I'm getting in 50 seedlings in late march, and I'm planting fruit trees for the first time ever. I'm a total newbie. They advice I've been given so far is this:
1. plant the depth the tree was already planted in previously
2. water the hole before putting it in.
3. put in mulch around it to protect against weeds/grass and to hold in moisture
4. plant 20 feet apart from each other
5. protect with a wire fence around each plant.
6. Biologist told me I did not need the protective sleeve if I have the wire fence.
7;. water weekly for first year.
Missing anything?
thanks
Patrick
That is a pretty good list to start with. Just a few comments. I presume we are talking about American Persimmons here. If you can provide supplemental water when needed (not necessarily weekly), you are so far ahead of most of us that you can make a lot of mistakes and still have great results. Personally I prefer air and water permeable landscaping material over organic mulch. I use quarry stone to hold it in place. It does not break down like organic mulch and it does not attract rodents. Catscratch covered rodent protection. Persimmons are primarily insect pollinated, not wind pollinated, so the 20 foot planting distance is a minimum distance to keep them from competing with each other. It is not an exact distance. They can easily be pollinated from trees 1/4 mile or more away. This gives you more flexibility in planting them allowing you to take hunting considerations into consideration.
I presume you know this, but in case others don't persimmons are dioecious. Most trees are either mail or female. Occasionally, you will come across a tree that has both male and female branches. These are called Perfect trees, but they are rare. One would think, seedlings would be 50/50 male and female, but I don't find that to be the case where I live. I have native persimmons and I'd say 80% of the trees I find are male. Only female trees produce fruit. You can't easily tell which seedlings are male and which are female until they are old enough to flower. You can tell by looking that the flowers. There are other threads with good pictures of the difference. I would plan on waiting unit they are about 1" in diameter and then cut them down at about chest height and bark graft them. There are other threads with pictures and details. If you are in the native range of persimmons, you probably don't need to worry about male trees for pollination, but if you want to be sure, you can allow a water sprout to become a branch below the graft.
It will still be many years until you see fruit, but grafting will cut off a few years and you will know the trees will be female.
I presume these are bare root trees. Don't be discouraged. The saying with bare root trees goes "one year of sleep, one year of creep, and then finally they leap". Persimmons don't transplant well. They have a long tap root. That often gets cut when they extract bare root trees. Sometimes persimmons will not leaf out the first year after they are transplanted. You probably won't see that if you can water them when needed, but don't give up on a tree if it does not leaf out the first year. It may surprise you the next year. You can scratch test it if you think it is dead.
Thanks,
Jack
