I’ve done lots of plantings over the years - here are some things I’ve learned: use PVC conduit for tree tube stakes - they’re cheap, last forever and don’t breakdown in the sunlight. Planting ROD without protection in even moderate deer density is an exercise in futility. I’ve planted hundreds, just to see them eaten down to the dirt before 2 years. Plant fewer and protect them. I planted some this year in bunches of 5 inside a fence cage (about 6’ diameter). I’m hoping after a couple years getting established, I can take fence down - move the cage over and plant with cuttings from the 2-3 year old ROD I just took the cage off. Any of those species you’re planting - will benefit from weed/grass suppression - I cut mats from a role of landscape fabric and use landscape staples - the better fabric will last 2-3 years before it breaks down, but it gives your plants the head start they need to out compete the weeds

I am really jealous, Bill. Planting trees, shrubs or cuttings is hard work but watching the fruits of your labor over the years is so fulfilling. As my property is all wooded mountain land, I decided to plant a group of redosier dogwood right along a trail from bedding to a water hole. A stand is close by. One thing I did was to cage around the cuttings to keep the deer from eating it to the ground until it gets some height to them. They are doing great so far. They are candy to deer from what I've seen. I plan on planting more each year until I have an area of around 100'x100' along the wet weather stream banks.

So many times you see trees/ woods being cut down to make an area the way they want it…it makes me so happy to see someone planting trees !! Even tho it may take years for the plan to come together, you are giving new life back ❤🌳

Ethan is the man, glad to see you keeping him busy…👊🏻🏹

I would get those cuttings down in the ground better. You only need the top bud(s) above the soil line to get better rooting. Hybrid willows are pretty tough, but Id sink them. If your red osier do well, get cuttings in the future off your own stock to expand your browse. Silky willow will be good for your erosion sites. If your hybrid poplars are OP-367 and some others, you can get your own cuttings again. They root really well.

Welcome back Ethan. Cant wait to see you on your 1000 acres. Know God put that desire in your heart and by developing yourself as a man of God to obtain the desire is more valuable than simply reaching the goal. Everything you need is within you! Keep up the great work.

I’m in MN and have done tons of tree planting, the deer browse makes it tough and frustrating to get things to establish and I can’t afford to protect thousands of trees through conventional methods so this year I went through and cut out hundreds of iron woods in areas I wanted more sun into the hardwoods and I took them all and created basically mini brush pile cages over all the transplants. It is obviously extra work but it cuts the cost vs tubes and stakes. If you’ve got a different tree species that’s less than desirable I recommend trying this method.

This is a great team! Love the content! Keep'em coming.

Love watching your show! I just got 80 acres right on the iowa line in northeast missouri and have aggressively began following your system. Cant wait to see the results.. im to the point i can’t really do anything else but sit back and watch it grow and thats driving me nuts! I spent all winter dozing , cutting, clearing, prepping and planting.. fall cant get here quick enough so i can see how any of it effects movement and then to learn how to hunt it!

Very cool project Bill, can’t wait to see how the trees do. Great video as always.

Thank you for sharing this information. Very helpful to this new landowner.

Some words of caution, once the deer find those red osier cuttings, they will likely browse them down to the dirt. Red osiers are amazing deer browse but they are very difficult to establish without caging or tubes. It's a better idea to spend the extra money to protect a few cuttings than to plant a lot of cuttings without any protection. Switchgrass is also another great option for access screening and provides security to small game and even deer on the edges. Wishing you guys the best of luck!

Done this in the late nineties with good success. It’s nice to see them come to fruition later on. Overall great for all wildlife.

I planted thousands of trees and shrubs on my property in southeast Kansas last year and lost almost everything except for some miscanthus due to the extreme drought. I now have IBC totes set up with drip lines and a timer, hopefully that will help for this year’s plantings. I love watching your channel, keep up the great content 👍🏼

Great video guys! I sure do enjoy seeing all the Dream farm improvements!

i figured about three days to plant all them. it is such a wise investment of time and money.

Have you noticed the deer interact with plantings differently when planted in rows with a planter vs. sporadically hand planting to make it more random?

Wish I was closer, would love to come help plant. So neat to have your own place to do this. This is a great series to follow along

Bill, in one of your latest videos, Jordan said she has to shoot a few inches lower out of the tree. Have her sight in a pin about 15 yards from the target and use that pin in the tree. For target shooting use the other pin.

Keep us posted on the results. I began planting with apples, pears and persimmons (cages and tubes). They have all been growing well. I later planted American Plum and Fragrant Sumac without protection or weed mats. I can't find any that survived. This year, I planted 15 Aronia, 15 American Plum and a lone red osier dogwood. I caged about 10, protected others with tree tops I cut and left a few exposed. The work sucks as you mentioned. I couldn't get all my seedlings planted, but hopefully most of the ones I did make it. If you get away without protecting, I may give that another go at some point. Until then, I plant a few and protect what I can.

Two years ago I planted 250 red oschier dogwoods and 250 hybrid willow here in eastern NE. Some success but the hybrid willow did seem to grow about 6’ a year but the deer seemed to eat about 6.5’ a year. They are in grow tubes so they eat down to the tubes. They are still alive so I’m hoping the roots continue to develop and will outpace the eating. Red dogwoods had a high fail rate. I’m blaming that on two very dry years and I planted them on hillsides instead of low moist areas.

Red Osier is excellent for hunting. I hunt around a lot of it in Minnesota and they seem to always hold deer. Imagine if your bedroom had a buffet, you'd probably spend a lot of time there too! You may not be aware, but you can clip the ends of red osier branches off and stick them right into the ground in the spring and they'll grow. Might save some money that way, but not time, since they'll have to grow, obviously. When I did that myself this spring to transplant on a different property, I didn't find a single plant that the deer hadn't clipped first. Literally hundreds of plants, every single one, every branch, was bit off. Granted, it was a hard winter, but it clearly demonstrates how the deer favor it.

Dang it that looks like a lot of work !! Good thing you have some young energetic helpers lol

If it was me putting time into planting I would put half as many trees in the sack and let the other half stay in the water bucket. Less chance of the roots getting dried out and easier to manage. By the time you are done you'll have it down pat!

Wild plum is a favorite of these mule deer here at my house. But at the farm ( about 70 miles away) I’ve not seen sign of them nibbling on stems leaves much in the summer. They do go nuts over the plums later. And as the weather cools and the plants change chemically? they will start browsing heavily. In a few short years your farm is going to be a huge deer magnet. 👍👍👀

Bill...good luck with all the tree plantings, it will be very interesting to follow. I'm planting some red osier dogwoods this year also. In the past I have planted thousands of white spruce and white pine and some switch grass with good success. I found although fast growing, after 20 -25 years the poplar trees start to have many many dead limbs and die off. They may give you enough time to establish native bushes etc., but in our case they were on a field edge and we had to cut them all down. Thanks for sharing, a very interesting project...Bob

Hope you do a progress report of these trees this year.

I will be getting some dogwood. I believe Osage orange and locust are overlooked as food sources. Both have large crops of fruit in 10yrs or less. The deer in my area only have hedge trees and cotton woods. At first frost they love the leaves and when the snow flies, the deer are always in the hedge lot feeding. I have planted oak since I was 20. I'm seeing the benefits now and it's rewarding. Dolgo crab apple has been a good one for me. The cedar blight has snuffed all other apples I have planted but not the dolgo.

Planted a lot of Xmas trees in my days Transplant bed and fields 🥵. Just no way around the labor and time that it takes. Nice work guys.

Just discovered this page! Looks like you have a great whitetail habitat concept.

I've done exactly what you're doing the last 3 years. I plant around 1200 total each year (including some conifers). I would highly recommend doing some tubes with wood stakes. Not that expensive and you will see the difference. Maybe do 10% of each type of tree and shrub in tubes and watch the difference. The deer will eat everything you planted. Dogwood can do very well on the edges of woods and high ground but you would need to water to get established. We have a lot of native Red Osier Dogwood on old mining tailings.

Hey Bill, I hope those choke 🍒 trees don't fork & grow a dominant & co-dominant side. Good thing they don't have a fence near them. I had a 60' come down on a fence last year & it was a clean-up nightmare. For a few years I had a heavy ratchet style truck pulling strap. It was between 2 huge ones leaning in opposite directions. However even the help of fortifying it with a large arborist rigging rope didn't work since I had it 2 feet below where the trunk of the tree twisted & snapped. They get scars in them from injuries but they don't act like there's a problem. The year b4 that I climbed up one & cut a notch in it. I had a strap well above that notch to pull it down with an rope puller tool. The notch never snapped but the whole tree 8 feet from the ground twisted @ a 90* angle & came down almost hitting a fence. They do however put out quite a crop of small food in August & September if u have large ones & I have too many of them...ha haha 😂. Thanks for the habitat renewal project. It would be nice if more folks put more effort into it.

God bless you, that's a lot of work. I don't know if you realize this wild/native plum ROOT SUCKER hard!! and every where their many yards of roots travel. I found out the very hard way. They also produce a thorn type structure that will destroy tires. That said deer love the leaf browse and the fruit. You do need lots of bees because they are the first to bloom and need bugs to pollinate. I get clouds of flowers, very few fruit due to cold springs.

I brought a hat & tee (no egg stain’s please 😅). Good luck

Bill try a tree auger saves a ton of work ! goes on your battery drill

Nice content. Been planting apples, pears and peaches. As have lot of native browse and lot of oaks. Been looking into hazelnuts and chestnuts next once make room for them

When tree tubing trees use 1/2 in steel Conduit for stakes. T-post is overkill. A 10ft piece is roughly $5. Cut in half you got 2 stakes. 2.50 each. But yeah adds up quick when tubing.

Thanks for the video Bill. My ears really perked up when you said swampy lowland, that fits my land perfectly. I have a lot of the Red Osier Dogwood around my 40 acres and the deer hammer it all winter. I want to try and get more of it around my land and have heard about cutting pieces of of the existing plant and then pushing them into the ground. I am not sure when to actually do the cutting because they say to let them sit through the winter and plant them in the spring. Have you heard anything about being able to do this with the Red Osier Dogwood?

I have determined that this method of planting really depends on whether you get enough rain the year you do it and your deer density. We have planted thousands of bare root trees here in Northern Indiana and the deer continuously eat the tops off them. We have to shoot more does.

I’ve hunted red osier thickets that were natural and ones I’ve made with cuttings. You will love them! Deer love them no doubt for browse and cover. Mine don’t get browsed heavy until late winter and early spring when food is scarce. One thing I’ve noticed over the last 15 years with red osier, they don’t like them in tight groups. I’m interested to see how this turns out for you.

Big blue stem, Indian grass, or switchgrass may help with erosion

How worried are you about deer browse ? Or rabbits and voles ? I’m told shrubs need to be protected.

As much as I love trees and cuttings, getting that kind of delivery would be so devastating mentally for me LOL Im good to get 100 in the ground each year at any given time. I put in 100+ this year on the property and in the yard. I dont have anywhere near the land you have though. I am currently working more on screening plantings and adding nut trees here and there. I have several chestnut to get in the ground this fall and will do a continued cycle each year to keep something new going and replenish anything that may die.

Bill, I have gone back to watching your videos over again, and I was wondering as to where you bought your cuttings from? I just purchased another 100 Red Osier cuttings and 50 Black Willow cuttings for a March planting, and I am always looking for options.

Ever planted ROD in an upland setting? I have very little wet areas and am considering trying it in some lower areas that don’t have standing water but will collect a lot of rain when it does come down. It’s a great browse for deer

I find that rabbits love to eat the newly planted trees quickly.

Bill do you have concerns with the dogwood kinda taking over and becoming to thick? I'm thinking about planting some but fear it may turn into a problem like honeysuckle.

Have any of your acorns sprouted yet? If not, when would you expect them to sprout?

Did you use root gel or planting hormone? Mine show much better success using it

Good information on a lot of shrubs Bill! Any thoughts on warm season grasses for bank stabilization and cover or no? This farm seems to be starting out like the previous which leaves me wondering if the direct seeding and shrubs has so much more pull than grasses do for screening and cover.

Bill, can you use a sub-soiler, place the tree, and then tamp? I planted some Red Osiers last week and the deer are already nipping the branches!

No persimmon trees deer and the raccoons will eat them, a couple pear trees always is good but takes along time to produce but they last a long time . Jordan will there be more color options on the shirts 👍✌🏻🇺🇸

Are you concerned that the deer will over browse these plantings and they will not grow. Would it be better to plant when there's more food..? Just curious I am interested in doing this

the website for your merchandise isnt working at the moment?

I may have missed it, but where did you purchase the red osier dogwood?

Do deer eat the woody parts of the plant like apple trees and pears???

Hey Bill, on those red osier dogwoods, do I need to cage those when planting? Hopefully not cause that's a lot of cages also do you know where I can get those cheap at cause I don't have any in my area

What does the choke cherry and the wild plum do for you?

Where did you purchase your red osier dogwood ?

Update on these??

Where do you get your trees?

Jordan are paid on commission sales? 😊