@Jobe .. we cleared 3 acres of land in 1997…. It was in the fall.. and I had it disked some.. then I drug a length of chain link fence over it for hours (with my 4 wheeler) to smoth it out some.. then I sewed a mix of winter wheat, fescue, lidino clover over it.
It got a little rain that fall and grew some.. but the next spring it really took off… bueatiful green grass and clover all over.
Well and some saplings that sprouted back up from roots.
I started that year. Having it bushhogged once a year in the fall.
We built our home in the middle of that 3 acre clearing in 2001.
I did all the tractor work to turn part of that clearing into our front and back and side yards.. a lot of discing .. a lot of rock raking.. smoothing out the bumps.. and got a good stand of grass growing.
Past the yard remained the same.. basically just fields… that got bushhoged once yearly.
There were always quite a few saplings and some good blackberry patches that came up in the fields. A few times I spared a nice blackberry patch (just bushhogged around it) for a few years and they were great blackberry patches.
I never paid a lot of attention to all those saplings that came up every year.. until about 2022… (over 20 years later).. I was getting interested in persimmons at the time and noticed one of those saplings that came up near my garden/compost pile was a wild persimmon.. and it was growing like a weed.
I looked around more in my fields and found 50-75 more of those.. all over the fields.
There were a few other varieties of tree saplings out there .. sour wood, callery, etc…
I think that most of those were perhaps there when I had the land cleared by bulldozer… and they came back from the roots that were left.
Bushhogging them down once a year did not kill them… they just came back up the next year.
For a few years I had my fields bushhogged twice a year.. early July and October.
That did not kill the persimmon shoots either.. I observed them being cut off in July at about 5 or 6 inch… and then growing another 3 or 4 feet tall by October.
I think many of those persimmon shoots in my fields have very well established root systems because they have been there many many years.. growing some every year (very fast top growth).. but being cut down once or twice a year.
A persimmon will not die.. from being bushhogged once or twice a year… It still has that root system on place and simply pushes up a new top and continues putting out as much top growth as it can.
i think it is very well possible that some of these wild dv shoots that I am grafting too.. have root systems under them that are 20 years old or older.
The ultimate persimmon rootstock.. pushing phenominal growth once grafted.
JT02 grew a shoot from a scion 10 ft tall first season.
Prok grew 8 ft tall first season and had leaves 12 inches long.
H63A grew 8 ft first season and produced fruit in year 2.
Since I have no idea when these rootstocks were established.. I can’t really include their age when stating how old my trees are.
Year one for me.. is the year it was grafted.
TNHunter
