This pine will grow in dry, sterile soils and needs full sun and free air movement. It is a pioneer species and invades recently burned, poor, sandy or logged areas. It has a slow to medium growth rate and does not tolerate limestone soils, preferring dry, sandy, acid soils. Trees grown in plantations are subject to root rot. Stems of young trees are often malformed due to eastern gall rust, and seedlings easily succumb to root rot and damping-off.
Wood is moderately soft, moderately light, weak and close-grained.
It is used for pulp, general construction, poles, posts and mine timbers. This pine provides cover and food for many northern wildlife species. Deer and hares browse the saplings and porcupines damage the trees when they feed on the bark. It is used in the north for windbreaks, shelterbelts and for reforestation of severely eroded sites. Although the Jack pine grows faster than most other conservation-planting pine species in Iowa, the fertile soils support more valuable, larger and more ornamental conifers.