Congratulations!

Your persimmon has decided that your yard is a good place to live. Keep doing what you are doing, give it some compost for food and mulch to maintain even soil moisture (during the hot summer) and it will get back into a normal cycle earlier next spring. It was busy establishing some roots and next year it may have significant new growth, and the year after that it may have a few flowers.

Thanks for the encouragement!

Next year should I do any pruning (it only has 5 branches and a central leader, and nothing's been pruned yet)?

I guess I should just leave it alone this year once it gets its leaves, right?

I'm really excited!

I had a persimmon do the exact same thing its first year. I thought it was dead, but finally about this late last year it budded out.

Margi:

I planted 3 varieties of Asian persimmon bareroot from a Texas nursery in March of this year, and looked at bare sticks for about 2 months. I even sprayed them with Wilt-Pruf, since I was afraid the grafted scions would dessicate and die. I need not have worried because finally, in mid-June, after temperatures were in the 80's, they began to leaf out, and have since grown significant new branches, with beautiful, dark-green leaves. The fact that your Nikita's gift leafed out even later may be due to the cooler temperatures of your location, which I assume is Washington State west of the Cascades, although you don't specify location. Location, BTW, is important to many fruitgrowing questions. It does seem that warmer temperatures are required to get Asian persimmons to break dormancy the first season after planting.

Next season, I expect these little trees to begin growth a month or more earlier, and yours should do the same. Asian persimmons generally do not become large quickly, if at all, and I do not plan to prune mine until late in the 2nd growth season, or even the 3rd growth season. At that point, I will try to control central growth by pruning down the leader, and spreading the branches to produce a low, squat tree.

Try not to become too excited. Trees seem to sense human excitement, and take measures to reduce it. Just watch your tree calmly, and when it becomes large enough that you can see it needs some pruning for shape, do it.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

You're right, Don, I live in the Puget Sound region of western Washington (bought the tree as Sky Nursery north of Seattle). But we've had an unusual spring-summer this year, with a week of temperatures in the 90s a few weeks back, and then more rain in July that we've ever had (our summers usually could be classified as a drought even though most people think it rains here all the time).

I love your advice about not getting too excited. But I can't help wondering - will the leaves get those beautiful fall colors this fall? I guess I shouldn't think such thoughts anywhere near the tree (soon to stop looking like a bare stick)!

Margi:

My brother lives in Bellevue, so I know about your normally bone-dry summers. Must be quite a treat to have rainfall lasting right through late July. The tables have been turned, since here in Northern Virgina we have had essentially no rain in June and July, although it is sputtering a little tonight. We keep getting promised 60% probability of thunderstorms, but what we actually get is the other 40%.

I counsel against excitment because so many things can go wrong with fruit trees that are sometimes beyond the control of the operator. Guarded optimism is generally better. I can't name all the disappointments I have had, but I just keep learning and planting away, and it works out.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA