re: Planting 75 sawtooth seedlings today and tomorrow

We bought a place in North Mississippi five years ago that has some mature sawtooth oaks – all 12-13 years old. First three years we owned the place the trees produced well and the deer absolutely hammered them. We can see one row of sawtooths from our house and when the acorns started falling there were often two or three deer walking around waiting for the next treat to hit the ground.

Year four was an unbelievable bumper crop – way more than the any of the previous three years. Just a gut feel but it seemed like we had at least twice the production than any of the previous three years. Year five (this past summer/fall) we had almost zero sawtooth acorn production. I’ve read the boom and bust cycle is not uncommon. Hoping for a better year in '23. We also have a good number of mature native also which produced very well this year – probably the best in the 5 years we’ve been here. Wish I knew why this occurred. Did not seem to be weather related as the overall weather was not bad and had good spring and early summer rains.

I know this doesn’t really answer your question on new trees but we are very happy to have the mature sawtooths and our deer like them even more!