It's alive!

Back in autumn this year I planted a Fuyu persimmon by the house in the front garden, and then quickly followed it up with a Nightingale persimmon nearby (which I forgot to document in the Blogosphere). The Nightingale twiglet has done quite well over spring and has lots of lovely big leaves. The Fuyu treeling, however, I thought had died. I waited and waited and my heart sunk as my twig did nothing. I decided I would leave it in the ground until the end of September, and if it still showed no signs of life then I would take it out. Then as September's end rolled around, I figured I may as well leave it there until we got back from our trip and deal with it then.

Well, much to my surprise, my little Fuyu persimmon is just a late bloomer! I thought these leaves might have been from the rootstock (it's a grafted tree), but no, the graft is at the bottom of that painted white section, and the leaves a good two inches above that, so my baby tree is alive after all! Happy days!


Lots of gardening updates to come over the following week: stay tuned!

Further to the Persimmon Post

Remember I mentioned that my Fuyu persimmon tree had arrived? He is now in the ground with his own little patch of ground covers.
For this gardening escapade I needed all sorts of paraphernalia. The 'soil' out the front is that dreadful brought in 'garden loam,' which is basically sand tinted brown. Therefore no plant goes in the ground without a generous sprinkling of cow manure, compost, blood and bone, Dynamic Lifter, and a healthy scoop of coir peat for bulk.  

Unfortunately, the first pictures of our persimmon don't look like much. That's because he's just a twig right now. Quite a tall twig, about 3 feet, but still just a twig nevertheless. You can barely even see it against the roses. Originally this section of the garden was white gravel (yuk, hate gravel in a garden! I presume it was put in by previous owners labouring under the misunderstanding that gravel is low maintenance). I've removed the gravel, ripped up the suffocating weed-mat, and pinched some of the bark mulch from under the roses. I'm not big on bark mulch, but since it's there already I'm aiming for continuity.

Around the tree I have planted thyme, oregano, sweetheart strawberries and pansies. There's also Tete-a-tete miniature daffodil bulbs, but we won't see them for a while. It doesn't look like much right now, but give it a few months and we'll see some ground cover action. 

Now, for some time the Iceberg roses have been bugging me. They should be lovely, and indeed the actual flowers are, but they're somehow a bit boring. And I think I've finally figured out why. For starters, I would never have planted roses in a neat grid, but I knew that already. No, it's something else. I've been reading a book called 'Garden Design Details' by Arne Maynard, and there's a whole section in there on vertical elements and I realised that's what's missing from the front garden: there's no variation in height, everything is at the same level.

So, it's not the greatest photo in the world, but you may get a hint of what I'm trying to achieve here. The persimmon will become a small tree, arching up and over the roses to the right and framing the house and garden. Over time I will fill in the garden bed in front of the tree (I have plans!). I might have to bring in more bark mulch even though I don't like it much. I don't think there's going to be quite enough available for continued plundering as I did today.

This is only part one of today's gardening efforts. There will be a sequel later in the week; stay tuned!

Persimmons

For weeks persimmons have been tempting me from the supermarket shelves (c'mon, eat us, you know you want to...) but at $2 each they seemed a little extravagant. When we were living in Japan, persimmons ("Kaki") were everywhere; common as muck. They were one of the cheapest fresh fruits available during Autumn and we ate them almost daily. On our train-jaunts about the countryside we would see the trees in people's backyards as we flashed past, heavy with the orange fruits and bright with their flamboyant autumn foliage (contrary to what we Westeners may believe about Japan, quite a lot of people do actually have backyards which fit whole entire trees in them.)

Photo by Diglloyd

Some months ago I ordered some fruit trees from Digger's, and I included a 'Fuyu' persimmon as my nod to our time in Japan. It arrived today in a box on our doorstep, along with a couple of plum trees, a strawberry, a pomegranate, and a white echinacea.
Later this afternoon we stopped at our usual fruit wholesalers, and Behold! Persimmons at $1 each! Seemed like serendipity, so naturally we bought several to celebrate the arrival of our little tree.

Japanese persimmons, Diospyros kaki, are actually originally from China. "Diospyros" means fruit of the Gods, and while I do like them both crunchy and apple-like, and soft and jellyish, I don't think I appreciate them quite as much as the Japanese who make whole hour long TV shows about them, showing the fruit as it advances through it's ripening stages. Non-astringent varieties (like Fuyu) can be eaten when still firm, but the astringent types are very high in tannins when firm so are only to be eaten by daring sorts. It's also attributed with all kinds of healing qualities, but I like it best simply for being a pretty little tree with delicious fruits. Our little tree probably won't bear fruit for several years, but I'm really looking forward to eating our kaki when it does.
(Read more at Wikipedia, if you like).