Peach trees, stone fruits, and deer

General Fruit Growing
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I was thinking about adding a few peaches or other stone fruits to my front yard the next few years. My neighborhood abuts conservation land. Local deer pressure is insane.

Being my front yard, my long term goal is no deer fencing. Fencing a young tree a few years in a 5 foot tall cage is OK, but I will not put a permanent deer fence in the front yard long term. No electric fencing either. I am too consistently inconsistent to consistently apply deer repellent. My dog is also too old and blind to be of assistance.

Any tips for this context? Could I delay the open center of a peach tree to 4 or 5 feet to keep it above the deer and protect the trunk? Or any other tips to grow stone fruit around deer would help.

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No one gripes more about deer than me. You are going to have to have all outward branches higher than six feet. You will also need something to deter them from rubbing on them. Trust me a rub will destroy even a well established tree.

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Seems like you should be able to grow the trunk tall and let the trees branch above the reach of the deer.

Check out these Japanese plum trees:

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The only stone fruits the deer around here are not eating are the European plums. They have topped a couple of branches, but do not seem to eat any real amount. Yet. A hungry deer will pretty much eat anything.

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I have to older peach trees (planted in 2002) that bear quite often… probably 6/7 out of 10 years…
Early Elberta, Reliance… and the trunk on both go up between 4-5 ft, then open center type pruning.

Below is a pic of my reliance from a few years back when it was loaded.

Reliance
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As you can see the fruit is hanging well within deer reach… and I have plenty of deer here… but they have never bothered my peaches.

I have had a few buck rubs… one of my apple trees, but it survived just fine and I have a crab apple in the back yard that has been rubbed 2x, big rubs too… and it is still doing just fine. They normally only hit it good on one side… or at least that has been my luck so far.

The deer, turkeys, squirrels, around here have a healthy respect for me… well because I — EAT EM.

Below is what a deer looks like when you put him in a jar… with some onion, garlic, celery, carrots, beef broth. I also put them on the grill quite often too.

Chunky%20Deer%20Stew
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TNHunter

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There is no shortage of deer or open land here, but at my site they browse leaves but don’t really go after to fruit as aggressively as you might think, sometimes not even bothering with drops. At other sites its a different story.

I’m just saying you can hedge you bet by not removing the center until you know what your deer behave like and leave some lower branches. This is a bit tricky, though, because shade usually kills the interior wood of peaches creating a donut effect.

That said, deer are no big deal here, it is squirrels that make a fruitgrowers life more difficult. If you leave at least the first 5’ of trunk branchless you will be able to build baffles, although some places I manage they jump up to 6.5’ to reach a branch. It’s weird how same species behave differently depending on site.

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I think you guys are just lucky. It’s total destruction here if I do not protect it.

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Robert and others…

I do wonder why the deer do so much destruction on your peaches/trees but not to mine.

I am glad they don’t bother mine but I am not really sure why they don’t… they just don’t and I am sure glad of that.

I do know deer very well… and I wonder if something like this might be the difference.

Here in Southern Middle Tennessee… my Early Elberta tree… I start getting the first ripe fruit around 6/20… and that last 2-3 weeks and those are gone… and usually around July 10 my Reliance peaches start getting ripe and we harvest those for another 2-3 weeks. That is just ideal that when one stops, the other starts.

As you can see in my Reliance pic above, here in my location (during that time frame, actually near the end of that timeframe) things here are still quite green and lush (lots of natural deer food available).

When we do have a Hot, extremely dry spell (bad enough to affect most of that natural deer food)… it is usually mid to late August, or later when that happens. Last year we really had no extremely hot dry spell… so did not happen at all last year. It was green, lush even into Sept, Oct last year. That is sure not always the case.

So when my peaches are ripe … the deer here normally have plenty of other stuff to eat (what they normally eat)… it’s lush and green.

If it was extremely dry, hot, when my peaches were ripe, and a lot of their normal food was not available, they might just wipe out my peaches too.

I have seen that happen here with Ginseng. Ginseng Harvest season starts here Sept 1. Most years, there is plenty to be found, with always some that have been browsed by deer. You find the stem only sticking up. Sometimes they will eat all of the leaves and leave just the stem and the berry stem with berries still attached. They obviously like the Ginseng leaves better than they do berries and stems.

But in years when it is extremely hot and dry in August, going into September… the deer will often just devastate the Ginseng tops leaving very few to be found by Seng Hunters when season opens. they will get the berries and stems down to ground level too.

I was wondering if some of you who have so much trouble with deer and your peaches… might be in a location where when your peaches are ripe… something like hot/dry weather has affected the normal deer food in a bad way.

When the stuff they normally eat is plentiful… not so interested in peaches… but when not, very interested in peaches.

TNHunter

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Oh and man I love peaches…

Here is a pic of my Early Elberta dated June 21.

Early%20Elberta%20Peaches
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TNHunter

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That’s a pretty good idea. I’d rather er on the side of keeping them tall for the front yard. There is the added benefit of having big beautiful trees for the front of the house.

Good to know its possible, that’s adds another a decent amount of space for me to add to the next few years.

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:+1::+1::+1::+1::+1:

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I’ve seen ads for motion activated sprinklers that spray water at the deer (and other animals) and scare them away. Some also make loud noises or flash lights. I haven’t tried one myself but it seems like maybe a good solution. Here is one from Amazon (there are many options):

https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-62100-Activated-Sprinkler-Detection/dp/B009F1R0GC

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Perhaps you should consider a pair of pups you can train up to patrol your yard for you. A good dog(s) keeps a lot of unwanted visitors from sticking around.

This just made me laugh. Same goes for me, but replace “deer repellent” with so many other things. :roll_eyes:

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You guys really make me appreciate the neighborhood coyotes. They are a handsome couple and amazingly well-fed.

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Higher trees also use less otherwise useful space. Kids can run under them as can a lawn mower and kids also prefer a decent climbing tree to something low to the ground. When the branches contain luscious fruit, all the better for them.

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BackYardBuckParty
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I just ran across this picture… that is the edge of my back yard… where the taller grass and DEER start… my field. I have a salt lick there… and we enjoy watching the deer…

And again, I have LOTs of deer… but they have never bothered my peaches.

Just lucky I guess.

TNHunter

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I didn’t have too many problems with deer on my peaches until the last few years. Last summer the critters got about 80% of my crop (not sure who got what but the deer were in the thick of it). They can get a peach as high as 8’ when they stand on their hind legs. I wouldn’t have believed it until I saw it with my own eyes.

The mistake I made this last year is I stopped using the spray repellant and the motion detector sprinklers I had, and relied mainly on the fruit being high. I’m planning on re-deploying both spray and sprinklers in the coming summer along with keeping the fruit high. It is hard to keep the fruit high on peaches though as they droop under the crop load. You really need to work at it. My plums I did much better on, they did get some of them but much less.

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Man, don’t you have neighbors that hunt. I’ve lived in deer country my whole life and only seen females congregate. I have never seen more than one buck at a time. They are by far the most destructive of their species.

Oh yeah, the salt lick. It’s rare a gardener seeks to attract deer although plenty are foolish enough to maintain a bird feeder, which really helps squirrels make it through a tough winter.

Do you use the salt lick to attract deer to shoot?

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Alan…

In addition to the salt lick… which I said was for attracting deer to look at…
There is a big white oak tree (couple of them) just to the left of that pic, that produce gobs of white oak acorns… and I have a 6" PVC Pipe corn feeder tied to that oak tree…

Again… attracting Deer, Squirrels, Turkey… to “look at”…

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it :slight_smile:

PS… the corn feeder gets lots of attention from the deer too, and turkeys and of course squirrels love it and the congregate around the feeder, on the tree, etc…

And all those squirrels attract a pair of Bobcats quite often (Large Male and med-size female)…

They sneak in thru the field, or edge of the woods… and I happened to look down there one day last summer and the female bobcat was just in the edge of the field all hunkered down, watching the squirrels as they hopped around, picking up kernels of corn the turkeys had scattered…

When one of those squirrels turned just right (head away from the female bobcat) tail towards the female bobcat (just enough to obstruct the squirrels vision)… she was out of the filed and had that squirrel in her mouth in a split second.

The squirrel never new she was there until she had it in her mouth.

I have seen the larger male try to catch a few, but he has failed each time I saw him try.
The female is definitely the more stealthy of the two. I am sure the large male pays off big time on larger game.

PS… I am into self sufficiency - growing my own food, catching my own food… preserving my own food. I do a lot of fishing, we eat smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, black perch, crappie, catfish, etc… We eat Deer, Squirrel, Turkey, Dove, Quail. My favs are all those fish mentioned and the wild turkey, just very good eatin. A young deer, the back straps and tenderloins go on the grill, seasoned up good wrapped in bacon… and it is as good as any beef sirloin you ever had. Older deer, I often put up by making pressure canned… chunky deer hind quarter soup/stew. I fill up the jar with about 1/2 cubed meat, add some onion, garlic, celery, carrots, beef broth, salt… and pressure can. Stores on the pantry shelf with no refrigeration required… Just heat it up and eat it up.

I dry/dehydrate, freeze, water bath can, pressure can… and on the pressure canning put up a lot of meat, chicken, turkey, fish, deer, beef… and meat soups… mostly deer, chicken and beef soups.

TNHunter

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PS… early summer here… when the bucks are in velvet (pic above) you often see bucks in groups like that. Once those antlers finish developing, dry and they rub off that velvet… well the doe competition starts, and they are no longer summer buddies… they don’t get along near as well.

Turkeys do something similar… late winter you will see flocks together in big bunches, lots of Gobblers together getting along fine…

But once mating season starts March/April… it’s every man for himself, fighting, kicking, trying to out GOBBLE each other… keep all the females for himself, etc…

TNHunter

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