Persimmon Trees

 

Winter Set Persimmon Seedling

American persimmon fruit are very small, so most persimmon trees are grafted using American root stock and a graft of a Japanese verity.

It's that time of the year, all my Loquat trees are flushing out with flowers  and fruit.

Loquats (Japanese Plums)

The best flavored Loquats are usually grafted, tho those that are not grafted are still very tasty.

Years ago ingrafted Loquats were used as landscape trees in Tampa.    

 

PASSION FRUIT

November 2018

My flowers are changing to fruit, so far I have found seven fruit on one vine with still many more flowers yet to change. I believe these are a red variety.

 

Be ware of over planting, I planted this Neem tree several years ago, and now it is 50 feet high and the trunk is 3 feet across.

Photo by Raleigh Barnes

I've been experimenting with my dragon fruit, by tipping my plants. by cutting off a small piece near the tips, it seems to force it to produce more flowers. The photos I have submitted seem to show this to be true. Next year I will try it again. As I am still getting flowers.

The variety of tropical fruit that can be grown in a sub-tropical environment is amazing. I have in a relatively small space over a hundred different types of fruit trees as well as fruiting bush's. Years ago a friend gave me a seedling. It grew, but never flowered and this year I had decided to remove it to plant something else. Well, this year it flowered and fruited. Below is a photo of it, it is in the pom family same as the apple. It taste kind of like an apple and a pear.

Chinese Jujube fruit

NATURAL PESTICIDE

     Natural pesticides are not always chemical or plant base, sometimes the best pesticides are animal base. I'm referring to things like snakes, birds. bats, wasps, lizards and many insects. All to often people are in a hurry to spray poison on everything. True, those harsh  chemicals will do the job. What you haven't taken into account, is that you also just killed off all the beneficial animals too. You spray the beetle or the caterpillar, the bird or snake or lizard that will eat that pest  will also die.
     You may remember years ago farmers used DDT to kill off mice and rat, in the process they had all kill off most of the eagles. Well some of the mice and rats didn't die, but the did a job on the eagles. The eagles are still trying to come back.
     I don't have any mice or rats in my yard and that I encourage the non chemical approach.

Here is a portrait my neighbor, a 5 foot black racer