if you plant oaks, oaks have a long time in the maturity. White oaks can take up to twenty years before they bear fruit, and most of the oaks take eight, ten twelve years before you get into production. That was one of the really unique things about chestnuts it's chest us could bear it only three to five years, so you're not having to wait a long period of time. When you're planning

fruit trees. Many of them are grafted and so grafted trees are already using true wood to graft with, and so they can bear it two to three years as well, so you don't have this long wait time until you start getting into production and buy. You know, with a chestnut, by ten years you can be getting ten to twenty pounds and nuts per tree, so it's not that long a return. And but the other interesting thing about chestnuts that's a real advantage is chestnuts there every year no

matter what. They don't flower until after leaf out of the spray. Oaks flower before they leap out, and so sometimes olks get and you know, if you hunt an area you know the oak, the acorn crops will cycle. Sometimes it will be two or three years, and then you'll get a huge bump or crop of acorns. Wildlife like repetitive food, and you know they'll be more attracted to come back if you've got food crops every year, or they have to move to find where the acorns

are going. To be you know, dropping that year or if you have a thin year all over. But if um, then take about chestnuts, is that because they flower so late, they flower after the threat of frosts and springtime, and so they miss a lot of those late season spring

frosts and produce much more reliable crops. You're in your own So would it be your recommendation to you know, plant uh a diversity of different tree and shrub species if you were starting out with something like this, so you would have some things that would start producing mass earlier, like a chestnut or maybe some of these different shrubs and berries, and then you know, a handful of years later, then whatever else you were planting, maybe apples or per

simmons or something else would start producing, you know, in the longer term, so you don't wait to plant them. You get them all plants as soon as possible, and then slowly over time you're gonna get more and more and more production. Is that the way to think about this? Sure, that's exactly correct. Yeah, I think you could think about

like that. But I do think that there are um some species that are just they're just really great grupplot tree um, the chestnuts specifically we have, uh we shipped to a lot of retailers, will King and Walmart and are the largest size that we shipped, which is a seven down size. There's a three year old tree. And most of what we ship out about the flower and fruit UM. And I see I see checknuts on those

sizes actually really frequently. So I mean you can go to a store and get a a a mass producing tree um and with the persimmons, stand with the mulberry, um. It's it's had a lot thicker. If I think in people might um might think and those trees, I should say, that's about really all trees, um, most trees. It just

produced so much mask. You know, It's something that I look at year after year on the farms with the same trees and our same orchards, I look at all of the food that's being produced and I'm just blown away by the amount of food that that is exactly. We we harvest every single one of our chestnuts um. However, we don't harvest all of our persimmon fruits. Our care fruit are citrus that's on the farms. There's peach, there's um,

there's mulberry, there's a lot of fruit that we don't harvest. Uh. And there's thousands of towns that's fall and and just go away. They rot on the ground. We eat as much as we can, but we just simply can't harvest all of it um because they're they're budget sources. We don't we don't sell the fruit self on the farm. Um. And so you know, plants the trees, you will get a significant amount of fruits quite quickly. Be much differ

than you may think. So then let's say that somebody is listening and they've been convinced that, yeah, tree should be added to my repertoire. How how would you recommend someone going about thinking through what the right trees would be for different goals or for different areas. How do you how do you think through that? The best way for you to determine what to plant in your area?

I think first is to look at your usb A zone USC a plant pardiness zone map is if you just google that U S D A plant Pardiness zone map has your U S D A zone and it goes from you know, warm to cold um in the in the South, it's like you know, Florida's zone, and I think it gets under the leaven and then ten is Orlando area. Nine is where we are in uh in Gainesville, and it just goes up all the way to to Michigan. Where where Michigan is I think zones

UH full, five, four and five. UM, So check your U S D A zone you can google that, google your zip code and based on that you can go to really anywhere that cells trees and it should on the tag or on the website give you that information. UM. And you know there are there are some big retailers who are you or having trees and varieties that may not survive in your area, So make sure to check that. UM. Make sure to take a look at what zone you're

planning in and what the truth are. Then then next from there, I would I would really recommend just go now and taking a look at your property. UM. What kind of soil do you have where are you wanting to plant? Does it have full sunlight? UM? Does it have uh you know, a way to get water to it? If you don't have a way to get water to it, come up with a plan to get water to it for the first you know, a few years after planting, UM, you can take a soil sample. UM, you can find

a soil sample online, UM really anywhere. But also you know, your local feed and seed store or you know your local AD extension office can can provide soil samples UM and check out like what what kind of soil you have? UM. You know, do some research into your planting site because kind of like that site crap is is important, UM is important to think about. UM and all of those kind of factors will give you a general idea of kind out what what you can plant in your area.

But I mean really primarily it's going to be your zone, in your U s d A zone. Yeah okay, So so then let's say we've done that, We've checked our zone, and we've checked what our site specifics are. UM, all things being equal, what would be a handful of your top recommended trees to consider? You know, assuming that some will be right for certain areas. If you had to give me, like the greatest hits that everyone should at

least look into, what would those be? Yeah? Sure, yeah, so I think that UM, I would start by thinking about a range of UM, well, first highly producing trees and second having a range of varieties that are can produced at different times of year. UM. I think would

be would be preferable and best for a food cloth. UM. But you know, number one I would recommend if your fire goal is to attract wildlife and deer, the the Dunstan chestnut is um, and the chestnut specifically is um a tree that deer are are naturally wired to seek out because of the rich history of chestnuts in America. UM. It's it's something that they just smell and sense and they come to it over many other Um. You know, a corner or fruit, so chestnut um, and it produces

extremely heavily. Next, I'd say cher simon U. Cher Simmon also is just a heavy producer. UM. It's high sugars and in an important time of year. UM. Hair hair is a really great tree. UM. I mean many types of pair. You know, I would say, you know, people may be worried about a specific variety, UM, but at the end of the day, if your goal is to attract wildlife, most varieties are going to suffice UM with

with pair and per simmon um. You know, whether it's late or not, I mean, just uh, if it's an edible pair versus a versus a native pair versus m improved you know, care for you know, a cold like a cold hardy pair as long as it um as long as I just think that in general, um deer

are just going to be attractive to fruit. So uh lastly or some more would be um crab apple, I mean apple in general, but we we sell crab apple all over the Eastern United States because it is a native and um it may not have very edible fruit for us, but it does produce highly um. And it is a native, so it has natural resistance to at inc testing disease and weather that we uh see in the Eastern United States. UM. Mulberry is another great producer

um and plum. There's native plums, but really any plum um and then of course bushes like raspberry, BlackBerry, blueberry um all great producers. I'd add mulberry to that list because it's a really early ripening fruit in the springtime. But one of the things that I think UM bears in mind if you're buying some of the commercial fruit varieties, let's say like a Gala apple or you know, uh red delicious apple, A lot of the commercial varieties require

a lot of sprays and chemicals to produce fruit. They were bred for fruit quality, not for disease resistance, and so we tend to stick to more native called of ours and UM. One of the other things you want to do is look at ripening times. And we've got several varieties of pairs. One of them is a doctor Dear pair that was selected by Dr James Crawl in Texas. He found it full of fruit at Christmas time, and so we propagate that because it holds its fruit so

late in the season. And there are per simmons uh that we sell native per simmons and will ripen in August and some that will ripen in November. So you can have fruit on the tree all the way through the hunting season just because you've got you plant you know in early a middle season, in a late season variety and they all so you've got fruit ripening all throughout pharmacason. So I think you know, or native variety versus commercial varieties that are for because they're easier to

care for them. And then a wide range of ripening UM. And also you know, just to touch on oak as well, white oh has less annon and red oak and uh. You know, deer have really sensitive taste buds just like us, and that they would rather less canon because of the bitterness. Um. However, like we talked about earlier, acorns can take a really long time to produce. Oaks can take up to twenty years before they produce. But um we do so on a website. A we sell saw toothed oak, which is

a faster producing oak. They can produce in uh, you know, seven to nine years as opposed to the fifteen to twenty years or some some other species. Um so a saft tooth oak. We also have a gobbler saw tooth oak, which is a little bit more of a compact kind of st um if you're looking to have mass produced quicker. However, acorns are also when when they do produce, they put us a significant quantity of high fat uh mass, which is uh you know, a really important food source as well.

So you know, wrapping that into your uh tree food plot is also something to think about. Yeah, So if we're planting tree food plots as as we're as you're referring to them, is it best to do a mono culture? Like Okay, if I'm doing this, I'm gonna do chestnuts, and it's gonna be all chestnuts because only just get it just right in just the right place, or I'm gonna just apples or just per simmons, or would you

instead recommend, you know, a blend. If you're gonna do an orchard, it should be a bunch of different things. How what would you recommend their diversity or perfect the one same thing. From a pollination point, you need to have the trees in the same area, so in small groups, you know, if you've got chests, that trees need to be within the feet of each other across pollinate because the wind pollinated. And it's better if you've got four

or five trees in a group. And then but the idea, you know, don't just plant one or two, plant you know, half a dozen, eight or ten trees of a particular type together, and then you know your next block will have the same grouping, so not totally random because of pollination concerns, but also um mixing them up. Will you know you can do a lot, even in a very small area, by just making sure that you've got to mix of different varieties. So it's kind of a combination

of both. Would you ad anything to you, Yeah, I think that it's just important to take a look at m H. Yes, your species requires a pollinator or not. Some species are self fertile or just produce fruit on their own without a pollinator. UM. So if it does require a pollinator, then you have to plan at least two. However, at least two planted fifty feet apart, um is still only going to produce so many flowers, especially early in

the trees. Like so as that tree develops and it starts to produce more flowers every year, UM, it will start to pollinate each other um more and more. But with uh, you know, with three or five or ten trees, it's going to start to have more poll interpollination um earlier in in your in your food plot. So there's something to think about. I would recommend having a variety of tree because I think that having the different types

of nutrients is all important. Um. However, it just depends on how large your planting site is, you know, UM.

And and you know some some people want to plant three trees, four trees, that's all the space they have, and so in that scenario, you may just want to plant homogeneous and have just one variety, Whereas if you have a little bit of space for more trees, and then I would recommend doing you know, a couple of different varieties with at least I would say, at least three trees within within pollination space so that they can they can pollinate each other. I was gonna say, let's

talk a little bit land. Um, you know, site selection and your property. Well, let's say you have a blot land. Yet, what do you want to look for? Because E didn't mentioned it before, I think it's really critical, is that your soil is really important for your ability to be able to have a good tree food plot. And you know, as the and said before, go look at what's growing

on the property right now. If you've got nice oak trees and you know, ell on the beach and that sort of stuff growing on your property, you can grow chestnuts and you can grow oak trees and probably most of the fruit for your area. But if you've got pine flat woods that doesn't have you know, very good soil, and that's a common soil type down here in the Deep South, especially Georgia, South Carolina. And then you know, all the way along the Gulf Coast you need to

really find the best planning site. You know, consequently, further north where there's rolling land or or bottom land and a lot of people come and say, well, look, a's w a wet down there. I want to put the trees down there. That's actually not the place to plant um. A lot of trees. Chestis in particular don't like wet feet. They can get root fungus by top thora and it can you know, really stunt or kill the tree from

root fungus if the soil stays to wet. If when the snow melts in the spring down in the bottom of a of a swale and it stays moist for a long time, you want to avoid that. You want an area with with air drainage and water drainage to planning on a side slope, especially like south facing slope is really good. The north facing slope can be really cold if you're up north. You want to avoid that. So you know the microclimate that you picked to plant or if you're choosing property that has you know a

range of elevations. You know, looking at the native vegetation the area will tell you a tremendous amount about what

you can grow on your property. The other other problem with with you know, bottom land is in late spring frost which always occur uh cold air settles in those low pockets, and you can get a frost down in one of those pockets went up on the hillside and never frost at all, and so you can get leaf damage or flower damage from late frost if you plant down and uh, you know, in a bottom on a in a pocket. So typically orchard sites are better where

there's good air drainage and water drainage in the soil. Okay, that's exactly what the next thing I was curious to learn a little bit more about. Now, what about sun you know, do we need full open sunlight or can you get away with some partly shady kind of patches in an already somewhat timbered location for these types of things, Is it? Which is it? On that front? Yeah, you know, chess has in particular, there are forest tree The reason they were so common in the forest is they were

faster at competing to the tree fall gap. You know, if you're a little seed underneath the big shaded canopy, you've got to sit there and wait until you get a shot at the light up above. And if the tree fell. Chest Us were faster at colonizing that gap than any other species. It's one of the reasons that they were so widely spread, plus animals, you know, transported the caeds around and planting them all over the place, schools, that sort of thing. But the partial shade, partial sun.

The more sun the better. But planting in a forest is not a problem as long as they have some access to sunlight and then some trees a lot of the fruit are. You know, they're not canopy trees anyway, there might only be twenty or tall maximum, and so they can grow in uh, you know, along the forest edge. You know, if you've got a regular food plot, there's no better place to plant trees than on the edge of that, you know, that existing open food plot. It's

perfect location. Speaking of how quickly growing chestnuts are, there was a from a book I love called The over Story, and I jotted it down in case there was an opportunity to read it, and so I got to throw it in here. He wrote that the trees thicking like enchanted things. Chestnut is quick by the time, and ash has made a baseball bat, a chestnut has made a dresser bend over to look at a sapling, and it'll put your eye out. I thought that was pretty good.

That's a wonderful book. By the way, Yeah, so so tell me this. Um, I kind of want to get into some of the how to. So let's say we've we've decided we want trees. We were gonna try a couple different of these varieties. We're gonna do some clusters here and there. Um, we found a good site for it. Now we're gonna actually get out there and plant them. Um, is the is your recommended planting process for trees? Basically

the same for all these species? You know, So if you were to tell me the best way to plant a crab apple, would it be about the same as what you tell me when I'm planting a chestnut or white oak or per ciment or they really different for each species. Okay, it's it's a great question, but they're all really similar. Um, you dig a hole about the size of the container that the tree came in. You don't need a big hole, and especially in areas with heavy clay, don't dig this giant four foot wide hole

and put a bunch of multi in the bottom. That becomes a sponge to whold moisture and root funcus. So what we recommend is you dig a whole little you know, about the size of or a little bit bigger than the you know, the container. And let's say it's a three gallon pot or a seven gallon pot, and you can then when you unpot the tree, you break up the roots all around the perimeter of the root ball.

And and if you've got stuff that's crossed up or growing together, you can go in with a pair of clippers and clip them apart, but open the sagham open and break them up. And it's those young, a little tiny feeder roots that are where the tree up takes all its bister and nutrients from, not the big thick roots. They're a little white filaments along the along the edges

of the roots, set the tips of the roots. So you put the soil back in after put the tree, and and then you water and in really well basically mudded in. And what that does is that gets rid of an air pocket. Because when those little tender, young feeder roots grow into an open air pocket, uh, they die. And then you're not up taking oyster. But if you flood the hole when you plant it, put your mud,

put you all your soil back in. And I don't know why when you dig a hole in the ground you put a tree back in and there's never enough dirt until it back up. You um, you create a mud bath for it, and that gets rid of all of the the air pockets and then you can kind of create a little they am around the outside. And then what's really beneficial is put your molt on top

and that keeps the surface roots moister. When that tree gets big, those roots or within one or two ft of the surface, I mean, they may send a tapper down, but that that root zone is this giant nutrient collecting web that goes out to the tips of the branches. And so it's this you know, it's this huge filter out there trying to get moisture and nutrients, and it's going to recycle the nutrients that are in the leaves

with leaves fall um. But so you wanna you know, first you want to make sure your your solaw has good what's called tilts. It's not rock hard, it's not shale rock um. Don't put fertilizer down in the hole, which is a common misconception because fertilizer ferns roots and all those young feet of roots, especially if you're using law and fertilizer something like that. Get a good time release fertilizer that's gonna release slowly over three to four

months or longer through the growing season. That way, you're not going to burn the burn the roots of transplanting and multch those things in, and that mulch helps keep the moisture in the soil after you mut it in. And and the number one, single most important thing is to continue watering the tree on a regular basis for the first several years. And you know a lot of people they live two hours from their hunting camp their lands.

If you can get out, get a tank from the back of your tractor, get a tank that fits in the back of your pickup truck. You can get five gallon buckets and drill a little tiny hole in it and let rain any rain that fills up, fill the bucket and have it dribble back down on the tree. If you've got access to a well, you know, you can pump it all that water out there or put in an irrigation system. But that water is the essence

of survival for the tree. And if you don't water it and you get on one of those hot, dry summers like we've had the last few years, you could you know, it's just throwing your money away. It could not not go back and water that tree. The other thing that we really highly recommend is the use of grow tubes or tree tubes, and we've tested a bunch of different ones. We sell someone on the website. The tree tube for a young tree actually does three or

four things. First, during the winter, critters want to chew like mice and rabbits want to chew on the trunks for food, and deer, you know, they'll eat the leaves, especially of a chest the tree when the tree is young, because they're so they're so tender and sweet, So the tree protects it physically from tradation. Second, um, you know bucks like the ruther antlers on them in the fall, especially a young tree, a tree to protect protects it

from that. The third most, probably the most important thing what they were developed for is during a night, when that transpirational moisture is released out of the leaves, it condenses on that tube and it slides back down and recycles the water. So it's not just going up into the air, but it captures that moisture and recycles it

down into the roots. So you know, the watering you're doing is it's sticking around longer because the two captures that moisture and and it trains back down to the roots. And you know, when you're testing planting a tree by itself versus inside a tree tub, you can get two to three times of growth in a year of out of a tree toub then you can just by putting it out in the open. So it has a lot

of different advantages. And so that would be instead of using a cage, right, you would never use both at the same time, Is that correct? Yoh, yeah, you can use both absolutely, but the beginning in the beginning, the moisture, the it is really valuable. And then you just go in and take that tree tube off and just the last three years. You'd take it off after two or three years and then then replace it with a cage or clificate. You know, pull it off and just let

it grow inside the cage. But yeah, if you've got especially it's got bear tree tubes are like playfuys and it's uh, they can really get in and re havoc with them, and so the cage helps a whole lot for that. And if a bus rubbing on him, you know, the cage protecting keeps the tree too from me and off Yeah, uh, Ian, is there anything else you'd add to that? And then one other, uh specific thing. I watched a video you talking once about weed mats, and

that's something we haven't talked about yet. I'd be curious your thoughts on on that and anything else. Sure, Yeah, you know one more thing I would well, just a couple of things I would out one. I just I just can't help it. Stress. That's the number one thing that goes wrong with with planting is is watering. It's

just a lack of water. Um. So I just have to reiterate what Bob said that getting water to your tree in the first couple of years, just like you said earlier, Um, you know, what you get in what you put into it is what you get out of it. And so having a plan to water is crucial for establishing a tree. Um. So you know, water plant, water plan, water plan. Um. But then I would also add, you know, just just to clarify the the grow tube is specifically for a younger tree like a year A year old

tree eighteen to thirty six inches a tree. Tubes are typically four to five foot, so a tree that would fit inside of a small grow tooth like that. Um. You know, we we ship online and most of our online shipping are are smaller trees eighteen or thirty six inches a couple of feet at most, and those those should go into a groceres grow tubes are just so beneficial, like Bob explained, Um, but you know, are are larger sizes that we shipped to larger retail box stores like

Walmart Rooking. They're a little bit too large for a grow tube. But what I would recommend is having a cage for for both. So at any planting time, no matter the size, having a tree cage I think is really crucial because wildlife um is gonna just mess with it. You know. The grow tube is going to help maybe with with with small critters like rice mice and squirrels, um, but you know anything larger deer bear, um, if you

gotta have a pretty substantial tree cage. Otherwise there's they just love the tender root, the tender tips of a newly growing tree in the springtime, and if it's below the brows line, they're going to get in there and they're gonna knock it over and it's you know, investment is gone. Um. But yeah, we've met our complete addition. UM, you know, weed is competition for nutrients and and moisture.

And so if you're you know, if you let uh weed competition grow up and basically strangle a tree out of UM, you know that that you know that nutrients. I've seen it before where we've actually done this before on the farm. We haven't gotten back out to a new planting on one of our orchards, and we see UM it basically outcompete and even out sunlight. Uh. Some of the smaller trees, I mean, the grass can get as you know, huge, and and that'll that'll just kill a tree. So we mat at least gives it a

little bit of room. UM, so that you know, if you can't get out there, it will take a little longer for that we competition to grow up around it, the grass to grow up around it. UM. And something else to mention that we haven't touched on yet is you know, is herbicide. UM. And you know it's okay to to spray herbicide around a tree. UM. If you're if you're what I what I would say, you're not an expert, I would not UM broadcast spray around the newly planted tree um a grow tube and help protect

a very young tree. Uh any tree in the first you know, three or five years, it doesn't have significant bark development yet and it's uh cambrio layer is just underneath that. You can actually take your thumbnail and scratch an m tree and you'll see green um. And if you spray herbicide, it's it will go into that um that you know, soft layer, and they can kill a July planted tree. So a weed mat is it's just another kind of you know, step in protection that you

can take before springing UM. And I would recommend hand eating around young trees for some time because even if you spray, and even if you think you you are not getting the base of the tree with any of your herbicide, UM, there's wind will drift. If there's a windy day or even a little after it can ta

can kill in the tree. So it's just gonna be really careful about about leat protection, which is why we recommend a weave not okay, other than that ongoing water plan in the long term, is there any other maintenance for these trees you'd recommend. I mean, I've heard some with apple trees is pruning and things like that, they are sometimes recommended. Is is there anything else we should be thinking about other than what you've mentioned chestnuts and

many of the trees don't take that much pruning. Um. They're naturally going to seek the light and to send that main shoot up and you know, you may want to prune off some lower branches, you know, to get it up above the brows line so they're not eating the leaves on the lower branches, or if you're working with machinery in there where you want to be able to get underneath and you know, ride a mower around

that sort of thing. But it's there's there's not a huge amount to do regular fertilization once a year in the early spring with a time release fertilizer UM or if you hit a really bad uh drought right uh four or five years ago there was just a tremendous drought and trees are dying all over the eastern uv especially in the corn corn growing regions in the Midwest, and UH it's you know, if you can get water back out if you hit one of those droughts, that's

sometimes when you may need to go out. But that's the beauty of it is and once the trees are established after three or four years, they take care of themselves. So you know, we haven't talked about pest management very much, but they're really not many pests just to hardly any um they're you know, you're not it's not something you have to go out and spray. And if you're using good native varieties, you're not having to you know, to

use a lot of chemicals. And I really second what Ian is saying, and that stay away from round up um in the first in the early area ages of the tree. You'd be surprised at the amount of drift that goes on and you can kill a young tree really easily with with accidental overspray. So just stay away

from it and use sweeden at and use the hope. Okay, perfect, Well, we we've we've covered a lot about the why we've covered the what we've covered the how is there anything Bob when when you're thinking through this topic that you think is really important to still touch on that we haven't yet, Is anything lingering on the tip of your tongue that you really got to get out there or do you feel we've we've checked the boxes, don't wait every year you play, every year you put it off,

um know, is one one more year you gotta wait for crops, even with with stuff that's scruting in three or four years. The rewards you get on a whole lot of different levels from planting and growing trees is an amazing process. And it really is. You know, as you talked about, it changes the way you you see your world. And I think that's the really, really most important lesson from this whole process. You're enhancing your land, but you're also learning how to really see into the

cycles in nature and and participate in those cycles. One of the things that's not talked about very much and um, but if you read the earliest settlers and uh in the United States, the earliest explorers that the Native Americans living here planted chestnuts, they planted well nuts, they planted hickories because they knew the value of those food crops.

And you know, one of the reasons the chessups may have been so common in such a large area they were planted by the by the early native populations that

lived here. And so, you know, we're living in an era right now where there's so much development and you know, we've we've farmed it, fence road of fence row, take a little time, replant those fence rows, plant around your food plot, replant some of the areas that have been logged, and you're you know, you're really doing not only are you gonna learn about the cycles that you're doing, you know the whole system of benefit and you know you'll reap the harvest for decades. Yeah, I would you would

you add anything else? And then also would you give us a rundown of where listeners can find more about your nurser online, how they can order trees or any other other things we talked about. Yeah? Sure, Yeah, you know, I think I think kind of like Bob started to with there, it's sure, it's just you know, just getting started. I think is is you know the best thing? I

know that as just like with everything else. UM, you know, you can read about it all you want, and you can think about watering and you know, the weating, but until you do it, you may not. Um, you're just you're just not going to figure out how it's gonna work on your property and you know, in your environment, um, in your soil, you know, at your planting site, until you do it and you might find some pickups along

the way. You know, Mother nature likes to throw curveballs with with weather and climate and you know test sometimes in disease that that come up. Um. And so I just would recommend getting started because the sooner you do, the sooner you can happen this stablished plot. Um. But you know, besides that, it's it's just a matter of doing it, just like anything else you can. So you can google us at Chestneyhill Outdoors. We have a website Chestnut Hill Outdoors dot com. Um. You can purchase from

us for our two major shipping seasons. We have a shipping season in spring and a shipping season in fall, but you can place orders for most of the year um. But the best time to to start, you know, looking for those orders is kind of late summer when we start turning them on the website inventories. And then in in you know, the mid to late fall, we'll start turning on our inventories for spring as well, so keep

an eye out on that. You can also follow us on Chestnut Hill Outdoors Facebook and Instagram, and we make announcement about those kinds of things um. And we we also shoot all kinds of information out and fun you know, equip its and stuff for for learning. Um. And then we also shipped to Walmart, Rule King and some select co op feed dealers in Pennsylvania and New York. But

we shift just about all the eastern United States. Uh. And if you want to find a location your you you can go on our website to the store locator. This is yeah, such part that you can search your town or your zip code and it'll pop up all the stores you know, sixty mile radius of you, and you can go to that store. You can see how many we shipped. You can see when we shifted it. We're in the middle of our main shipping season right now in spring. Um. So it's just we're just starting

to get into those stores. Um. And uh. You know, just also if you want to hear more are about the information we talked about today, We have just about all of it on the website. We have a learning center. You can go in about learning center and read about watering and staking and weed control and and how did how to do all of it? Um. So you know, we we just you know, we have a lot of

institutional knowledge that we find. It's our pops to hand that off to people, and so it's all available, all there for you to to take advantage of, and we hope that it helps you to be successful at pointing treat. Amazing. I really appreciate It's been fun to get to dive more into this topic with you guys. And like I said, I've been on a been on a tree bender lately, and I'm excited to get my hands dirty and planting some this spring too. So you guys have helped me

out personally as well. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely, let's talk against soon. All right, very good, thank you. Okay, that is a rap. Thanks for tuning, guys. It's uh It's Earth Day in just a few days after this one publishes, So if you don't already have plans, maybe consider plant a tree, plane a tree or two, get a chestnut put on the ground help bring these suckers back, or maybe just find whatever is available at your local Walmart and plant it in your backyard or in your

back forty. It's gonna be great for deer, it's gonna be great for all sorts of animals. It's good for the water, it's good for the air, it's good for you and me. So that's my that's my final message for I appreciate you listening. Let's go plant some trees. Read the over story. If you haven't yet, check out Chestnut Hill Outdoors, and until next time, stay wired to hunt.