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The chocolate pudding tree

If you like chocolate you’ll love the black sapote tree (Diospyros digyna).

Commonly known as chocolate pudding fruit, this amazing fruit is low in fat and an excellent source of vitamin C, containing about four times as much as an orange.

The fruit is delicious eaten fresh or used as a chocolate substitute in recipes and milkshakes, or simply mix the pulp with yoghurt and lemon juice for a refreshing treat.

The green fruit is picked when hard and allowed to soften indoors where it turns brown within 3-6 days.

Diospyros belongs to the Ebony family and is related to the persimmon tree, having the same shaped fruit and dark shiny leaves. Some have both male and female organs, and are faintly fragrant; others are solely male and have a pronounced gardenia-like scent. The fruit is nearly round, bright-green and shiny when young.

The tree has a beautiful dense canopy and although slow growing it’s a great tree for warm parts of WA.

Diospyros is a semi-tropical tree that needs lots of compost in the soil, heavy mulching and loves chicken manure. It will not do well in alkaline, dry soils, so coastal areas are not suitable. I have seen wonderful specimens in the Pilbara and Kimberley; as long as you can keep up the summer water, it will grow well.

DID YOU KNOW?

Parsley and coriander flowers can attract up to 25 different beneficial insects. It’s worth allowing some of your herbs to go to seed so that the little helpers in the garden knock off the pest insects.

THREE JOBS TO DO NOW:

1. Plant out autumn-flowering bulbs such as autumn crocus, nerine, heamanthus and belladonna lily.

2. Cut off runners from strawberry plants and pot them up into good quality potting mix.

3. Prune stone fruit trees that have finished fruiting, replenish the mulch and fertilise.