SMALL PROPERTY Habitat Improvements: Lessons Learned and Future Plans

Keith and Ben do a Winter Walkthrough of their parent’s property in Central Ohio and breakdown the takeaways from the improvements that they have worked on in the past few years as well as show the results that they are seeing in the first 3 years of serious habitat work on the property.
This video is loaded with great information on how to make small, cheap improvements, and the video shows what we have learned from the things we have tried and ways we would change our approach to be more effective with future projects. If you are interested in all-around wildlife habitat management, you won’t want to miss this one.
Music by Jim Ryser
Oak Tree Planting Video: • Small Property Habitat...

[@Eastky23wildlife]

I like how you numbered your trees.

[@JPswOhio]

Cool video! It’s crazy how fast those silver maples grow! I’m looking forward to the “burn it “ video!

[@OhioWild]

I'm looking forward to doing that burning as well! Should make for some neat stuff, thanks for watching!

[@sandych33ks1]

Prune those wild apples tree and the fruit will get better every year. I have cleaned out over thirty wild apples trees and pruned them every year and took all the vines out. They produce more and bigger apples.

[@MrChristianDT]

Have you tried just buying seeds from seed conservatories? A lot of rewilders kind of prefer to source stuff locally, or wait for things to return on their own, but Ohio is so heavily altered from its native state & with climate change, I kind of feel loath to wait. You can get stuff a bit more locally from conservatories in Ohio & Kentucky & some independent sellers from Appalachia on Etsy. I've been stocking up on understory plants, tree & bush seeds I researched & scatter them by hand around late December, which seems to work pretty well, for the most part. Only thing that sucks is the wind blows them around, so it takes time to find them all later. I think many have really low viability rates, too, so sometimes you'll throw out a hundred wildflower seeds & later, you'll only find the one flower. I'm up in the northeast. Don't have my own land, but I've been improving the unused areas around where I do live for the last few years & learning as I go.

[@kurtcaramanidis5705]

Well done. I'm in my first full year of converting some ag fields to habitat.

[@OhioWild]

We just went through our first winter with a fresh CRP planting and it’s pretty awesome to see the changes already taking place. Definitely going to do some spring updates on how the first year did

[@steved5023]

I found the blue tubes interest the deer. I have white tubes and blue. Most of the blue have been taken out , but the white ones are left alone

[@randyallen4702]

I have an area in SE Ohio I'm interested in improving habitat. My question is, can using a powerful leaf blower in a mature oak area be a comparable alternative to burning? (East facing slope)

[@OhioWild]

It wouldn’t have the same effect since there isn’t any heat to kill off the undesirable competition and topkill seedlings to restart growth from the roots. The oaks (and many other species) have adapted to that periodical reset. Thanks for asking though, it’s good to be thinking of ways to improve/disturb those local environments in ways to continually benefit the site.

[@tOSUSteve]

Keith/Ben - do you recommend removing honey suckle? It is becoming more populated on my property in Ohio & not sure if it is good for deer/turkey or bad

[@OhioWild]

I would recommend removing honeysuckle by any means possible. Once it takes hold nothing else will stand a chance under it. Removing with basal spraying and/or cutting with treatment and restablishing native shrubs and grasses would be the much better alternative for long term sustainable habitat for deer and Turkey.

[@tOSUSteve]

@@OhioWild thanks Ben/Keith. The property is near Cadiz, oh. I thought Ben was our Forester, but I just looked and it is someone else.

[@thomastaylor3419]

How many acres are you working with?

[@OhioWild]

Total farm acreage is 56 acres but about 50% of that is tillable ag (now farmed by an organic farmer) so we only have “free reign” to maybe 25 or so acres for habitat management

[@gsquared2394]

Cages over tubes forever