Forestry Update – November 3

Good deer food plots contain plants such as iron-and-clay cowpeas, red clovers, white clovers, chicory, and cold hardy oats. Planting fruit and nut trees can also enhance your deer feeding areas many years in the furutre. Good candidates for deer orchards include sawtooth oak, chestnut, pear, plum, apple, persimmon, and live oak. Deer also like shrubs such as American beautyberry and strawberry bush and vines such as grape and blackberry. It has been reported that a one-acre, well-maintained food plot can produce forage enough to equal 100 acres of forest. However, it helps to start fertilizing the trees at their second year of planting in early fall to help them recover fruit production.