I have a bit of a dilemma relevant to some basic questions regarding American persimmons. I could use some expert advice. I have, on their way from John Brittain of Nollin River Nursery, a 'Morris Burton', 'Early Golden', 'Szukis', and 'Prok' (from starkbros).

I have a maximum square portion space of 30' by 30' to dedicate to growing a single American persimmon; (I'm using it in my native plant/native fruit plant yard nature-scape project that I'm going to eventually base a website encouraging native naturescaping and native fruits).

As I mentioned previously, I am considering putting all 4 varieties in a single hole, about 5" apart from one another in a box-shape formation, so that they might grow, expanding their trunks until they fuse to form a solid trunk: inosculation/approach grafting. Someone suggested to me that this may cause the trunk to rot and may not cause a true fusion, leaving 4 cores separate.

Since I haven't seen too many American persimmons in nature (all of which have been under 20' in height), can you tell me a little about pruning them and so on:

If I planted the 4 trees separately spaced at 15' apart, instead of the above approach, could I easily prune them anually to be a life-long width of only 15'? If I did this, would this result in a disproportionately wide trunk and branches (as with some bonsai specimins) and weaken the tree through frustrating its natural growth inclination? I think restrictive pruning practices are determental to the lifespan of trees and shrubs.

If I can prune each to 15' apart, since it will be a relatively small tree, I can probably consolidate and keep just one tree consisting of multiple varieties; although persimmons are not easy to maintain as a multi-graft project, if kept under 20', I don't see how I couldn't label each of the 4-varieties of main limbs and prune each so that no one dominates over the others; I could keep track of variety of each main branch and see to it that all new branches are kept in ballance. If I were to let the tree grow too large, of course, when the tree drops old branches, it would drop the initial set and may be replace by just 1, 2, (or 3) of the original 4.

____________________________________________________________What about this idea... I've never heard of it, but it seems like it could be a GREAT idea? which could apply to all fruit tree multi-grafting - no maintance required. What if you did a graft of a single variety unto a root stock and once that 1st variety forms an extended lead, graft a 2nd above it to continue the single lead, and a 3rd, and 4th, and so on; in this way, as the sapling grows into a tree, the trunk will be formed of a sequence of 4 segments (varieties)? It would be like a linear sequence of 4 pencils, glued tip-to-eraser. Each pencil, i.e. each trunk segment, will put forth buds from the side of the trunk to form the branches that will, of course, be of its self-same variety. No more loosing varieties to competition. If I were to do this, I would graft the single-lead sequence of 4 plus the bottom two at the top, for a total of 6 just in case the lowest portion of the tree has no limbs when the tree is mature/tall. I bet this has been done - I'll try to do a good enough search to find out.

Thanks,
Steve

You really should ask this in the Fruit and Orchards Forum. Many of those people have lots of specific experience with these issues. It's their specialty. Here, I think your more likely to find readers/posters with different interests and maybe very little if any actual experience growing persimmons.

I will still add my two cents. I frequent both forums and know a little about persimmons. The "stacking" scheme you proposed is likely to have disadvantages for many reasons. I can think of one option that you could consider. I'm not really sure how good of an idea it is, but I'll describe it anyway. Some of the regulars in the Fruit and Orchards Forum would likely be much better at evaluating this idea than I am. You might be able to train the tree in an open vase form with four scaffolds. You could graft one variety to each scaffold base. Essentially, you'd have one base with four main branches (scaffolds). I've never tried this with a persimmon, but it might work.

I also think planting them 15' apart would be OK. In nature, there are many persimmons growing 15' or less apart. If that's all the room you have, that is actually what I would recommend doing. I don't think you will have to worry about pruning them any more than normal because they are planted close together. They will shade each other out and compete for available light just like they would if they were growing wild.