Fertlizing trees

[Diehard]

I just watched a presentation by a researcher at UTK where they examined the effects of fertilizing white oaks......What do you think they found?

[Phil1979]

Think it may have helped the second year.

[MUP]

Hmmmm...what did they find? Just tossing some fertilizer out or raking leaves out, spreading lime for Ph bal and all that?

[Diehard]

Hmmmm...what did they find? Just tossing some fertilizer out or raking leaves out, spreading lime for Ph bal and all that?

They ran soil tests and fertilized, limed, etc. based on the soil tests.

[MUP]

I'm going to just guess that there was little gain found.

[Phil1979]

I'm guessing any gains were 2-3 years down the road.

[Diehard]

Absolutely no benefit to fertilizing trees. They did find some benefit to opening up around the crown of the tree you want to produce more. The biggest thing was this though.....only about 10% of white oaks are good producers and those trees can be helped some. The rest you cannot increase production, they just aren't good producers.

What I took away was this. When you find a good producer, mark it and then thin the crown around it. Forget about trying to get the rest of the trees to do anything. Now that begs the question....what is a good producer? Last year al of them produced good. This year look for that special tree producing when others aren't and focus you affords there with a chain saw. Remove trees growing into the crown of the good tree.

Don't fall for the marketing out there about fertilizing trees!

[Phil1979]

Thanks for the info. I'll definitely use the advice.

[leader]

I got a ? Diehard maybe a dumb one but I know no better. Say you got alot of big Oaks in one area. Do those all draw more nutrients from the ground to lesson the production than say if there was just a few.What I am saying is would a few give out more population of nutts than alot of Trees. Just something I wondered about I'm no bio person.

That's an interesting and great ? I think....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Diehard]

I got a ? Diehard maybe a dumb one but I know no better. Say you got alot of big Oaks in one area. Do those all draw more nutrients from the ground to lesson the production than say if there was just a few.What I am saying is would a few give out more population of nutts than alot of Trees. Just something I wondered about I'm no bio person.

Any time you decrease competition the remaining trees will benefit. However, like I said, they found that a very small percentage of white oaks were actually good producers. Locate your good producers, eliminate some competition and open up the crown and you will increase the food supply and your chances. So, yes, removing the low producing oaks will benefit.

A chainsaw and some sweat can yield more and better results than the most expensive bag of food plot seed and fertilizer!