Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 531: Planting Trees for Wildlife with Bob and Iain Wallace

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Ep. 531: Planting Trees for Wildlife with Bob and Iain Wallace · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: modern whitetail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and today in the show we're talking trees, why they're
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: valuable to wildlife in the natural world, where to plant them,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and how to do it well. And to help us
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: have that conversation, I'm joined like Bob and Ian Wallace
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of Chestnut Hill Outdoors. All Right, welcome to the Wired
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. And
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: today in the show, we're talking trees. We're gonna cover
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: everything you need to know to make trees a part
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of your habitat improvement plan. We're gonna be talking about
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: how trees can help you improve a property for deer
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and deer hunting, as well as how to make it
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: be beneficial for all sorts of animals and birds and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: pollinators living in your neck of the woods. We're to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: explore the services the trees can provide, not just feeding
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: deer mass, but everything else they do for the environment.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about why they're so impactful, how to
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: choose the most useful and appropriate trees for your goals
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and for your area. We're gonna talk through what kinds
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of trees are the best for certain goals. We'll definitely
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: talk a lot about how to choose the right places
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to plant and the right ways to do that planting itself.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: This is really great stuff. We've never spent a really,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: uh kind of substantial amount of time talking about trees,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: massed trees, hard massed, soft massed fruit trees, all the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: many different things these can do for deer and deer hunting.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And today I'm really glad we're doing it. And my
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: guests today are two folks have a have a deep
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: and very very interesting connection to trees, chestnut trees in particular.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Now you might not know much about chestnuts trees because
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: they have mostly been wiped off the face of our countinent.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't always that way. It might not have
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: to stay that way in the future either. You see,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: our guests are Bob and Ian Wallace of Chestnut Hill Outdoors.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: They run a very successful nursery selling trees all across
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the country, with a particular focus on trees for wildlife,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: for hunters and land managers, and they've got a tremendous
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: knowledge of this intersection between growing and planting trees and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: then also meeting the goals that we as hunters and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: outdoors people have. So that's what they do. But they've
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: got this this really interesting history that I found fascinating
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: as well. So before we get them on, I want
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: to read you just a little bit about something related
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to this history and this history of chestnut trees, which
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: is something that they are deeply connected to, and it
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: was talked about in my recent favorite book of the year,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: The Over Story, which maybe you've heard me ranting and
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: raving about here in recent weeks, but it's it's good stuff,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and I thought this would be a really appropriate time
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to read you a little expert So this is a
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: little snapshot of the history that preceded Bob and Ian's story,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and then when they come on, they're gonna explain how
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: they fit into this. So here's the excerpt. The Killer
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: slips into the country from Asia in the wood of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Chinese chestnuts destined for fancy gardens. A tree in the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Bronx Zoological Park turns October colors in July, leaves curl
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and scorched to the hue of cinnamon, rings of orange
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: spots spread across the swollen bark. At the slightest press,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the wood caves in. Within a year, Orange spots flecked
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: chestnuts throughout the bronx the fruiting bodies of a parasite
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: that has already killed its host. Every infection releases a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: horde of spores on the rain and wind. City gardeners
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: mobilize a counter attack. They lop off infected branches and
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: burn them. They spray trees with a lime and copper
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: sulfate from horse drawn wagons. All they do is spread
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: the spores on the ax as they used to cut
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the victims down. A researcher at the New York Botanical
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Garden identifies the killer as a fungus new to man.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: He publishes the results and leaves town to beat the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: summer heat. When he returns a few weeks later, not
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a chestnut in the city is worth saving. Death races
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: across Connecticut. In Massachusetts, jumping dozens of miles a year,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: trees succumb by the hundreds of thousands. A country watches,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: dumbstruck his New England's priceless chestnuts melt away. The tree
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: of the tanning industry of railroad ties train cars, telegraph poles,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: fuel fences, houses, barns, fine desks, tables, pianos, crates, paper pulp,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: and endless free shade and food. The most harvested tree
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: in the country is vanishing. Pennsylvania tries to cut a
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: buffer hundreds of miles wide across the state. In Virginia,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: on the northern edge of the country's richest chestnut forest,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: people call for religious revival to purge the sin behind
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the plague. America's perfect tree, backbone of entire rural economies,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the limber, durable redwood of the East, with three dozen
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: industrial uses. Every fourth tree of a forest stretching two
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: million acres from Maine down to the Gulf, is doomed.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: A five year old in Tennessee who sees the first
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: orange spots appear in her magic woods will have nothing
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: left to show her own children except pictures. They'll never
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: see the ripe, full habit of the tree, never know
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: the site and sound and smell of their mother's childhood.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Millions of dead stumps brought suckers that struggle on year
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: after year before dying of an infection that preserved in
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: these very stubborn shoots, will never disappear by the fungus
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: takes everything all the way out to the farthest stands
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: in southern Illinois. Four billion trees in the Native range
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: vanish into myth, aside from a few secret pockets of resistance.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: The only chestnuts left those the pioneers took far away
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the states, beyond the reach of the drifting spores. And
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: so this is where Bob's family comes into play, because
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: his family helped find some of those last survivors and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: bring them into the future. So that, my friends, is
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: what we're discussed. We're gonna get this very interesting story,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: and we're then going to dive into how we can
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: plant trees like this, whether it's chestnuts or apple trees,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: or oak trees or per simmons, so many other things,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and do great things for the wild life that we
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: hope to hunt, that we want to watch, that we
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: want to help, and uh, man, get something out there
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: that's good for our kids and their kids too. So
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that's the game plan today. I'm excited about it. Bob
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: and Ian are great guests. I think you're gonna enjoy
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: chatting with them, and so I think let's, uh, let's
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: just get into that story. Now I will give you
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: one quick heads up. We did have some sound quality
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: issues for parts of this one in the beginning, so
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry in advance for the audio inconvenience, but thanks
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: for baron with it. It does get better later in
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: the show. So thanks and here we go. All right
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: here with me now on the show. I've got Ian
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and Bob Wallace. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Thank you. Yeah, hey, Mark,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: thanks for having us on. Yeah, I really appreciate you
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: making the time. I'm I'm on a little bit of
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a personal tree kick. I've been I've read a couple
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: of books that got me more fascinated with trees than
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I ever have before. So the last two months or so,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I've been just diving really deep into the world of
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: trees and forests and all sorts of stuff. So I'm
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: particularly excited about this one. Given to you guys, history
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and your specialty. Um So, I guess with that said,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: could the two of you, you know, just give me
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: a quick introduction to yourselves and your role today with
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the nursery. Uh, Ian, do you want to kick things off? Maybe? Yeah? Sure?
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Um So my name is Ian Waller, I Bob don
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Um Bob. Uh. Bob founded the nursery with with my mom.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I'm dead about gosh forty forty something years ago now,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and um my brother and I have taken over operations
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: at this point. Um. And you know, I'll let Bob
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: kind of explain a little bit of a history of everything. Um.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: But you know, we as a family have been, um
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: just really involved in in the nursery industry and then
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: all things plants for a really long time. My my
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: great grandfather was Dr. Dunson, who read the Dunston Chestnut
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and he was a plant breather. Uh and and so
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: we we have you know, generations of uh just knowledge
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and there it was in that um, you know, we
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: we find you know, it's a just it's it's crucial
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: to pass that information on to other people because we've
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: in fat you know, trees and plants are of course
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: just a crucial part of our our local ecosystems. Yeah, Bob,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: what about you can use a little more of that backstory.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: So I got involved in chestnuts. My father was a
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: plant leader at the University of Florida, and my mom's dad,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: his father in law, was a great breeder and he
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: got given some cuttings from an American chestnut tree that
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: had survived in a grove of a hundred acres of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: dead trees from Ohio. Chestnuts are a really unique tree.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: They were the most common tree in the eastern hardwood
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: forest and from millennia, and they were incredibly prolific food
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: producing tree. Chestnuts are high carbohydrates, high in protein, high
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: in water, low and fat. So there really nutritionally like
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a grain like brown rice that grows on a tree.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: And if you could imagine what that means if you
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: were a deer or a squirrel or a hog or whatever.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly valuable food source. And every fall throughout East
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: or North America there was a giant mass crop of
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: just nuns and they literally were in some areas in
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the Appalachians and in the Northeast a solid forest. It
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: was the the forest in some areas. And around the
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: turn of the century, a dark fungus from China got
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: accidentally introduced into the United States on trees at the
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and it was they had brought in
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: justice from China. Justice exists are all over the world
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: in the northern latitudes, and they've been incredibly important as
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: a food source, not just for wildlife, but also for people.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're remnants of chestnuts and seven thousand year
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: old Chinese archaeological digs there in all the Native American
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: um archaeological digs in northeastern in the Eastern United States,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: and they were really important for settlers and for Native Americans.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: As we all, it's for wildlife, and so it's you know,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: it's an incredible food source. But this disease was brutal
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: the Chinese the disease of some China. Chinese chestnuts have
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: resistance to it, and but the American chessnut didn't end.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: In the space of about thirty years, thirty million acres
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: of forest died in the Eastern United States. I mean,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: that's easily the largest ecological disaster in American history. And
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: you know, none of us remember it because we weren't alive.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just unknown. Now. If you could imagine
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: all the oak trees in the Eastern United States dying
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: off right now, that's how devastating it would be. And
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: my grandfather was a plant breeder in North Carolina, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: he watched the chestnut forest dial around it, and so
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: he a friend of his found a single living tree
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: in this grove of dead trees and took cuttings and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: sent it to him. My grandfather, after the blight had
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: had killed off all the chestnuts, had had planted Chinese
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: chestnuts on his farm in North Carolina, and so he
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: hybridized this single living American chestnuts that had some native,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: you know, natural blight resistance in it with Chinese chestnuts.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Chinese chestnut does not have a very good tree form,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It's not timberlike like the American and the nut quality
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: is not quite as good. And so he created this
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: hybrid that was that both had really good nut tree
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: quality and was resistant to chestnut light. And this was
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and when he retired, he moved
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: to be near my mom's daughter in Alatua, Florida, where
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the farm is, and he had this grove of chestnut
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: trees on his property and one of the few chests
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that grows in the eastern United States at the time.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And they were white resistant. So we had we took
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: samples of them, got you know, inoculated with white. They
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: survived the inoculations. Um we did, you know, We sent
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: them around different chestnut researchers to see how blite resistant
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: they were, and they turned out to be a really
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: high quality tree. And so I got out of college
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and moved to the farm to be uh near my
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: grandparents and started a nursery to be able to grow
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: chestnut trees. And we were at the time the US
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: was importing millions of dollars of chestnuts for roasting on
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the open fire, and that was our original market, to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: try to sell them to orchardess to replace the imported chestnums.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And it was a great idea, except when you sell
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: to an orchardess, next year, you've got to find another
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: orchardess because they planted their crops. So the nursery diversified
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: over time. And I was at a at a conference.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I'm a fisherman and I was not a hunter at
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: the time, and I was at a conference talking to
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: a guy about deer repellent because all the orchardess were
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: having offense their orchards off because the deer were literally
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: coming in and cleaning out their entire chestnut harvest. And
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the guy looked at me and said, you need to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: sell the people who bleatch us, I mean who want deer,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: not who want want the chestnuts for harvest, and that
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: was a lot. How was a light bulb that went
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: on and um, one of my best friends from high
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: school was a professional bass fisherman, saw Griggsby in and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: he introduced me to build her for real treat. And
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: at at the time, Mossy Oaks had a little nurseries
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: selling oak trees, and so I went to Bill and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Fitch the story and said, hey, look, will you know
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: license with real tree and call it real Tree nursery
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and sell chesna trees, which is a way better tree
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: for attracting deer than than uh oak trees are because one,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: they're sweet too, they don't have any tanning. You know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: deer will eat a white oak long before they lead
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: a reddo just acorn because the white oaks are less
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: bitter and chestnuts had no tannon whatsoever, and the deer
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: absolutely love them. So we started selling selling chestnut trees
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: too deer hunters, probably fifteen years ago, and it I
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: think it really changed the concept of food plots in
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the the entire hunting industry. You know, everybody was planting
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Brassica's or plant core and their plant beans. They um
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of those those plots you had to plow
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the ground every year, you had to have machinery or
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: work the soil, and you had to replant in the
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: you know, the beauty of a free crop for producing
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: food if you plant one time and you take care
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: of it for a few years, and that investment can
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: last to more years. So you're not just planning for yourself,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: but you're planning for your for your kids and your grandkids.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: And the deer when they learned that there's an orchard
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: producing food, that those teach the funds and those deer
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: come back every single year. And you know, our our orchard,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: we have a conveyor built of schools that hauls the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: nuts off as well as the deer. When you come home,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: there's you know, half a dozen here in the orchard
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: at the farm during harvests. So it's a it's a
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing attractive and I think, really, you know, we
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: kind of discovered a whole new way to improve your
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: land and and improve your you know, take care of
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: your farm and and improve the wallet on your left. Yeah, now,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: correctly if I'm wrong, but there are a number of
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: other services. I guess maybe if we think of it
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that way, that trees can provide on a landscape outside
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: of just food, right, I mean I've heard about the right.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: They stabilized tree banks or stream banks if you're planning
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: them by water, They filter drinking water, They helped pollinate
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: different things. Can you speak a little bit about that stuff? Sure,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: the uh, you know, one of the one of the
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: biggest issues that we're facing. Not to get too political,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: but the climate change can be reversed by plenty more trees.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Trees take up carbon dioxide, they emit oxygen, They enhance
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the health of the soil. And their studies around the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: world where farmers in Africa in an area that all
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the trees and then cut the lands drying out, um
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the you know, the crops don't grow well enough. But
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: if they go into plant trees especially you know, even
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: just a long fence rows or scattered throughout the pasture,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: you know, it creates shade for the livestock, shape for
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the wildlife. It create, it creates food sources, and it
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: actually changes the moisture regime of the climate in that
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: area because the trees, you know, hold moisture in the soil.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: They emit moisture at night through respiration, which is the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: you know, the backside of photosynthesis and so they um,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: they breathe out moisture at night, and it's uh, it
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: really can change your entire farm. And if you're buying
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you know, old land that's been farmed heavily and the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: nutrients have been wrung out of the soil from too
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: many crops harvested. If you go in into plant trees,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: you can completely change that cycle in a very short
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: period of time. There's a lot of research, all a
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: lot of different angles about that. Yeah, fascinating stuff, you know.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Another another point to that is that you know, uh,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: local flora and fauna in a native ecosystem is is
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: in itself like a living organism. They're all connected significantly
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: to each other. So when you take out native species
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: and you you know, do you know homogenized crops um,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: it changes that whole the whole ecosystem and not just
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the the plants, but all of the animals have to
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: change to you know, adapt to that that that local ecosystem.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Just like our body, you know, if you take out
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: certain types of um, you know, vitamins and nutrients, we
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: start to not act so healthy and and the same
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: goes for an ecosystem. And so when you work to
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: um put energy into native trees, native plants, UM, the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: whole ecosystem benefits from it. You know, from a food perspective,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: mark like you mentioned, from a pollinator perspective, birds and
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: bees and bugs, um, everything works together. And so from
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: top to bottom um you know, from predators down to
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: prey plugs, micro organisms to you know, the macro species,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: it's all um. It's all connected. And so you know, planting,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: planting trees there's a part of that process. Yeah, that's
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a really important point. One of the things that I
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: learned that we weren't just you know, selling trees to
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: people to attract fear that it was a much deeper
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: thing that what maybe you want to call it tree
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: planning or track or therapy, right, but a lot of
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the people that we sold to they were you know,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: had office jobs during the week, and and they wanted
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to get to their farm and to improve their land,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and we were one of the vehicles for them to
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: get back in touch with the cycles and the earth. Again.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, hunting has that there's a side the hunting
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that it's just like fishing or birding or whatever it
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: mean that time sitting in the stand watching the world
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: wake up at dawn. I mean, it's a really important
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: part of the reasons that we get out there and
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: you know, planting trees and you know, improving your land
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: and making it, you know, a better place for the future.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Is it's a really cool process. And that was a
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: thread that went through I swear everybody that comes to
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the farm to pick up creese, that's part of their goal.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. Yeah, it's something I can definitely relate to.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I have had that same experience where if it weren't
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: for having involvement in starting to work the land and
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: get involved the habitat improvement, I never would have understanded
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: this incredible depth of of the ecosystem. I guess I
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: had to learn about soil, I had to learn about
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: water and sun and how all these different things work together.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And it opens up this entire new window that as
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: a hunter I was never even looking into. I was
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I was walking through these places trying to just get
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: to where the deer. We're thinking about how I was
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: going to get set up for a shot, and I
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: was ignoring all this other stuff around me. Um, And
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I feel like taking a step like this, whether it's
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: you know, doing food plots or in this case, trees. Um,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: it just takes the blinders off. I think it makes
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: everything so much richer. Um. It's it's hard to beat
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: that as far as I'm concerned. It's really true. The
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: I used to say that the evolution of a hutter was,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I want to kill a deer. I want
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to kill a lot of deer. I want to kill
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a big deer. And then it gets to I want
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: to grow deer. And it's you know, you're tracking them
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: on your cams. You're watching the bucks as they age.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: You're saying, Okay, that one's going to be a shooter.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: You know that one, I'm gonna wait another year. You
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: know their habits, you know where they're, where they're at
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: on the farm, where they're bedding down. I mean, it's
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: it's really an amazing process of of knowledge, and that's
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: you know, that's an elemental force and being a human
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: for why hundreds of thousands of years, the process of
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: tracking and knowing where all the game is out and everything.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really really deep, deeply embedded thing
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: in the process of training. Planting trees is just like that. Yeah,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So So, Bob, you spoke to this a little bit earlier,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: but I'd like to um get back to it a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: little bit more, uh, specifically that being why we would
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: choose trees over a food plot, or why we would
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: choose to add trees to supplement a food plot system.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Because right as we all know, food plots are very,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: very trendy. Everybody wants to put them in. So if
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: somebody's listening and they have a property that they're starting
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to manage or they have been, let's assume they either
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: have food plots are thinking of doing food plots, can
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: you give me, like your elevator pitch to this person
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: about why a food plot, tree plan or trees and
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: general should be added to that plan. If you had like,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: you know, a minute, a minute or two in the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: elevator with them, pitch them on this real quick. It's
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: certainly not mutually exclusive at all. If if you've got
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: land and you want to improve it, food plots are
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: tremendous and trees fit into that process really well because
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: you're planning, you know, on the on the edge of
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: your food plot, so you've got access to sun. Um,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: you know, you're laying out the trees so that you've
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: got shooting lanes. You're um the real benefit though, it's
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: as much economic or ergonomic that you're putting the energy
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: in at the beginning. And I do like to say
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: trees are like children. If you plan them out and
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: you don't water them, you know, and you ignore them,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get out of it what you put into them.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: But if you go out and take care of them
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: for the first three or four years, you're gonna have
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: something that's going to reproduce food year in year out
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: for decades and decades. And I mean it's a it's
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: an inexpensive long term investment in the health of the property.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: And they you know, basically the biological mass that it
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: can support by adding all another layer of of food production.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Plus you know, chestnuts are as I mentioned before, are
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: a high carbon hydrate energy source and they fall right
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: at the time of the rut, so they are really
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: important and have been for deer are really important resource,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: you know, when they need the most energy to be
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: able to chase those around. So it's it's a really
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: critical critical thing and they're you know, they're very evolved together.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Well i'd like that, yeah, I would definitely like to
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: add a couple of teen things that I think is
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: just just really cool. I mean, you know, our modern
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: nature provides um and the you know, when you plant
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: um uh you know, your traditional food plot, UM, you're
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: gonna have a window in which if it's gonna grow,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and you can decide that window and it's gonna peak
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and that's when the nutrition is available. UM. But with
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: with trees, if you strategically uh pick a window of
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: varieties that are going to have nutrition available at different
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: times of year, you can build your food plot to
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: have nutrition available all year round. I mean in the
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: South we can almost legitimately have fruits at almost twelve
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: months of the year. Not quite, but it's here on
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the farm. Uh In in Olashua week we have uh
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: just about ten months where you can be taken some
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: tin um. And as you go further north that window decreases. However,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: you know, you can take varieties that very early spring
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and early summer start to have fruit like mulberries um.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: In the South, you have peaches um that come on
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: in May and then into the summertime you have plums
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: that come on in the native plum species like chickens
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: out plum um and and then throughout the summer, uh
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: you have blackberries, raspberries, and there's blueberries, and then further
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: on into into the fall, then you start to have
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a lot um a lot to come on. There's hair
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: in per sinmon and then of course the hard mask
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: like chestnut and oaks UM. And you know those those
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: the deer are naturally dependent on those cycles, right that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the way that nature has provided food forever um and
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: it's you know, those those native species will seek out
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: those food sources when they're available, and they also need
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: those food sources at those strategic times for those nutritions UM.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: You know, like Bob mentioned fruits uh and and mass
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: trees like checks that have high carbohydrates sugars and fruits,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and then in uh in checknut its high carbohydrate, but
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: it also has healthy fats. And then of course right
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: before the winter sets those other hard mass like acorns
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: that have flopped of fats. So it's really important to
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: have a wide variety of trees that can provide nutrients
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: for the whole year, which is a really unique set
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: that UM that planting trees provides that UM, you know,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: it's a perfect addition to any food plot. Yeah, and
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: that yeah, that's really true. Um, you can be in.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: One of the things the nursery can do is help
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the the planners, help the people plant the trees to come,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: you know, to pick the right varieties for the area. Right,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: So the South we have very mild winters, snow, you know,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: less freezes. Different trees are adapted to different latitudes, different
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: um areas. The USBA has what's called the chilling map,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: which is the number of hours underneath five degrees during wintertime.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: And so there stands the reason that stuff that grows
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: in northern Illinois is not gonna God, you get enough
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: chilling when you planted in southern Georgia. And that's especially
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: true with plant with a lot of the fruit varieties.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: That chill wing is uh as a factor in triggering
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the flowering first thing in the spring, which then ends
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: up very uh you know, varying the flowers turned into fruit.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: So it's really important to pick the right varieties for
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: your area. And you know, in this idea of being
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: able to plant the sequence so you've always got fruit
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: ripening on your farm. We also went and found things
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: like varieties of simmons that will fruit in August and
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: varieties for simmons that will fruit in November in the summer.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Same thing with pairs, same thing with apples, and so
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: having that, you know, that wide range of cultivars that
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: produced at different times also really helps keep the deer
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: on your property. I mean literally, you can have a
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: five acre backyard and plant enough fruit there that you're
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: gonna pull deer from all over the area, because you know,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: most areas don't have that amount of food during the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: summer when there's a lot of vegetation to deer turn
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: of vegetation and eat lots of leaves and grass and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. But um, having even a little area,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: it becomes a magnet, right for every year in the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: area to come in and see. Yeah, and you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: tell me if you guys have seen this on a
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: wider scale than me. But I've also noticed with things
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: like um soft mass trees, they're relatively unique in most areas. Right,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be thousands of acres of corn, and let's talk,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you know, agricultural areas will be thousands of acres of corn,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: thousands of acres of soybeans, But you might be the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: only game in town that has apples or chestnuts or percions,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and so it's you're like the ice cream truck that
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: everybody can only get your place. That's true, and that
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: is very true. UM. And you know, another kind of
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: point to that is that, um, when you may be
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: a a you may have a unique food source on
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: your property. And that's that's great to have, UM. But
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I think even more so, you know, I think a
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: lot of people tend to think of a food plot
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: as more of an attractive for a certain time of year,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: so that you tend get the deer to come to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: your property for that time, UM, and use it as
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: bait in a sense. And you know that can I
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: think that trees can be used in the same way.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: But I think more importantly, if you have varieties that
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: are fruiting all year round, you're gonna have a herd
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that stage. And you know, as we all know, dear dear,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: don't they don't there's a very large plot. They tend
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to stick in in a little bit smaller areas. Um.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: And if you have nutrition available at all times to
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: see if there, your hurt's going to stay and you're
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: going to have you know it just it's consistent, um,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: consistent attracting and not even attracting our bait. But it's
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: just their homes that they've decided to stay on. So
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the biological furbose carrying capacity, right, if you increase the
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: foods in why you can increase the carrying capacity of
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: your land. And so it's yeah, it's it's it's easy,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: easy to prove it easy to see. You know, when
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: you're into your own eyes, when you started, you know,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: your your crops start producing. Yeah, I think a common
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: um rebuttal to the idea of trees from many people,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: and this has been something that I've said to myself
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: over the years is man, but it's and take so
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: long for these trees to make a difference. I can't
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: wait ten years or fifteen years or however many years
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: until these suckers work. I just want something now. Um
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: what is your response to that pushback? The best sign
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: the planet tree was was five years ago. It always
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: has been. To answer your question, mark, if you plant oaks,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: oaks have a long time in the maturity. White oaks
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: can take up to twenty years before they bear fruit,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: and most of the oaks take eight, ten twelve years
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: before you get into production. That was one of the
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: really unique things about chestnuts it's chest us could bear
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: it only three to five years, so you're not having
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: to wait a long period of time. When you're planning
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: fruit trees. Many of them are grafted and so grafted
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: trees are already using true wood to graft with, and
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: so they can bear it two to three years as well,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: so you don't have this long wait time until you
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: start getting into production and buy. You know, with a chestnut,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: by ten years you can be getting ten to twenty
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: pounds and nuts per tree, so it's not that long
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: a return. And but the other interesting thing about chestnuts
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: that's a real advantage is chestnuts there every year no
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: matter what. They don't flower until after leaf out of
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the spray. Oaks flower before they leap out, and so
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: sometimes olks get and you know, if you hunt an
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: area you know the oak, the acorn crops will cycle.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it will be two or three years, and then
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you'll get a huge bump or crop of acorns. Wildlife
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: like repetitive food, and you know they'll be more attracted
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: to come back if you've got food crops every year,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: or they have to move to find where the acorns
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: are going. To be you know, dropping that year or
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: if you have a thin year all over. But if um,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: then take about chestnuts, is that because they flower so late,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: they flower after the threat of frosts and springtime, and
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: so they miss a lot of those late season spring
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: frosts and produce much more reliable crops. You're in your
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: own So would it be your recommendation to you know,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: plant uh a diversity of different tree and shrub species
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: if you were starting out with something like this, so
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: you would have some things that would start producing mass earlier,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: like a chestnut or maybe some of these different shrubs
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and berries, and then you know, a handful of years later,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: then whatever else you were planting, maybe apples or per
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: simmons or something else would start producing, you know, in
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: the longer term, so you don't wait to plant them.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: You get them all plants as soon as possible, and
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: then slowly over time you're gonna get more and more
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and more production. Is that the way to think about this? Sure,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: that's exactly correct. Yeah, I think you could think about
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: like that. But I do think that there are um
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: some species that are just they're just really great grupplot
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: tree um, the chestnuts specifically we have, uh we shipped
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: to a lot of retailers, will King and Walmart and
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: are the largest size that we shipped, which is a
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: seven down size. There's a three year old tree. And
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: most of what we ship out about the flower and
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: fruit UM. And I see I see checknuts on those
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: sizes actually really frequently. So I mean you can go
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: to a store and get a a a mass producing
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: tree um and with the persimmons, stand with the mulberry, um.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: It's it's had a lot thicker. If I think in
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: people might um might think and those trees, I should say,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that's about really all trees, um, most trees. It just
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: produced so much mask. You know, It's something that I
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: look at year after year on the farms with the
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: same trees and our same orchards, I look at all
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: of the food that's being produced and I'm just blown
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: away by the amount of food that that is exactly.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: We we harvest every single one of our chestnuts um. However,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: we don't harvest all of our persimmon fruits. Our care
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: fruit are citrus that's on the farms. There's peach, there's um,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: there's mulberry, there's a lot of fruit that we don't harvest. Uh.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: And there's thousands of towns that's fall and and just
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: go away. They rot on the ground. We eat as
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: much as we can, but we just simply can't harvest
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: all of it um because they're they're budget sources. We
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: don't we don't sell the fruit self on the farm. Um.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: And so you know, plants the trees, you will get
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: a significant amount of fruits quite quickly. Be much differ
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: than you may think. So then let's say that somebody
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: is listening and they've been convinced that, yeah, tree should
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: be added to my repertoire. How how would you recommend
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: someone going about thinking through what the right trees would
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: be for different goals or for different areas. How do
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: you how do you think through that? The best way
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: for you to determine what to plant in your area?
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I think first is to look at your usb A
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: zone USC a plant pardiness zone map is if you
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: just google that U S D A plant Pardiness zone
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: map has your U S D A zone and it
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: goes from you know, warm to cold um in the
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: in the South, it's like you know, Florida's zone, and
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I think it gets under the leaven and then ten
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: is Orlando area. Nine is where we are in uh
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: in Gainesville, and it just goes up all the way
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: to to Michigan. Where where Michigan is I think zones
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: UH full, five, four and five. UM, So check your
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: U S D A zone you can google that, google
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: your zip code and based on that you can go
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to really anywhere that cells trees and it should on
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: the tag or on the website give you that information. UM.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: And you know there are there are some big retailers
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: who are you or having trees and varieties that may
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: not survive in your area, So make sure to check that. UM.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Make sure to take a look at what zone you're
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: planning in and what the truth are. Then then next
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: from there, I would I would really recommend just go
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: now and taking a look at your property. UM. What
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: kind of soil do you have where are you wanting
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: to plant? Does it have full sunlight? UM? Does it
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: have uh you know, a way to get water to it?
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: If you don't have a way to get water to it,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: come up with a plan to get water to it
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: for the first you know, a few years after planting, UM,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: you can take a soil sample. UM, you can find
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: a soil sample online, UM really anywhere. But also you know,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: your local feed and seed store or you know your
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: local AD extension office can can provide soil samples UM
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and check out like what what kind of soil you have? UM.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: You know, do some research into your planting site because
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: kind of like that site crap is is important, UM
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: is important to think about. UM and all of those
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: kind of factors will give you a general idea of
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: kind out what what you can plant in your area.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: But I mean really primarily it's going to be your zone,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: in your U s d A zone. Yeah okay, So
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: so then let's say we've done that, We've checked our zone,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and we've checked what our site specifics are. UM, all
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: things being equal, what would be a handful of your
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: top recommended trees to consider? You know, assuming that some
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: will be right for certain areas. If you had to
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: give me, like the greatest hits that everyone should at
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: least look into, what would those be? Yeah? Sure, yeah,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: so I think that UM, I would start by thinking
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: about a range of UM, well, first highly producing trees
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: and second having a range of varieties that are can
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: produced at different times of year. UM. I think would
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: be would be preferable and best for a food cloth. UM.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: But you know, number one I would recommend if your
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: fire goal is to attract wildlife and deer, the the
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Dunstan chestnut is um, and the chestnut specifically is um
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: a tree that deer are are naturally wired to seek
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: out because of the rich history of chestnuts in America. UM.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: It's it's something that they just smell and sense and
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: they come to it over many other Um. You know,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: a corner or fruit, so chestnut um, and it produces
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: extremely heavily. Next, I'd say cher simon U. Cher Simmon
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: also is just a heavy producer. UM. It's high sugars
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and in an important time of year. UM. Hair hair
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: is a really great tree. UM. I mean many types
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: of pair. You know, I would say, you know, people
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: may be worried about a specific variety, UM, but at
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, if your goal is to
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: attract wildlife, most varieties are going to suffice UM with
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: with pair and per simmon um. You know, whether it's
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: late or not, I mean, just uh, if it's an
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: edible pair versus a versus a native pair versus m
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: improved you know, care for you know, a cold like
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: a cold hardy pair as long as it um as
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: long as I just think that in general, um deer
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: are just going to be attractive to fruit. So uh
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: lastly or some more would be um crab apple, I
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: mean apple in general, but we we sell crab apple
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: all over the Eastern United States because it is a
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: native and um it may not have very edible fruit
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: for us, but it does produce highly um. And it
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: is a native, so it has natural resistance to at
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: inc testing disease and weather that we uh see in
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: the Eastern United States. UM. Mulberry is another great producer
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: um and plum. There's native plums, but really any plum
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: um and then of course bushes like raspberry, BlackBerry, blueberry
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: um all great producers. I'd add mulberry to that list
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: because it's a really early ripening fruit in the springtime.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that I think UM bears
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: in mind if you're buying some of the commercial fruit varieties,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: let's say like a Gala apple or you know, uh
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: red delicious apple, A lot of the commercial varieties require
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of sprays and chemicals to produce fruit. They
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: were bred for fruit quality, not for disease resistance, and
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: so we tend to stick to more native called of
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: ours and UM. One of the other things you want
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: to do is look at ripening times. And we've got
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: several varieties of pairs. One of them is a doctor
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Dear pair that was selected by Dr James Crawl in Texas.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: He found it full of fruit at Christmas time, and
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: so we propagate that because it holds its fruit so
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: late in the season. And there are per simmons uh
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: that we sell native per simmons and will ripen in
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: August and some that will ripen in November. So you
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: can have fruit on the tree all the way through
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the hunting season just because you've got you plant you
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: know in early a middle season, in a late season
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: variety and they all so you've got fruit ripening all
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: throughout pharmacason. So I think you know, or native variety
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: versus commercial varieties that are for because they're easier to
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: care for them. And then a wide range of ripening UM.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: And also you know, just to touch on oak as well,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: white oh has less annon and red oak and uh.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: You know, deer have really sensitive taste buds just like us,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: and that they would rather less canon because of the bitterness. Um. However,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: like we talked about earlier, acorns can take a really
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: long time to produce. Oaks can take up to twenty
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: years before they produce. But um we do so on
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: a website. A we sell saw toothed oak, which is
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: a faster producing oak. They can produce in uh, you know,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: seven to nine years as opposed to the fifteen to
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: twenty years or some some other species. Um so a
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: saft tooth oak. We also have a gobbler saw tooth oak,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: which is a little bit more of a compact kind
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: of st um if you're looking to have mass produced quicker. However,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: acorns are also when when they do produce, they put
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: us a significant quantity of high fat uh mass, which
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: is uh you know, a really important food source as well.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: So you know, wrapping that into your uh tree food
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: plot is also something to think about. Yeah, So if
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: we're planting tree food plots as as we're as you're
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: referring to them, is it best to do a mono culture?
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Like Okay, if I'm doing this, I'm gonna do chestnuts,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: and it's gonna be all chestnuts because only just get
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: it just right in just the right place, or I'm
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: gonna just apples or just per simmons, or would you
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: instead recommend, you know, a blend. If you're gonna do
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: an orchard, it should be a bunch of different things.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: How what would you recommend their diversity or perfect the
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: one same thing. From a pollination point, you need to
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: have the trees in the same area, so in small groups,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: you know, if you've got chests, that trees need to
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: be within the feet of each other across pollinate because
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: the wind pollinated. And it's better if you've got four
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: or five trees in a group. And then but the idea,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: you know, don't just plant one or two, plant you know,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: half a dozen, eight or ten trees of a particular
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: type together, and then you know your next block will
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: have the same grouping, so not totally random because of
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: pollination concerns, but also um mixing them up. Will you
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: know you can do a lot, even in a very
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: small area, by just making sure that you've got to
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: mix of different varieties. So it's kind of a combination
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: of both. Would you ad anything to you, Yeah, I
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: think that it's just important to take a look at
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: m H. Yes, your species requires a pollinator or not.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Some species are self fertile or just produce fruit on
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: their own without a pollinator. UM. So if it does
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: require a pollinator, then you have to plan at least two. However,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: at least two planted fifty feet apart, um is still
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: only going to produce so many flowers, especially early in
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: the trees. Like so as that tree develops and it
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: starts to produce more flowers every year, UM, it will
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: start to pollinate each other um more and more. But
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: with uh, you know, with three or five or ten trees,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: it's going to start to have more poll interpollination um
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: earlier in in your in your food plot. So there's
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: something to think about. I would recommend having a variety
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: of tree because I think that having the different types
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: of nutrients is all important. Um. However, it just depends
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: on how large your planting site is, you know, UM.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: And and you know some some people want to plant
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: three trees, four trees, that's all the space they have,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: and so in that scenario, you may just want to
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: plant homogeneous and have just one variety, Whereas if you
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: have a little bit of space for more trees, and
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: then I would recommend doing you know, a couple of
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: different varieties with at least I would say, at least
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: three trees within within pollination space so that they can
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: they can pollinate each other. I was gonna say, let's
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit land. Um, you know, site selection
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: and your property. Well, let's say you have a blot land. Yet,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: what do you want to look for? Because E didn't
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: mentioned it before, I think it's really critical, is that
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: your soil is really important for your ability to be
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: able to have a good tree food plot. And you know,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: as the and said before, go look at what's growing
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: on the property right now. If you've got nice oak
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: trees and you know, ell on the beach and that
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: sort of stuff growing on your property, you can grow
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: chestnuts and you can grow oak trees and probably most
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: of the fruit for your area. But if you've got
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: pine flat woods that doesn't have you know, very good soil,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: and that's a common soil type down here in the
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Deep South, especially Georgia, South Carolina. And then you know,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: all the way along the Gulf Coast you need to
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: really find the best planning site. You know, consequently, further
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: north where there's rolling land or or bottom land and
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of people come and say, well, look, a's
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: w a wet down there. I want to put the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: trees down there. That's actually not the place to plant um.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: A lot of trees. Chestis in particular don't like wet feet.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: They can get root fungus by top thora and it
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: can you know, really stunt or kill the tree from
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: root fungus if the soil stays to wet. If when
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: the snow melts in the spring down in the bottom
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: of a of a swale and it stays moist for
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: a long time, you want to avoid that. You want
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: an area with with air drainage and water drainage to
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: planning on a side slope, especially like south facing slope
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: is really good. The north facing slope can be really
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: cold if you're up north. You want to avoid that.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: So you know the microclimate that you picked to plant
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: or if you're choosing property that has you know a
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: range of elevations. You know, looking at the native vegetation
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: the area will tell you a tremendous amount about what
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: you can grow on your property. The other other problem
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: with with you know, bottom land is in late spring
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: frost which always occur uh cold air settles in those
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: low pockets, and you can get a frost down in
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: one of those pockets went up on the hillside and
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: never frost at all, and so you can get leaf
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: damage or flower damage from late frost if you plant
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: down and uh, you know, in a bottom on a
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: in a pocket. So typically orchard sites are better where
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: there's good air drainage and water drainage in the soil. Okay,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what the next thing I was curious to
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about. Now, what about sun
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you know, do we need full open sunlight or can
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: you get away with some partly shady kind of patches
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: in an already somewhat timbered location for these types of things,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Is it? Which is it? On that front? Yeah, you know,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: chess has in particular, there are forest tree The reason
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: they were so common in the forest is they were
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: faster at competing to the tree fall gap. You know,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: if you're a little seed underneath the big shaded canopy,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: you've got to sit there and wait until you get
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: a shot at the light up above. And if the
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: tree fell. Chest Us were faster at colonizing that gap
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: than any other species. It's one of the reasons that
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: they were so widely spread, plus animals, you know, transported
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the caeds around and planting them all over the place, schools,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But the partial shade, partial sun.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: The more sun the better. But planting in a forest
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: is not a problem as long as they have some
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: access to sunlight and then some trees a lot of
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: the fruit are. You know, they're not canopy trees anyway,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: there might only be twenty or tall maximum, and so
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: they can grow in uh, you know, along the forest edge.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've got a regular food plot, there's
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: no better place to plant trees than on the edge
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: of that, you know, that existing open food plot. It's
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: perfect location. Speaking of how quickly growing chestnuts are, there
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: was a from a book I love called The over Story,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: and I jotted it down in case there was an
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: opportunity to read it, and so I got to throw
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: it in here. He wrote that the trees thicking like
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: enchanted things. Chestnut is quick by the time, and ash
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: has made a baseball bat, a chestnut has made a
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: dresser bend over to look at a sapling, and it'll
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: put your eye out. I thought that was pretty good.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: That's a wonderful book. By the way, Yeah, so so
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: tell me this. Um, I kind of want to get
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: into some of the how to. So let's say we've
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: we've decided we want trees. We were gonna try a
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: couple different of these varieties. We're gonna do some clusters
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: here and there. Um, we found a good site for it.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Now we're gonna actually get out there and plant them. Um,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: is the is your recommended planting process for trees? Basically
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: the same for all these species? You know, So if
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: you were to tell me the best way to plant
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: a crab apple, would it be about the same as
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: what you tell me when I'm planting a chestnut or
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: white oak or per ciment or they really different for
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: each species. Okay, it's it's a great question, but they're
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: all really similar. Um, you dig a hole about the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: size of the container that the tree came in. You
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: don't need a big hole, and especially in areas with
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: heavy clay, don't dig this giant four foot wide hole
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: and put a bunch of multi in the bottom. That
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: becomes a sponge to whold moisture and root funcus. So
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: what we recommend is you dig a whole little you know,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: about the size of or a little bit bigger than
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: the you know, the container. And let's say it's a
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: three gallon pot or a seven gallon pot, and you
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: can then when you unpot the tree, you break up
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the roots all around the perimeter of the root ball.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: And and if you've got stuff that's crossed up or
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: growing together, you can go in with a pair of
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: clippers and clip them apart, but open the sagham open
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: and break them up. And it's those young, a little
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: tiny feeder roots that are where the tree up takes
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: all its bister and nutrients from, not the big thick roots.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: They're a little white filaments along the along the edges
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: of the roots, set the tips of the roots. So
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: you put the soil back in after put the tree,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: and and then you water and in really well basically
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: mudded in. And what that does is that gets rid
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: of an air pocket. Because when those little tender, young
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: feeder roots grow into an open air pocket, uh, they die.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: And then you're not up taking oyster. But if you
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: flood the hole when you plant it, put your mud,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: put you all your soil back in. And I don't
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: know why when you dig a hole in the ground
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: you put a tree back in and there's never enough
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: dirt until it back up. You um, you create a
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: mud bath for it, and that gets rid of all
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: of the the air pockets and then you can kind
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: of create a little they am around the outside. And
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: then what's really beneficial is put your molt on top
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: and that keeps the surface roots moister. When that tree
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: gets big, those roots or within one or two ft
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: of the surface, I mean, they may send a tapper down,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: but that that root zone is this giant nutrient collecting
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: web that goes out to the tips of the branches.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: And so it's this you know, it's this huge filter
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: out there trying to get moisture and nutrients, and it's
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: going to recycle the nutrients that are in the leaves
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: with leaves fall um. But so you wanna you know,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: first you want to make sure your your solaw has
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: good what's called tilts. It's not rock hard, it's not
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: shale rock um. Don't put fertilizer down in the hole,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: which is a common misconception because fertilizer ferns roots and
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: all those young feet of roots, especially if you're using
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: law and fertilizer something like that. Get a good time
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: release fertilizer that's gonna release slowly over three to four
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: months or longer through the growing season. That way, you're
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: not going to burn the burn the roots of transplanting
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: and multch those things in, and that mulch helps keep
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: the moisture in the soil after you mut it in.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: And and the number one, single most important thing is
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: to continue watering the tree on a regular basis for
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: the first several years. And you know a lot of
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: people they live two hours from their hunting camp their lands.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: If you can get out, get a tank from the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: back of your tractor, get a tank that fits in
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: the back of your pickup truck. You can get five
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: gallon buckets and drill a little tiny hole in it
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: and let rain any rain that fills up, fill the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: bucket and have it dribble back down on the tree.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: If you've got access to a well, you know, you
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: can pump it all that water out there or put
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: in an irrigation system. But that water is the essence
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: of survival for the tree. And if you don't water
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: it and you get on one of those hot, dry
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: summers like we've had the last few years, you could
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: you know, it's just throwing your money away. It could
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: not not go back and water that tree. The other
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: thing that we really highly recommend is the use of
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: grow tubes or tree tubes, and we've tested a bunch
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: of different ones. We sell someone on the website. The
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: tree tube for a young tree actually does three or
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: four things. First, during the winter, critters want to chew
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: like mice and rabbits want to chew on the trunks
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: for food, and deer, you know, they'll eat the leaves,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: especially of a chest the tree when the tree is young,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: because they're so they're so tender and sweet, So the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: tree protects it physically from tradation. Second, um, you know
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: bucks like the ruther antlers on them in the fall,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: especially a young tree, a tree to protect protects it
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: from that. The third most, probably the most important thing
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: what they were developed for is during a night, when
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: that transpirational moisture is released out of the leaves, it
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: condenses on that tube and it slides back down and
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: recycles the water. So it's not just going up into
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: the air, but it captures that moisture and recycles it
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: down into the roots. So you know, the watering you're
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: doing is it's sticking around longer because the two captures
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: that moisture and and it trains back down to the roots.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And you know, when you're testing planting a tree by
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: itself versus inside a tree tub, you can get two
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: to three times of growth in a year of out
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: of a tree toub then you can just by putting
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: it out in the open. So it has a lot
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: of different advantages. And so that would be instead of
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: using a cage, right, you would never use both at
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: the same time, Is that correct? Yoh, yeah, you can
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: use both absolutely, but the beginning in the beginning, the moisture,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: the it is really valuable. And then you just go
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: in and take that tree tube off and just the
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: last three years. You'd take it off after two or
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: three years and then then replace it with a cage
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: or clificate. You know, pull it off and just let
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: it grow inside the cage. But yeah, if you've got
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: especially it's got bear tree tubes are like playfuys and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: it's uh, they can really get in and re havoc
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: with them, and so the cage helps a whole lot
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: for that. And if a bus rubbing on him, you know,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: the cage protecting keeps the tree too from me and
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: off Yeah, uh, Ian, is there anything else you'd add
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: to that? And then one other, uh specific thing. I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: watched a video you talking once about weed mats, and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: that's something we haven't talked about yet. I'd be curious
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: your thoughts on on that and anything else. Sure, Yeah,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: you know one more thing I would well, just a
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: couple of things I would out one. I just I
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: just can't help it. Stress. That's the number one thing
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: that goes wrong with with planting is is watering. It's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: just a lack of water. Um. So I just have
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: to reiterate what Bob said that getting water to your
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: tree in the first couple of years, just like you
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: said earlier, Um, you know, what you get in what
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: you put into it is what you get out of it.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: And so having a plan to water is crucial for
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: establishing a tree. Um. So you know, water plant, water plan,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: water plan. Um. But then I would also add, you know,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: just just to clarify the the grow tube is specifically
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: for a younger tree like a year A year old
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: tree eighteen to thirty six inches a tree. Tubes are
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: typically four to five foot, so a tree that would
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: fit inside of a small grow tooth like that. Um.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: You know, we we ship online and most of our
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: online shipping are are smaller trees eighteen or thirty six
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: inches a couple of feet at most, and those those
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: should go into a groceres grow tubes are just so beneficial,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: like Bob explained, Um, but you know, are are larger
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: sizes that we shipped to larger retail box stores like
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Walmart Rooking. They're a little bit too large for a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: grow tube. But what I would recommend is having a
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: cage for for both. So at any planting time, no
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: matter the size, having a tree cage I think is
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: really crucial because wildlife um is gonna just mess with it.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: You know. The grow tube is going to help maybe
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: with with with small critters like rice mice and squirrels, um,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: but you know anything larger deer bear, um, if you
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: gotta have a pretty substantial tree cage. Otherwise there's they
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: just love the tender root, the tender tips of a
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: newly growing tree in the springtime, and if it's below
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: the brows line, they're going to get in there and
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: they're gonna knock it over and it's you know, investment
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: is gone. Um. But yeah, we've met our complete addition. UM,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: you know, weed is competition for nutrients and and moisture.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: And so if you're you know, if you let uh
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: weed competition grow up and basically strangle a tree out
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: of UM, you know that that you know that nutrients.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: I've seen it before where we've actually done this before
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: on the farm. We haven't gotten back out to a
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: new planting on one of our orchards, and we see
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: UM it basically outcompete and even out sunlight. Uh. Some
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: of the smaller trees, I mean, the grass can get
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: as you know, huge, and and that'll that'll just kill
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: a tree. So we mat at least gives it a
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: little bit of room. UM, so that you know, if
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: you can't get out there, it will take a little
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: longer for that we competition to grow up around it,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: the grass to grow up around it. UM. And something
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: else to mention that we haven't touched on yet is
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: you know, is herbicide. UM. And you know it's okay
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: to to spray herbicide around a tree. UM. If you're
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: if you're what I what I would say, you're not
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: an expert, I would not UM broadcast spray around the
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: newly planted tree um a grow tube and help protect
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: a very young tree. Uh any tree in the first
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: you know, three or five years, it doesn't have significant
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: bark development yet and it's uh cambrio layer is just
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: underneath that. You can actually take your thumbnail and scratch
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: an m tree and you'll see green um. And if
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: you spray herbicide, it's it will go into that um
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: that you know, soft layer, and they can kill a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: July planted tree. So a weed mat is it's just
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: another kind of you know, step in protection that you
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: can take before springing UM. And I would recommend hand
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: eating around young trees for some time because even if
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: you spray, and even if you think you you are
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: not getting the base of the tree with any of
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: your herbicide, UM, there's wind will drift. If there's a
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: windy day or even a little after it can ta
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: can kill in the tree. So it's just gonna be
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: really careful about about leat protection, which is why we
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: recommend a weave not okay, other than that ongoing water
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: plan in the long term, is there any other maintenance
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: for these trees you'd recommend. I mean, I've heard some
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: with apple trees is pruning and things like that, they
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: are sometimes recommended. Is is there anything else we should
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: be thinking about other than what you've mentioned chestnuts and
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: many of the trees don't take that much pruning. Um.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: They're naturally going to seek the light and to send
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: that main shoot up and you know, you may want
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: to prune off some lower branches, you know, to get
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: it up above the brows line so they're not eating
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: the leaves on the lower branches, or if you're working
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: with machinery in there where you want to be able
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: to get underneath and you know, ride a mower around
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But it's there's there's not a
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: huge amount to do regular fertilization once a year in
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: the early spring with a time release fertilizer UM or
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: if you hit a really bad uh drought right uh
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: four or five years ago there was just a tremendous
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: drought and trees are dying all over the eastern uv
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: especially in the corn corn growing regions in the Midwest,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: and UH it's you know, if you can get water
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: back out if you hit one of those droughts, that's
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: sometimes when you may need to go out. But that's
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: the beauty of it is and once the trees are
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: established after three or four years, they take care of themselves.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: So you know, we haven't talked about pest management very much,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: but they're really not many pests just to hardly any
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: um they're you know, you're not it's not something you
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: have to go out and spray. And if you're using
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: good native varieties, you're not having to you know, to
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: use a lot of chemicals. And I really second what
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: Ian is saying, and that stay away from round up
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: um in the first in the early area ages of
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: the tree. You'd be surprised at the amount of drift
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: that goes on and you can kill a young tree
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: really easily with with accidental overspray. So just stay away
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: from it and use sweeden at and use the hope. Okay, perfect, Well,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: we we've we've covered a lot about the why we've
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: covered the what we've covered the how is there anything
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Bob when when you're thinking through this topic that you
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: think is really important to still touch on that we
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: haven't yet, Is anything lingering on the tip of your
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: tongue that you really got to get out there or
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: do you feel we've we've checked the boxes, don't wait
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: every year you play, every year you put it off,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: um know, is one one more year you gotta wait
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: for crops, even with with stuff that's scruting in three
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: or four years. The rewards you get on a whole
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: lot of different levels from planting and growing trees is
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: an amazing process. And it really is. You know, as
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: you talked about, it changes the way you you see
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: your world. And I think that's the really, really most
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: important lesson from this whole process. You're enhancing your land,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: but you're also learning how to really see into the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: cycles in nature and and participate in those cycles. One
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: of the things that's not talked about very much and um,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: but if you read the earliest settlers and uh in
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: the United States, the earliest explorers that the Native Americans
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: living here planted chestnuts, they planted well nuts, they planted
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: hickories because they knew the value of those food crops.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: And you know, one of the reasons the chessups may
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: have been so common in such a large area they
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: were planted by the by the early native populations that
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: lived here. And so, you know, we're living in an
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: era right now where there's so much development and you know,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: we've we've farmed it, fence road of fence row, take
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: a little time, replant those fence rows, plant around your
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: food plot, replant some of the areas that have been logged,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: and you're you know, you're really doing not only are
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: you gonna learn about the cycles that you're doing, you
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: know the whole system of benefit and you know you'll
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: reap the harvest for decades. Yeah, I would you would
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: you add anything else? And then also would you give
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: us a rundown of where listeners can find more about
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: your nurser online, how they can order trees or any
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: other other things we talked about. Yeah? Sure, Yeah, you know,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I think I think kind of like Bob started to
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: with there, it's sure, it's just you know, just getting started.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I think is is you know the best thing? I
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: know that as just like with everything else. UM, you know,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: you can read about it all you want, and you
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: can think about watering and you know, the weating, but
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: until you do it, you may not. Um, you're just
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: you're just not going to figure out how it's gonna
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: work on your property and you know, in your environment, um,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: in your soil, you know, at your planting site, until
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: you do it and you might find some pickups along
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: the way. You know, Mother nature likes to throw curveballs
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: with with weather and climate and you know test sometimes
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: in disease that that come up. Um. And so I
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: just would recommend getting started because the sooner you do,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: the sooner you can happen this stablished plot. Um. But
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: you know, besides that, it's it's just a matter of
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: doing it, just like anything else you can. So you
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: can google us at Chestneyhill Outdoors. We have a website
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: Chestnut Hill Outdoors dot com. Um. You can purchase from
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: us for our two major shipping seasons. We have a
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: shipping season in spring and a shipping season in fall,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: but you can place orders for most of the year um.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: But the best time to to start, you know, looking
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: for those orders is kind of late summer when we
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: start turning them on the website inventories. And then in
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: in you know, the mid to late fall, we'll start
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: turning on our inventories for spring as well, so keep
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: an eye out on that. You can also follow us
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: on Chestnut Hill Outdoors Facebook and Instagram, and we make
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: announcement about those kinds of things um. And we we
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: also shoot all kinds of information out and fun you know,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: equip its and stuff for for learning. Um. And then
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: we also shipped to Walmart, Rule King and some select
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: co op feed dealers in Pennsylvania and New York. But
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: we shift just about all the eastern United States. Uh.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: And if you want to find a location your you
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: you can go on our website to the store locator.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: This is yeah, such part that you can search your
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: town or your zip code and it'll pop up all
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: the stores you know, sixty mile radius of you, and
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: you can go to that store. You can see how
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: many we shipped. You can see when we shifted it.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: We're in the middle of our main shipping season right
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: now in spring. Um. So it's just we're just starting
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: to get into those stores. Um. And uh. You know,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: just also if you want to hear more are about
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: the information we talked about today, We have just about
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: all of it on the website. We have a learning center.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: You can go in about learning center and read about
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: watering and staking and weed control and and how did
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: how to do all of it? Um. So you know,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: we we just you know, we have a lot of
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: institutional knowledge that we find. It's our pops to hand
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: that off to people, and so it's all available, all
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: there for you to to take advantage of, and we
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: hope that it helps you to be successful at pointing treat. Amazing.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate It's been fun to get to dive
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: more into this topic with you guys. And like I said,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: I've been on a been on a tree bender lately,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: and I'm excited to get my hands dirty and planting
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: some this spring too. So you guys have helped me
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: out personally as well. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely, let's
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: talk against soon. All right, very good, thank you. Okay,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: that is a rap. Thanks for tuning, guys. It's uh
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: It's Earth Day in just a few days after this
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: one publishes, So if you don't already have plans, maybe
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: consider plant a tree, plane a tree or two, get
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: a chestnut put on the ground help bring these suckers back,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: or maybe just find whatever is available at your local
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: Walmart and plant it in your backyard or in your
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: back forty. It's gonna be great for deer, it's gonna
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: be great for all sorts of animals. It's good for
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the water, it's good for the air, it's good for
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: you and me. So that's my that's my final message
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: for I appreciate you listening. Let's go plant some trees.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: Read the over story. If you haven't yet, check out
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Chestnut Hill Outdoors, and until next time, stay wired to hunt.