My Big Papaw planted trees when I was kid and told myself I would do the same some day…huge thanks to KBush and Canterberry on here for all the help and all! My dad and I planted 43 trees yesterday…5 Dunstans, 8 red mulberry, 8 black cherry, 12 Mexican plums, and 10 Chickasaw plums. Not gonna lie, it was pretty special.

Nice!!! Definitely going to get some return on planting them! Good job on getting the egg bandit as well.

Nice! Where’d you source your trees? Mossy Oak Nativ?

👍 👍👍

I noticed 5 or 6 years ago that some of my plots had a little bush/tree that had a leaf like a persimmon. I left some of them in the plots. Sure enough they are persimmon trees. I have a lot n a few plots now, but some in almost all of them. They start producing persimmons in year 3 or 4. I left a LOT in one plot and I’m going to move some in the spring. I enjoy watching them grow and the grandkids and I eat a FEW of them. I have some big mature ones on a few properties and everything n woods loves persimmons. Lot o pics on camera when they are dropping n late fall.

You're a lucky man ! You don't need no stinkin' corn. Just sink in and wait.

Good stuff

I planted few pair on my lease 3-4 years back - they will produce next hear. Wish i had a plumb tree at the house

Found 5 dunstans at rural king for 1/2 off but all the others nativ..they were fantastic to deal with and Dudley helped out a lot as well!

That’s awesome…I decided against planting them cause I could have wasted my space and gotten all males

Some nurseries will have grafted American Persimmon (female). You’d still need 1 male tree nearby to pollinate.

I got several of the Mexican plum from Nativ. I’m. Looking forward to those.
My local co-op gets barefoot persimmons in and they’ll appear to be grafted. I’ve bought several but the area I’m planting in is already full of persimmons. But it’s about 80:1 male to female so far.

May look into in future…you think a persimmon would be better than a crabapple?

Man that’s legit! Looking forward to seeing how yours goes as well. That sucks about the 80-1 😂.

My next round I’ll do some more Dunstans, some nuttall oaks, crabapples…open to more suggestions.

I’ve put in some crabapples(have a few growing wild also), native and improved plums. Have a few mulberry that are wild and mature. They get a lot of attention. I’ve planted about 8 pears and I’m excited to see them start producing in another year or two.

I have Chinese Chestnuts, Pears, Crab Apple. Here they all have to be protected from Deer eating and rubbing them. They will destroy something you planted just for them.
These trees have been watered for two years to get them established.

Crab apple and persimmons don’t have much overlap on availability except for a few varieties of crabs that drop late. +1 on the watering as mentioned above.

Deer do not browse or rub(so far) my persimmons or pawpaw. Pears, plum, crabapple, mulberry, and peach they nibble into oblivion if they aren’t caged. I built 3-4’ wide cages with 4-5’ tall hog wire and reinforcing mesh that I had laying around. I like them much better than tree tubes in my application.

Mine are caged also.

I hope the tree tubes do well. I did not have the time for cages.

Planted some sawtooth oaks with my dad almost 20 years ago that I was just looking at yesterday … it will be a special moment for me and his grandkids to take a deer or turkey under some day soon.

You have time for cages. A roll of hog wire or concrete reinforcement mesh will make a bunch. They aren’t really going to be handy until the leaves start to emerge March/April.

I like the tubes for being able to spray around them the first few years so they don't get swallowed by other stuff but I have started using much shorter tubes in the 18-24" range. The long tubes just didn't seem necessary and I could cut them in half and get two for one. Not knocking your long tubes but for me they are more hassle (weeds inside the tube outgrowing the tree and wasp primarily) than short tubes. YMMV

Word to the wise: don’t even say the word “roundup” around fruit trees. I’ve killed more young fruit trees than I care to admit that way.

I spray my orchard every year with gly and prowl h2o. I do it with a boom sprayer, with the boom mounted to my front end loader, just on one side and i only use the first two nozzles, which covers about 2ft. I spray both sides of the row and overlap just a little in the middle. Very little gets on the trunk of the tree and i can control that pretty good having the boom right in front of me. I do use a pretty weak mix, i guess. I put around 1oz gly/ 1 gal water or less. I also spray it before or right as the trees are putting on leaves. I try to do it about a week or two before i put out my first fertilizer so the trees arent competing for the fertilizer. It kills everything except the clover, which adds nitrogen before its over with. I also use it around the trees we plant each year with a hand sprayer, on a day with no wind, wand pointed straight down. If i happen to let the grass/weeds get tall, ill weedeat around them then spray. Ive had really goos success doing this and the young trees grow so much better when its clean around them. I would not try that with a mix of 2-3oz/ gallon of water, thats just too much. I can usually get by with two sprayings per year on the young trees. If i spray a second time on the older trees, i spray gramoxone(paraquat)/ prowl h20 in april. After that the trees will leaf out thick and shade out alot of the competing weeds/ grass up against the base of the tree.

Well it sounds like you’ve got more experience than me. Definitely killed apple trees on my place. Maybe stronger mixture on my end.