I'm thinking about going and seeings if it is legal to plant fruit trees on the National Forest!!! If so anyone plant fruit trees on there land? What kind do y'all plant and what is the fast growing that will produce the fastest ( planting 3 foot trees)!!! I was thinking a pair trees, apple trees, persimmon trees, and maybe peach trees!!

Can't do that.

Cannot plant or remove anything from national forest

Ok.. So on private land.. What's good?

Really and truly the best thing I was told by a biologist was to find a bunch of briar patches and fertilize the crap out of them.

I personally like apple trees. But no matter what you plant tree wise will take several years to mature and produce

Quit using exclamation points, too.

Austin I have pears, apples, and a few chestnuts planted. If I had it to do all over again I wouldn't plant apples. To much maintenance. Pears are great and you can pretty much plant and forget unlike apples where you have to worry about pruning them and everything under the sun killing em. Just my 2cents.

Yeah, apple trees likely wouldn't do well on the national forest. My gf's dad has been working in getting his apple orchard up and running and it requires a lot of work. Plus it's been two years since they were put in the ground. Expecting some limited drops this coming fall but likely won't be dropping well until 2017 or 2018.

That said, if you have the time, they will definitely draw in deer. Expecting to do a lot of killing once those apples get right.

Japanese persimmon are probably the only fruit you would be able to hunt over. Some varieties won't get ripe until right around bow season/early November. This is only assuming you can keep the raccoons out of em though. Bugs and disease don't affect Japanese persimmon much.

Apple's are high maintenance, highly susceptible to disease, and aren't easy to grow. I would avoid them unless you want to put the work in year round for a personal orchard. Japanese persimmon you can pretty much plant and forget.

Pear varieties are easy to grow, low maintenance, and produce lots of fruit, but it will all be gone by hunting season. Good for qdm though, they'll love you for it.

Check out the wildlife group in Tuskeegee, they have a wildlife package that consist of different tree's and varieties that will drop from June thru December. Do not plant Jap persimmons. The fruit does not drop from the tree. I know, i have 3 of them. They literally will rot on the limb. Only climbing critters will benefit. I wish someone would have told me, before i bought and planted them. They also have grafted female persimmons. Pears are the easiest tree to grow and produce a lot of fruit. I planted some 15 gallon tree's last spring and most had 3-5 pears each on them. If you plant apple or crabs, you better cage them or the deer will browse them hard. They haven't browsed the pears much at all.

Do you think if some of the fruiting scaffolds were low enough deer would eat them right off the branch?

Just don't plant fuyu variety. Those are better suited for market use and wont drop. Other varieties that get soft like custard inside when ripe will drop off the tree.

I've got several varieties of pears planted. Some of the early varieties start dropping in Aug and the late varieties are supposed to have fruit dropping into late Dec. I have the varieties staggered according to fruit drop times so that I should have pears dropping for about 5 months out of the year. My pears are only a couple of years old so they haven't started fruiting much at this point, but I'm in hopes that the fruit will drop as advertised. I also have some Japanese persimmons as well. The fruit does tend to hang on the trees way into deer season and will often times rot before dropping, but the deer will still eat all of the lower hanging fruit.

Pears and our native persimmon are what I would go with. A small pear variety that produces a lot of fruit is best.

Don't you know that they don't appreciate any habitat improvement for the wildlife on National Forest? About the only thing they do are prescribed burns.

Yes, if they can reach it, they'll eat them, but that won't be for very long before its outta their reach. Too many better varieties to go with. I will say this. The jap is non-astrigent and will get the size of a basball are very good for human consumption.

From personal experience on our farm; whatever you plant you will need to put wire cages around. I had 5-6 of the prettiest apple trees along a creek in the edge of one of our fields. In one night a buck broke all the limbs off all of them and rubbed them so bad they couldn't be saved. I did kill a dandy 8 pt there a couple of years later .

Find some assorted oak trees and fertilize. Also, fertilize honeysuckle, briars, huckleberry bushes, and other known deer species. For planting go with round pears and mow under regular without damaging bark. Deer love scoupernongs and persimmons too. Don't know may like crab-apples bush variety. Trim water oaks down to about a foot off ground and fertilize. New growth will spring up and deer will eat.

Modern day Johnny Appleseed are ya?

There are a few varieties of chestnuts too that may be an option.