Pistachio
Pistacia vera
No male tree, no nuts — one in every eight to twelve, and a season long enough to split the hulls.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Silver and gray
- Sunlight
- Full sun, with eight hours a day the minimum.
- Watering
- A deep watering every two weeks in summer, and none at all in winter.
- Feeding
- A balanced feed in late winter, then a nitrogen-rich one in early spring.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- April
- Pruning
- Prune in late winter while dormant, opening the tree to a vase shape.
- Mar–Apr Bud Break
- Apr–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Sep Fruit Set
- Sep–Nov Harvest
- Nov–Dec Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 23 ft
- In-row spacing
- 23 ft
- Between rows
- 28 ft 8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, with a taproot it keeps
- Working depth
- 24 in–5 ft
- Can reach
- 10 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 34–57 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
It anchors downwards as well as sideways, which is what lets it stand in a gale and what makes it hate being moved. Plant it small: past a few years in the ground a taprooted tree transplants badly, and often not at all.
The habit is Pistachio’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Psyllids Pistachio psyllid
- Scale insects Immobile brown or white bumps fixed to stems and leaf undersides, sucking sap and weakening growth. Wipe off with a damp cloth or dab with horticultural soap; watch for the sooty mold that follows.
- Gray mold (botrytis) Botrytis rotting whole bunches
- Late blight Alternaria late blight
- Verticillium & fusarium wilt Verticillium wilt
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
Lavender, Rosemary, Thyme, Pomegranate
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com