Persimmon Protection

Two years ago I harvested about 6 fruits –first harvest!–from my wonderful Persimmon (Fuyu-type) tree. Wonderful, not just because it produces exceptional fruit, but also because it’s a beautiful tree at all times of the year–OK, maybe not so much in early spring before its late leaf-out, but every other time of the year.

That is, until last year when two things happened. The potentially prolific harvest (maybe about 100 fruits) was stolen entirely by squirrels. (“How can you be so sure?” Because I saw the blighters running along the top of the fence with them in their mouths!)

And the growth became gangly and unattractive. This spring I pruned off a lot of last year’s growth, mainly so I could actually manage to drape it with bird netting, hoping to keep out the squirrels.

Unfortunately this year’s (potential) harvest will be a fraction of last year’s (potential) harvest. Did I prune off too many fruiting branches, or do Persimmons do what many other fruit trees do–alternate good harvest years with less-good harvest years? Certainly my Italian plum, prolific last year, has only about a dozen plums this year.

So I decided that the effort to drape the whole tree for the sake of 20 persimmons wasn’t really worth it, but there might be an alternative.

Then ran out of net bags:

So does anyone else have a better solution?