cedar/spruce

[stevejedlenski]

so i have been thinking for years now that i would like to turn our lowland swamp into a cedar swamp. i want to plant a bunch of cedar so the deer can use it as a shelter area and also a food source. now i know that Deer love this stuff come winter and dont think i would have the time/energy to cover them for the next 20 years until they mature enough not to be destroyed. so my second option would be to plant black spruce as these would provide the cover, not provide food, but would need no maintenance.

anybody else ever have a go with anything like this?

[deadeye]

You are faced with a common problem.  Your desire to provide shelter and home for the deer verses their desire to eat and live.  We have been fighting this issue for years.  Our plan is to plant enough that some will survive.  We have planted 1000's of evergreens (white pine, red pine, black spruce, white spruce, white cedar, tamarack,) and 1000's of hardwoods.  More are lost to weather than deer.   
We have placed chicken wire around some apple trees (regular and crab) and that has worked fine.  Believe me it is quite a struggle to establish a new evergreen shelter while the area is inhabited with deer.  The big question is do you plant a 1000 unprotected and hope 50 survive or plant 100 protect them and hope 50 survive.  Looking back, I wish we would have looked into fencing a couple acres (300 foot square would be around 2 acres).  We then would plant and maintain the area until the trees are big enough to survive (5-10 years).  At that time we could move the fence to another ares and start again.   

[beeker]

I've done the plant and pray method with the bare root stock.. hard to say how or why we've lost em.. in the case of the pines type trees we've planted we've had about a 20% survival rate  on em. now some of these trees are pushing 5+ feet and we've done little to assist em. pounded in some posts to keep the wheelers off of em. the tall grass will protect em when they're tiny..

in the case of some of the fruit trees we've lost the entire crop and now we won't plant any fruit trees unless they have a cage and well weeded area

[dakids]

Try itasca nursery.  We got great servival rate the first 3 years. Way easier to plant a tree plug than a bear root tree.  Buy the tree planter.  Well worth the money. It will save you time planting.

http://www.itascagreenhouse.com/