Persimmon

June 30, 2018

I have an American persimmon tree with an Asian graft which is about 7 years old. It was damaged during a storm this spring and a huge part of the trunk was wounded. Is there anything I could do to nurse it along?   

Unfortunately, I do not think the tree is worth salvaging from the wound up.  From the picture, I am guessing the damage is done beneath the graft union.  In my opinion your best bet would be to cut it off at the soil line and then choose the strongest sprout to retrain as a tree, or buy a new tree. Once it has grown, you could graft a stem of an Asian variety on to it.  The wound is so large that even if the plant somehow survived, it would be totally hollow and weak the rest of its life. 

August 6, 2016

 We have a relatively old persimmon tree in the back yard.  It is not doing too well…a lot of dead limbs and thin foliage this year and it is already dropping persimmons.  We are blaming the very wet spring.   What can we do to help this nice tree survive and thrive?   I’m pretty sure you’ll say to remove the dead limbs at least.  Should we put down some kind of fertilizer? 

Trees typically don’t die overnight unless they get struck by lightning, but their death can be a slow process, getting thinner and thinner each year and leafing out less and less. From the pictures I saw, this is not something that has just started this spring. The tree has fewer branches than it should and all the die-back on the tips is not a good
sign. When a tree starts to decline, there is usually not a great deal you can do to reverse the damage. Water is vital for tree health, so keeping it well-watered can help. From the lush green lawn around it, I would say it has ample nutrition. I don’t think the tree is in a position to fall over, but dead limbs can drop. Removing the dead tips I think will simply be a Band-Aid approach.

 July 24, 2016

We have a bunch of persimmon trees in our yard, and have little persimmon trees coming up everywhere. Between regular grass mowing they will be 6 - 12" high.  It's nothing new, of course, but is there an easy way we can control them?

If the small trees are root suckers, cutting them out is all you can do without impacting the mother tree.  If they are seedling trees, cutting and treating the cut edges with a glyphosate product (Round-up) could help reduce their re-sprouting.  

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