Paper Bag Tree - Giant Fuyu Persimmon

August 28, 2016

It is SO SURREAL! I cannot believe that this will be the last season I will be harvesting Persimmon from my beloved Giant Fuyu Persimmon tree - The Autumn Queen of my San Diego orchard. The tree is too established; almost 17 years old, and too big to be transplanted. Regretfully, so far, air layering has failed to produce any viable plants. I am just going to have to buy plant one or two of the Giant Fuyu Persimmon for Temecula garden.

The sight of bird eaten Persimmons finally kicked me into action. Each time I decided I was going into the garden to wrap the ripening Fuyu Persimmon, I mentally kicked myself because I had made yet another trip to the grocery store without buying the needed paper lunch bags!!! Finally, I had to make my third and specific trip to buy the necessary lunch bags.

How Do You Move a Garden?

May, 2016
The past couple of months and weeks has been strange and uneasy for me. I had been purging and packing our offices for the office move. If that is not unsettling enough, I had also started the same purging and packing on our own San Diego home. But my most ambivalent feeling might be regarding my garden. Over the years, we have grown our San Diego garden in the style of the lush tropical garden we grew up with. The San Diego weather has allowed us to grow tropical fruits like bananas, mangoes, Sapote Ciku, longan as well as figs, persimmons, and citrus like pomelos and kumquats. In anticipation of our move and sale of the house, we had started clearing out and tidying our San Diego garden. Not everyone appreciate the "Jungle Look" we favored. 

The plan is after we tidy up the garden, we can plant a more acceptable palate of plants to prospective buyers.

Wrapping the Persimmons

October 30, 2014
I finally got around to wrapping up the persimmons. The birds as usual were more diligent than I was. The persimmon tree is the darling of my fall garden. In the few weeks since I came back from Malaysia, the persimmon have taken a decidedly more orange color. The sight of those orange colored, pumpkin shaped Fuyu Persimmon is a sure sign of fall.... and good eats.

Fruits of Neglects

October 2014

I woke up happy that I was relatively unaffected by jet lag, thanks to sleeping just 3 hours on the last leg back from Asia and a dose of melatonin to grant me a full night of blissful sleep. This morning, I headed excitedly out to my garden/orchard. Weeds abound as expected after three weeks absence....plus even more weeks of neglect prior. I was anxious to check on the bunches of banana that started forming as I was leaving for my trip. Three bunches of bananas!! So glad that this year the banana plants flowered early enough in summer for the fruits to form and ripen before fall/winter. 

My tree is almost bare........

It is chilly and wet in the garden this time of year. I am lucky that in San Diego I still get to enjoy days of 70-80F sunshine filled days among the norm of 40-60F rainy days during the winter. It is now January and all the leaves have fallen off my Persimmon tree. A small number of paper bags still hang on the tree, hiding the remaining ripening persimmon from the birds! At this time of year, I call the tree my Paper Bag Tree!!

Persimmon - Fruits of the Gods

My beloved Fuyu Persimmon tree continues to reward me with delicious fruits despite my neglect. I cannot say that I have always attended to it well but this year, life has truly overwhelm me. Caring for two houses and gardens, an hour and half apart plus the stress of a teenage son applying to college.......

Before the Fuyu started taking color, the only time I paid attention to the tree this year was to take pictures of the Persimmon flowers for Autumn Belle- a promise I made when I was harvesting last years crop. It was the ruckus of wild chirping and flapping of wings that emanating  from the vicinity of the Fuyu Persimmon tree that woke me up from my stupor. Those birds were fighting each other to get at the fruits! I do not know what angered me more, the delicious ripe persimmon eaten by the birds or the beautiful green unripe persimmon needlessly pecked by the birds? Every gardener with a persimmon tree knows you have to share some fruits with the birds, the keyword here is SOME.

Fruits in an neglected orchard

I cannot believe it is already August 2012. My real life outside Blog world has been beyond busy leaving me with very little time to blog. We have been travelling since the end of June through the end of July attending Lacrosse College Recruiting Showcases with my son. We crisscrossed the east and west coasts of the US, returning home to San Diego for a couple of days in between with barely enough time to wash dirty laundry and repack for the next trip. Having two gardens and hour apart, I resigned myself to the fact that there would be many casualties of neglect.


Finally, yesterday evening I ventured into my Chula Vista garden. It was overgrown with weeds as it had received multiple watering a day due to some glitch in the irrigation controller. We came home from the airport at midnight to find the irrigation on, then running again at 3 am when we went to bed  and at 8 am in morning!! What will my water bill be this month?? Irrigation is now turned off for the rest of the week to allow the ground to dry off.


The good new is the fruit trees are doing fine. I will let the pictures speak for themselves while I dine on some delicious Mission Figs :)

Black Mission Figs

Fuyu Persimmon Flower

Until Autumn Belle asked me last year, I never thought to photograph the blossoms of the Japanese Fuyu Persimmon( Ebenaceae, Diospyros kaki ) tree. The flowers are inconspicuous. The time between bloom and fruit setting seem to happen in a blink of the eye. Normally, I would see the green flower buds and before I know it, watch the fruit fill out. The open bloom of the flower itself does not make an impression on me. In fact, truthfully in the early years, I believe that the persimmon blossoms were green!

Persimmon green blossom buds

The buds of the Persimmon tree are green in color. They look like a green buttercream icing formed by  a star shape icing tip. The 'swirly icing' are actually the sepal. At this stage, the buds reminds of those little biscuit we buy in bulk as little kids. A little round, flat top biscuit, top with a colorful swirly hard sugar icing. These days, I seen the biscuits being sold at pasar malam ( night markets) in Malaysia.

Autumn Belle - Beautiful Colorful Persimmon

The Persimmon is ripe when the fruit is the same color as the leaves

It has been getting colder and colder each week the past month of November. Even in San Deigo the leaves on deciduous tree had been changing color and finally fallen off. I managed to take some pictures of my favorite deciduous tree- the bearer of yummy persimmons to share. These pictures of the colorful tree were taken on November 15, 2011.

It is Paper Bag Tree time again

Mr.Chow, the gardener was here today. With a big smile on his face, he told me about two birds who ate my very delicious persimmons, which were very soft and ripe. He could not help himself exalting the flavor of the persimmons. We chatted fully aware what had happened. Lol! He reminded me to net the tree before the birds ate all the fruits. I have been meaning to wrap the fruit ala Asian practice for awhile now. A quick peruse of the tree showed a number of fruits partially eaten by the birds. I got to work wrapping up the fruits.

How's does my garden grow?

I know it has been awhile since I blogged about my garden. By no means have I forgotten it although I have neglected it a fair bit. This is an unknown price for college education.....This summer we have been getting ready for daughter L to leave for UC Berkeley. We have so far visit Berkeley twice this year and will be moving her into the dorms in 10 days time!!! These trips and the pace of getting things together with her has taken its toll on my garden. I have not been able to create the bountiful garden I had envisioned in early spring. My kitchen garden in particular has suffered the most. We were away at Calso during the hottest week and that utterly killed my tomato plants. I know, the irony- heat and tomatoes! There was just not enough watering during those critical scorching days. I nursed them back to unproductive living dead status... Today, in an act of tough love, I yanked them out and started again with left over seedlings I started earlier. They are a bit stunted but maybe now that they have been elevated to Kitchen Garden status, they will take off. I can only hope.

This is not to say that I have not worked on my garden at all. I did so in drips and drabs. I did fertilize my trees and they have rewarded me with delicious fruits.This past 2 weeks had me waking up early and taking advantage of the cool mornings to spruce up my garden. The days were killer hot until this week. I also worked the evenings from about 5 pm to close to 9 pm if the children's activities did not interfere with these zen moments.

My rewards? The glorious sweet smelling blooms of the kumquats- heavenly. And now the trees are loaded with little kumquats, a promise of delicious pleasures to come. Three pomelo slowing getting bigger. It took a longer time to adjust to the transplant. It is a fragrant pomelo- cannot remember if it was the `green tea' variety. Sweet, juicy,not pulpy and unlike the flavor you get with market bought pomelo.

The mango tree is doing well with a fair amount of fruit. I am so glad it survive the transplant into the ground last year. It is quite an achievement to get Mango to fruit in our area.

June 29 2009 - flowers set and little mango form.


August 11, 2009 - after fruit drops. Remaining fruits almost palm sized.

Not to be outdone, three new plantings last year are flowering and seem to be setting fruit- the Ciku,the Nona and the Passionfruit. Whoa! Amazing. Just 2 days ago I was rewarded with yet another first in my garden- the Dragon Fruit plant is finally fruiting!! I am so excited.


August 11, 2009- just spotted dragon fruit ! (talk about being busy)


August 15 2009- how the fruits have lengthen!



Nona / Sugar Apple - flowering hopefully some fruit will set before the cold!



Ciku /Sapote flowers

Persimmon- reliable yearly delight!

Passionfruit grown on a arch trellis

Good old faithful Fig tree which we transplanted last year from the pot into the ground has really taken off. The fruits are large, purple and utterly delicious. As you can see from the pictures, the birds think so too!! We have been fighting them for the fruits. They cleverly eat out the fig on one side, leaving it hanging, so from certain angles you think you still have delicious fruits. The figs are the fruit in season now and it is GOOD.


August 11 2009-Figs swelling up to large palm sized and turning deep purple.



We have enjoyed blueberries, blackberries, peaches and now figs. Oh before I forget we did also enjoy the oranges- Valencia and the Navels, the Clementines and lots and lots of Calamasi (limau kasturi). So all is not lost in my garden....:)