I know what you intended but when you say a "healthy deer population" but in reality you have a very unhealthy deer population.

When White Oaks can not reach maturity due to deer browse you have too many deer, very unhealthy for the deer and for the rest of nature.


I don't plant Oaks for the deer, I plant them as they are becoming rare and I'd like to think that there will be some left in my woods when they are becoming rarer by the day every where else.

AJE, it'll be interesting to see if your method of planting lots of acorns in hopes of overwhelming the deer so that a few survive will work.
I doubt it will, it takes a good decade but usually more for a Oak to get past the deer. Talked to a DNR forester, he was telling me of a 40 acre plot that was planted in white, bur and red oaks 12 years ago.
It had to be fenced so that the trees would survive.

Dirty D, by healthy I mean we have plenty. Maybe I need to get uncle Jbyrd up here. He’d probably freeze.lol

I live is a closed 72 acre community and we have lots of wildlife. No surprise that they like white oak acorns. A resident flock of Canada geese live in two ponds here. They also prefer white oak acorns and they only dine under a few trees. Not all white oaks taste the same, evidently.

I started gathering acorns today. In 1 hr & 20 minutes I got several hundred bur oak. It was easy picking. This is the same date I started gathering last year. I'll probably start planting anytime between now and January.

I think what I'm doing is worthwhile. I plant so many that even if less than 10% make it long term, I'm probably doing pretty well

are you seeing any small trees ?

Last year I had a good take with the bur oak direct seeding. It seemed to work better than traditional white oak acorns, perhaps because I have poor soil.

Good post, thanks. And I also like that they do good in poorer soils. The long roots seem to help keep them from drying out.

At the moment I'm taking a break from de-capping bur oak acorns. I've done about a thousand this week. My fingers are sore.

I finished preparing these 2,220 bur oak acorns this morning. I could probably plant them anytime between now & winter

The trick will be keeping them at just the right ~humidity level in my fridge

I put 50 in each bag, leave them unzipped, & poked small vent holes in each bag



Direct seeding is neat.

Do any of you use Droste cans to plant your acorns?

According to Wikipedia, most east coast states consider them an invasive.

Today, I looked under around 40 large oak trees, both red and white, at two different parks, about 11 miles apart and didn't find a single acorn. I did get a mostly full bucket of buartnuts, some shagbark hickory nuts, a few heartnuts and a few buckeyes.





It's miserably hot and humid here. I want to check out a friend's 284 acre farm, over half of which is woods and my woods and hayfield edges, but not until it cools down some.

Keith

Nice, Keith.

Keep at it, you'll find acorns soon I suspect.


If any of you decide to try the Droste method, here it is:

I think because of some weird Spring weather, our area may be devoid of acorns this year. There were almost no mulberries this year. I saw and ate 4. I have literal hundreds of mulberry trees.

For years, since my pear trees matured, I have had 400 plus pounds of pears a year. This year, I don't know that there is even a dozen pears total on 5 large trees.

Keith

keith did you get a late frost down there,??

We have 100 foot plus red oaks around the house and in the woods. Last 2 years there was a ton of acorns. It was like walking on marbles. filled 14 , 5 gallon buckets up with no trouble. This year I don't think I could fill a coffee can up. This winter just mite be real hard on the deer and other critters who eat on them all winter. Our shag and pig nut hickories all have lots of nuts on them. We had a wet spring and no real heavy frost. Don't know if the beech trees have any nuts on them or not.

We got down to -22F last Winter, which froze out some plants. Frost wise, Spring seemed mostly okay. We had huge amounts of hard rain, that likely knocked the pollen down, followed by cold, that kept the pollinators from flying.

Keith

I started planting bur oak today. I noticed I had a nice take of white oak acorns from 2 years ago. This seems easier & cheaper than planting bare root seedlings.

Yea, its definetly cheaper and easier.

on the down side it takes longer and every year longer it takes to get above the deer is another year it might get hit.

I'm going plant a couple more White Oaks this fall.
I'm buying larger potted ones, they are great specimens and they save me about 10 years of time.

AJE, are you going to protect those against the deer?

I'm not so sure it takes longer. There's some evidence out there that direct seeding might catch up to bare root trees in height.

I might bud cap some of them til they get above deer height.

Interesting article about the roll squirrels play:

https://scienceblog.com/d-a-grey-sq...h-in-open-ground-a-fair-part-of-the-oak/

It appears squirrels treat white oak different than red oak when it comes to planting.