Playing with plants

[spacealien_vamp]

I spent pretty much the entire weekend working in the yard. Most of Sunday was devoted to trimming away all the spent spring flowers out front. Monday I worked more in the back.

I'm excited to see that some of the earliest maturing dry beans from April are starting to be ready for harvest.I wasn't expecting any for at least another month. I'm looking forward to getting more glimpses of some of the experimental ones.

The blackberries are continuing to produce well. I've packed away three quarts in the freezer so far, and it's still going strong. I'm amazed how much it can produce from just one plant.

I had to tie my persimmon tree to some bamboo poles because the whole thing was bending over due to the weight of the fruit. Hopefully the support will help it out.

The winter squash are starting to flower nicely. I hope I get a good harvest from them.

Comments

[mangaroo.livejournal.com]

Be strong, little persimmon tree! Is it just because the tree is young? (How they would survive in the wild if they're too weak to stand on their own when they are young?)

[spacealien-vamp.livejournal.com]

How they would survive in the wild if they're too weak to stand on their own when they are young?

Keep in mind that this is a cultivated variety, which means it's been selected by humans for qualities such as early bearing, large fruit, and high yield. Most cultivated varieties would do quite poorly if left to their own devices.

Fortunately, as a young tree, the branches and trunk are flexible and mostly bend without breaking. In the wild, if the weight of the fruit did cause the branch to break off, that would just be an example of natural pruning. The tree would start over the next year, having saved the energy of ripening that fruit and invested it in growth elsewhere.