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Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Gardening / One bite and you’re hooked!

 

Just how many persimmons will grow on a tree?
Just how many persimmons will grow on a tree?
IT is surprising the number of people who have not tried eating persimmons and yet those who have immediately love the delicious flavour.

My own experience came late in life when a client gave me some persimmons, assuming that I knew all about them. Arriving home, I placed them in a bowl and for a couple of weeks tried to decide how they should be eaten.

Then I peeled off the tough skin like an apple and found the taste delicious and was hooked. As we have no space in our already crowded garden to plant one, I am always grateful to generous people who have shared their crop with me.

There are two varieties of persimmon, the astringent and the non-astringent. The astringent need to be left until soft and squishy, when one can scoop the soft fruit on to ice cream or mix with yogurt. Do not try eating them before they are really soft or you certainly won’t ever eat one again! The non-astringent can be peeled and eaten as soon as they are ripe with the flesh hard like an apple. I chop them up and put into plastic containers and freeze them. They keep very well, giving several months of fruit on top of my breakfast cereal.

Persimmons are one of the most important fruit trees in China and have been cultivated for several thousand years with more than 240 varieties.

Westerners have been slow to accept it as a true fruit tree even though, as seen in this photo, it grows well in this district.

JUNE 5 is World Environment Day when we all try and assess what we can do to improve the environment. This year’s theme is “Sustainable Consumption and Production”. The slogan: “Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care”.

Now is an ideal time to recycle all those falling leaves. Don’t waste this valuable resource.

I was moved this week to see a man in a wheelchair, on the edge of the nature strip, picking up leaves with a lawn rake from the gutter and putting them on his garden. That was the other end of the spectrum of seeing householders raking leaves into gutters resulting in possible blocked storm water drains.

Or the lady I saw washing leaves off the lawn into the gutter with her garden hose. A terrible waste of water and a waste of a wonderful natural resource for the garden.

IMG_0402 Veggies can be grown in even the smallest of spaces.
Veggies can be grown in even the smallest of spaces.
EVEN with the smallest space, one can have a garden, as I have said many times before.

As we increasingly move into town-house living, with Flemington Road as a perfect example, many of the balconies are ideal for growing veggies in containers, providing they receive plenty of sun. They need not be fancy and polystyrene boxes are perfect. Polythene has great insulation qualities keeping the soil warm to encourage good root growth. Use only the best quality potting mix if you want good results, none of this $3-a-bag supermarket stuff.

Jottings…

  • A reminder for the veggie growers, winter crops include broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, snow peas, broad beans such as Yates Early Long Pod and cauliflower.
  • Do not mulch your garden in winter; allow the watery winter sun to warm the ground. Start mulching from September.
  • Encourage children to plant a tree or even a shrub to celebrate World Environment Day
  • Look out for Teucrium fruticans “Silver Box”, perfect for small hedges as an alternative to box hedging. Grows to only one metre tall with a 60cm spread. Silver foliage all year with sky-blue flowers in winter.

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Cedric Bryant

Cedric Bryant

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