Don’t you love surprises?
Earlier this week, I was looking out our kitchen window, which faces the garden and tree line behind our house and saw what appeared to be a pair of orange eyes staring at me.
Maybe it’s just my wild imagination, or the fact that Halloween (the best holiday of the year) is upon us, but it seriously gave me a spook!
There’s an owl that frequents our backyard that we’ve actually seen, so my wild imagination wondered if somehow it had gone Bunnicula on us. Turns out, the two orange “eyes” were actually persimmons!
On closer inspection, I figured out that we have TWO young persimmon trees along the tree line that I’ve never noticed before. I don’t know if this is just the first year that they’ve fruited or if I’m just oblivious, but I’ve taken this as a huge win for the Jubilee Garden! Things that I didn’t plant or care for just doing their thang. Proof again that God is good, He is faithful, and He always provides (for both us and all the little critters)!
Since there are only a few fruits on these trees (like less than five per tree), I’m assuming that they’re on the order of 10 years old. Most fruit trees take, on average, five years before they begin to produce fruit, and the first few harvests are pretty wimpy. But the American Persimmon (I’m taking a stab in the dark that they’re not the Oriental variety) is a stubborn little fella and can take 10-15 years to fruit. It’s a good thing I didn’t plant these, because I don’t know if I have that kind of patience. Once they get going, though, it’s hard to get them to stop.
In fact, the American Persimmon has no known insect pests or disease problems. Just another reason why wild natives are awesome! Plus they’re food for birds and other garden friends.
I’ve found a few other wild persimmons in the neighborhood, and had a horrible experience trying to eat the fruit. I don’t know if it was just that the fruit wasn’t ready yet or those particular trees got funk-ified somehow, but the fruit tasted like I was eating sidewalk chalk. Couldn’t get that furry taste out of my mouth for several hours – yuck! According to the NCSU Extension website, the fruits of American Persimmon are supposed to be really sweet when ripe, so maybe I’ll give it another go this year. But with much, much smaller test bites!
