Yes, they are great people. Also they have been very successful with their farm stands out there selling local grown produce. Thanks for the comment.

Shawn, thanks. You will really see an improvement in those trees after you prune them.

They are both very knowledgeable. Jesse works for the university so he is probably used to teaching people. Thanks for the comment and the support.

Thanks Justin. I think that adding apple trees to any farm is a great addition but especially so for a hunting property.

Yes, pruning makes a huge difference in their production from what I have seen and I love the quote from Eli that even a poor job of pruning is better than no pruning. Good luck.

Thanks for the comment Ron. Have a great day.

Thanks Mitchell. Have a great day.

Sandy, that is what this farm is like too. We have a few hundred that are bearing apples now and I don't know how many that are still growing to that stage. I am slowly trying to clean them up, cut away competing trees and prune them. It will take a few years just to get through them all once. I will be on a multi-year pruning rotation after that, I think. Good luck.

Thanks for the comment and the support Paul. Have a great day.

Thanks. I appreciate the comment.

Thanks for the comment. Both of these guys are experts and I am slowly learning to apply what they taught me. The main take away for most people is that pruning - even not done correctly - is better than no pruning. Good luck.

Thanks. Much appreciated.

Thanks for the comment Steve. Have a great day.

Thanks Takur. Have a great day.

Thanks for the comment and the support. We appreciate it.

I would really like that Eli. I have been trying to prune some of these super old wild trees and finding it challenging. I am also playing with grafting commercially developed varieties, like Enterprise, onto some of the smaller trees. It will be interesting to see how well that works. You are always welcome. Have great day.

Troy, good luck. It is cool stuff when you consider that you can grow trees that will feed deer (and other wildlife) for decades to come without much added expense or maintenance. I am starting to really warm up to fruit and nut trees for food sources.

Yeah I'm looking for a cheaper way to add food that is lower maintenance, I'm gonna try a few micro plots this yr also but trees seem like a no brainer, hopefully it will help me keep deer close without having to spend a fortune in corn

Good deal. Good luck on your project.

It has taken a few years for all this to soak in. I go back and watch it every winter before pruning. It is finally all starting to make sense.

Travis, it is never too late to go back and clean them up. The older they get the harder it is to reshape the tree, but even a couple years after planting you can still make those changes easily. I ordered a bunch of hybrid willows for screening too. That should work well as they are supposed to grow up to six feet per year. Good luck.

That makes sense. I know they advocate heavily for removing them from the tree, but we didn't get into where to discard them.

Apples are pretty cheap way to increase food on your property and we really like eating them too. Good luck.

100% :) @@bill-winke

All good as long as we are helping people. Good luck.

Thanks Edward. Have a great day.

Just started wild apples last year too small to prune yet.

Do a Google search under "Weed Barrier Matts for Apple Trees" and you will see lots of options. Good luck with the apple trees.

Lane, we don't have persimmon here. I think we had one the farm in southern Iowa and it was close to a neighbor's house. From the guys that have them (a friend of mine in southern Indiana has a lot of them where he hunts) they are definitely a strong draw. I would think they would be similar to apples and that the deer will go out of their way to seek them when they are dropping and look for new ones every day as part of their movement. Good luck.

I will take a look soon and do an update video. I have not been to the farm in a few weeks so it is overdue. Have a great day.

Tanner. Man, I am not sure what my deer would do with a 2,000 pound pumpkin. They would still be walking in circles around it trying to figure out where to start! You are correct though, I think pumpkins added to the outside rows of most food plots are a big winner. Thanks for the comment.

That tree did really well. Went from producing almost nothing to producing maybe 2 bushels per year. Not as much as Eli suggested it should produce but for almost zero maintenance it did pretty well. We had one in our yard the same age that I took better care of. That one really took off, but I also fertilized that one and pruned it every year. That is the key.

Awesome, thanks for the update. Keep making the videos we love them. I'm still working on my cedars here in KY as well. More fruit trees coming again this year.

Chris, that is correct. It is sort of like grass clippings left on your lawn. They break down to produce fertilizer for the lawn. But you would need a lot of mulch to do this on any scale. If you have a few trees, a truckload of mulch would do the job, but not if you have an orchard with many hundred trees - like Eli is managing. When you look up the N-P-K breakdown for mulch, the rates are in the low single digits for % active. So to get a pound of N actual, you would need roughly 50 pounds of mulch. You would need 100 to 150 pounds of mulch under each tree to get you a nice outcome. That is doable for sure, but again, that would be hard to do on a large scale.

@@bill-winke These videos are geared toward whitetail hunting not big orchards which I would imagine is the majority of your viewership. On a small scale which is what we're talking about here mulching is very doable. Lets be good stewards of the land and keep our use of chemicals to a minimum. I love whitetail hunting and managing my land for wildlife. But the mindset of lets forsake all else whether good or bad with a single mindness towards shooting that next big buck you see in the industry today is crazy. Not talking about you specifically here but as a whole.

​@@bill-winke Not quite accurate. Mulch doesn't feed the plant, it feeds the microbiome over time. Mulch has very little nutrients. The microbiome feeds the plant. Once you get this going it does a great job and is a more balanced way of providing nutrients for the plant. The fruits will taste better and have more nutritional value. However, it is more work, and by your comments, you are over-capacity with work. Sometimes we just need to do what we can with limited resources. I grow fruit trees on my property and this is the salad buffet lot for deer. I don't have to try hard, with bow or rifle, to fill the freezer every year. So I know a thing or two with growing fruit trees with deer pressure. I would never have left those lower branches. Never. Waste of energy to the tree. The idea is to feed the deer with fruit drops, not limbs. They will ravage those limbs and bust and tear them, creating wounds for disease. Paint the lower trunks with a mix of equal parts white latex paint, drywall spackling, and water. Works like a charm. Never use tubes. Too much moisture retention and rot. When growing saplings, use hardware cloth 2' tall and with a diameter of about two feet. Any narrower and the top will cut into the trunk when the wind blows. Remove the hardware cloth when the trunk caliper is about 2 to 3 inches and switch to that paint I described. I just pruned my trees this week Whew! It is a lot of work when the trees get big. Barring a late deep freeze (like last year) it will be a banner crop. I leave my cuttings on the ground for a week so the deer can eat the buds. I then remove the branches. Brush hogging once a year will help with airflow. Strategic hogging can be used to channel deer, while giving them cover and browsing opportunities. When video recording a person, move the camera to where the person is pointing to. In-general, a good video for pruning apple trees that have been neglected. All the best.

I am not sure, but I am guessing that pruning away the dead growth is a good start. If the whole tree is dying, which may be the case, you can take cuttings from the tree and graft to some other nearby apple tree or buy some rootstock and graft to that. You have a tree that is adapted to that setting and is disease resistant. It would be good to preserve that trait in other trees that you either have there already or can plant in the near future. There may be an expert that can tell you what is wrong with the tree you have there, but I am sure that like all things, even apple trees have a limited life. Good luck.

That stinks. I would be eating a lot of bear too! Thanks for the comment. Good luck.

Dang, that stinks. It sure limits productivity if you can't prune.

Eli was there in 2016 and think Jesse was there in 2018.

It is best just to go somewhere else for your information.