Hi Scott, It would save me a tremendous amount of space and make me extremely glad if I could fit all 4 varieties into a single 30' x 30' circle area dedicated to the 4-in-1 tree's life-long spread. I want to bounce still a couple of potential complications with this senario, all of which may be resolvable. And believe me: I am willing to be vigilant and careful in maintaining the tree's 4-way balance if it turns out that I decide to things this way. 4 Separate rootstocks/cultivars in one hole: 1. Peach trees are, even when left unrestricted, smaller trees with smaller trunk and root systems then American persimmons. If I give each cultivar its respective 1/4 room to spread its foliage, I fear that each tree will struggle to obtain enough solar sourced energy to support itself; although, one point could be to note that pruning will keep the trunk and roots small and potentially/hopefully proportionate to each tree's respective trunk/root-stem/needs. The 4+ major scaffolds arising from the base of the peach, cherry, wild-growing persimmon, etc. are sharing the same nutrients via the same root-system. If I ever decide to let the tree grow to full form and size, the 4 trunks would grow so large and strive to get away from the other trunks that they would fall down. 2. Jerry Lehman convinced me that it is not likely that American persimmons would properly inosculate, that instead of fusing they would bruise and rot - specifically American persimmons, not all trees. This doesn't, however, have anything to do with spacing the four trees in the same hole 20" apart. 3. However, it seems to me pretty feasible: which is to carefully keep the 4 trees in relative 1/4-balance within the 4-way circle. 4. Your description of that cherry tree above makes me think that we are talking about not many trees in the same hole, but a single tree bearing various root stocks in-grafted? Is that what you recommend? I've been told that persimmons are notorious from dropping former limbs when new ones are added. Let me know which situation you recommend for me: 4 trees in one hole or should I do a multi-graft tree - if I could do the later and be secure that it would work, I could just keep my 4 saplings for the future purpose of being the scion bank for the multi-graft tree. I keep hearing that I shouldn't do a multi-graft persimmon tree. I just got my persimmons in the mail and I quickly put them in the ground pending what I finally decide upon. I really appreciate discussing my options on this with you - at least when I do choose a plan, I'll have considered practically every option. Thanks, Steve

Its hard for me to imagine a place getting "full shade" followed by "full sun" in those time frames. Anyhow, there are lots of plants that do fine between light shade and several hours of sun that might do fine. I find meadow rue, celandine poppies, salvias, and rudbeckias to be pretty flexible plants in terms of sun conditions. Some cute rudbeckias (little black-eyed susans of some sort) that I dug a few years ago from the turkey creek landfill dig bloom for a long time in high shade, and I'd like to find more. Azaleas should be fine, but I'm sure I'm sure you can find a less "overused" shrub if you want.

""Since I only had enough bark for basically 10 plants total, I am going to try another mix using MG Organic Coice with some MGMC."" Make sure you add additional perlite as the MG organic choice contains none. Why would you choose the MGMC soil many say its not good for pepper use? Holds too much moisture. The Organic choice is very gritty and compacts hard if no perlite is introduced, if it was me I would also throw in some of that extra, smaller bark into that mix. Mark

I had to think about the second one, Glenda. And I only figured it out cause I saw a band from Alabama not long ago, and they kept saying "roll, Tide, roll"!