Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Saturday, December 06, 2008
That's a Wrap
I think it's pretty much over until spring.
The vegetable garden, that is. I went out this morning and found that the kale and sorrel had been eaten. The radish foliage has been eaten several times. The carrot foliage is nibbled on. The ground was frozen hard. Wonder if the carrots are still any good? Dunno, because I'm not in the mood to chisel them out of the soil. The weather got so cold so fast this year. I just wasn't prepared.
But, hey, that should be good for the persimmons, right?
Weeellll.....I plucked the one in the lower right hand corner. The pulp was a mushy sticky mess - very sweet, but still had that puckery astringency near the seeds. Maybe I should plant a cultivated variety for myself and leave the wild ones to the wild critters. Speaking of, a rabbit and I startled each other while I was looking at the persimmons, and I blame it and its family for eating the kale and sorrel. The work was too neat and dainty for a deer to have done it.
So, what's left to talk about until spring? Birdwatching, stargazing, garden catalogs, and frosty moss-scapes.
Oh yeah, and complaining about the weather.
Labels: critters, mosses, persimmon, vegetables
Sunday, October 26, 2008
How Long Must I Wait?
The early hunter-gatherers were a brave lot. Or just very hungry. I've been watching the wild persimmons ever since I discovered them while spraying poison ivy. Since I'm not an early hunter-gatherer and have access to all kinds of advice via the internet, I'd surely be able to tell when these persimmons were ready to eat. Let's run through the checklist.
Color is orange. Check.
Fruit is soft and shriveled. Check.
There has been a frost. Check.
OK, should be good to eat. I plucked the most shriveled one I could find. I brought it in the house and showed it to the spouse (who declined to eat any). I removed the peel, which was thin and came off easily. I cut, or rather squished, off some of the pulp along with one of the large seeds. I put it in my mouth. Hey, this is sweet...not much other flavor though...ACK! Still very astringent close to the seed. Maybe I should have removed the seed first? I wasn't intending to eat the seed, BTW, I was going to spit it out after I got all the pulp off. I cannot begin to imagine how they would taste when they would appear to be ripe by the normal standards of, say, plums.
So I'll wait a little longer. Or maybe try cooking them instead of eating raw. I was disappointed in the flavor though - there wasn't much. Not enough to earn it the name of Diospyros virginiana, which roughly translates to "food of the gods from Virginia". I lifted that line from Wildman Steve Brill, the author of the article to which it is linked - he'll tell you almost everything you might want to know about persimmons. Not being a born Southerner I was unaware that Persimmon Pudding is a Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition. In fact I never heard of Persimmon Pudding until I found this website whose owner fills in everything else about persimmons that Steve Brill may have left out.
I do hope I learn to like these. It turns out that I have not a persimmon tree, but small persimmon grove with at least two small fruit-bearing trees and one much larger (male?) tree.
Labels: persimmon
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Persimmon and The Poison Ivy
Normally I'm opposed to anything ending in "-icide". But I believe herbicide is the only practical way to deal with the huge amount of poison ivy at the woods' edge at Tangled Branches South. Most of the property is mercifully free of the stuff, but there's one section where it's practically the only thing growing.
I bought glyphosphate last spring, but couldn't make myself use it until early this summer and, well, poison ivy management is going to be a multi-year project. I've gone through a gallon and a half and only now am getting close enough to the trees to see what they are. But what marvelous trees! I knew of one sycamore tree among the maples and sweet gums, and I found a shrub I think is a deciduous holly (requires closer examination once I can get closer). One small tree stood out from the rest. The long drooping leaves made me think persimmon, even though I don't remember ever seeing a persimmon tree in person before.
Notice the dead vegetation in front and the poison ivy next to and behind the tree. This isn't the thickest patch of poison ivy either. But looking a little closer we find ... persimmons!
I want these persimmons. I really hope that spraying the herbicide so close to the tree doesn't damage it. It looks OK so far (fingers crossed).
Labels: persimmon, poison ivy
