Deer Resistant Trees

Greetings,
I am in the beginning stages of starting a food forest. In your experience, are there any fruit or nut trees that deer avoid? Also, I live on 5 acres in zone 5. What are the best-cold hardy-trees to plant?
Thanks, Steve

Do you mean trees whose branches deer will not eat, trees whose fruit deer will not eat, or trees that deer will not kill by rubbing their antlers?

Steven Barber wrote:Greetings,
I am in the beginning stages of starting a food forest. In your experience, are there any fruit or nut trees that deer avoid?
Thanks, Steve

No. You'll either have to provide cages for each tree or be prepared to fence them out. Once most of the branches are up above the 4-5ft mark you should be fairly safe from browse. With nut trees you will always have to do your best to beat the squirrels and deer to the harvest.

Steven Barber wrote:Also, I live on 5 acres in zone 5. What are the best-cold hardy-trees to plant?

IMHO the best trees are whatever your family will eat. For us that would be apples, cherries, paw paw, chestnut, and hazel.

If you wanna make your grandkids rich, plant a couple metric s***-tons of black walnut and black cherry seedlings.

in my experience, deer eat all fruit and nut trees.

Thanks for your reply John. I am focused mostly on the fruit and nuts. Edible for people but not attractive to deer.

you may want to look at this thread for deterring deer from your trees with a little recipe:

https://permies.com/t/1805//Sepp-Holzer-recipe-animals-trees

I'm not aware of a tree fruit that deer will avoid and humans like to eat. Additionally, deer like to browse on the woody parts of most fruit trees, however deer tend to stay away from pawpaw leaves and branches. Here is an excellent article on deer browse of various trees.

Pear seedlings I have grown haven't been ate as bad as some things, but then they come and rub and destroyed a lot, so nothing is safe from two points of attack....though if you want to consider it fruit, sumac plants have fended off eating and rubbing since they can sucker a lot.

I'd be really interested to hear from anyone who's tried Sepp Holtzer's bone soup recipe as a browser deterrent.

They're an introduced species in Victoria that have bred up to the point where its open season on them on private land year around.

I spent a few hours trying out different centrefires a month or so ago. Other than very expensive fencing or very expensive treeguards, shooting appears to be the only effective management technique.

I know its expensive-but has anyone had good results with electric fencing?
Steve

David Wood wrote:I'd be really interested to hear from anyone who's tried Sepp Holtzer's bone soup recipe as a browser deterrent.
They're an introduced species in Victoria that have bred up to the point where its open season on them on private land year around.
I spent a few hours trying out different centrefires a month or so ago. Other than very expensive fencing or very expensive treeguards, shooting appears to be the only effective management technique.

In Permaculture Voices Podcast B-reel 013 they talk about two people's attempts to use bone sauce around minute 10. The general takeaways seem to be:
1. It's easy to mess up making the bone sauce (2 out of 3 attempts were unsuccessful)
2. One person reapplies the bone sauce every two weeks, and one reapplies in the spring and fall.
3. The bone sauce it toxic to trees and painting it on thickly will kill the trees.