Sounds like my experience. I started very aggressively planting lots of mast producing trees from the Wildlife Group and others in 2006. Planted 1000’s of trees over 1000’s of acres for 10 years. I think I use to fantasize that I was Johnny Appleseed. Killed them every way you can kill a tree - mowing, spraying, over-fertilizing, under-fertilizing, you name it & I did it. Spent way, way too much $ for a very limited return. Wildlife Group sales good trees, it’s just difficult to pull a small tree out of a nursery and get it to mast bearing age in the wild. Hardwoods are much easier than any soft mast tree. We’ve planted over 100,000 trees for wildlife. Every condition and every scenario can imagine. We spared no cost with our program. Tree tubes, weed mats, irrigation, fertilizer, chemical treatments, you name it & we did it. Our success rate with apples and pears over an 11 year period has been less than 5%. Some of these continue to die from fire blight each year. Hardwoods are much better with a success rate of more than 80%. I’m sure plenty of people will comment on everything I’m doing wrong, but believe me we have done it every possible way and still can’t our success rate with apples and pears over 5%.

Instead of planting nursery grown trees, we started identifying, daylighting, and nurturing native trees, primarily native crabapple, plums, and persimmons. I’ve never walked a property where they don’t exist. Our success rate is near 100% and our property is now covered with native fruit trees. Just something to consider. This work was conducted in So Cullman County under very controlled conditions.