Those of us who order scion wood from the wonderful Fruitwood Nursery up in Orleans, California can’t help being struck by the amazing number of persimmon varieties on offer (69 by today’s count!) and the grafting knowledge – not to mention kindness & helpfulness – of Fruitwood’s owners Corrina Cohen and Marc Robbi. So when chapter members started clamoring for a speaker on persimmons, thoughts immediately turned to Fruitwood. And now, despite the terror of the over-9000-acre Pearch Creek fire that has threatened Corrina and Marc for more than a month, Marc has agreed (the fire gods willing) to speak to us via Zoom on October 14th.
A little background from the Fruitwood website: “We have been propagating and growing perennial plants for over 40 years and are the former owners of Rolling River Nursery.com, which is now under the new ownership of Planting Justice in Oakland, CA. We are now offering nursery wood and divisions of all the same great plants we sold previously, taken from our mother plantings here at Rolling River Farm in Orleans, CA. Our huge selection of cuttings wood, scionwood, liners, seeds, rootstocks and divisions are available and shipped throughout the lower 48 states, and by special request beyond. We supply everything the do-it- your- selfer needs to grow your own true to type quality starts of many popular fruiting plants. Growing your own is both fun and also an economical way to create your own edible landscape, orchards and other plantings large or small.
We are also offering custom propagation services such as bench grafting varieties of your choice for growing on by you, and contracting for the production of larger lots of certain varieties that we grow to size for commercial and other plantings. Let us know your needs and we will see how we may help. We can grow starts of most fruiting plants and also contract out to produce many native plants for restoration projects.
As always our growing practices are organic and sustainability oriented, motivated by the desire to contribute to a healthy, diverse and beautiful world for the future generations. We maintain our diverse collection of varieties as an effort to keep the rich genetic heritage inherited from humanity’s past fruit explorers and breeders available to the public and safe from extinction. All sales help to keep these plantings maintained, enlarged and going strong.”
Obviously we could have as easily asked Marc to speak on Apples (of which he sells 251 varieties of scion wood!) or figs (63 varieties!) or pomegranates (59!). Persimmons however are among the fussiest fruit trees to graft not to mention the most beautiful and most reliable fruiters for us in Southern California, so we are just thrilled to have an expert guide us through the selection of varieties, rootstock, and grafting technique.
So tune in on October 14th at 10 am. Zoom links will be sent out with member’s newsletters. If you are not a member but wish to participate, please Contact Us.
BTW, do not be deterred by the fact that almost all scion wood is currently listed as Out of Stock on the Fruitwood site. They have not yet begun cutting which – per the website – will begin in November.
Photo by Yoonbae Cho on Unsplash