Just how variable are wild American persimmon flavor wise?
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Extremely. I’ve had some that were inedible because they were so astringent, and others are among my favorite fruit I’ve ever eaten. All are astringent before they ripen, but some never lose that even when dead ripe.
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The flavor of a ripe native persimmon isn’t bad but the texture is god awful. Unless you like eating food that looks like rotten pumpkin baby food.
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I have a graft that has taken but is not growing very well (hasn’t put on too many inches.). There is a branch that is about six inches up from the graft and maybe 20 degrees offset. It is growing well. If I chop off this branch, will it make my graft grow more?
Thank you.
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Yes it will assuming it’s all one branch. For max vigor you want your graft to be the top/highest growing point on the branch.
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I have 3 Asian Pear trees, one Hosui and two unknowns (bought at steep discount, most likely Shinko). I have never eaten an Asian Pear in my life let alone have a clue to know when one should be picked. Looking at ACN Nursery Maturity Chart they have Hosui coming in August 25th. With the warm spring weather and being further South (Virginia)I assume I am 3 to 4 weeks ahead. Which puts the Hosui ready roughly now or in the next 7 to 10 days. How do you know when an Asian pear is ready to pick/eat?
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One fun test is to shine a flashlight at night. They turn more translucent as they ripen. Other than that look for green to go away. I always get hornets drilling into them as they get close to ripe so I never need to do anything besides look for hornets.
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Well, I had to take a flash light out and try it. The Hosui were translucent and what I think is Shinko not at all which I guess is to be expected since Shinko is later. I have no baseline so I can’t be sure what more translucent is but that is neat to know. I guess now I will checking my pears at night with a flashlight.
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Spud,
Don’t worry too much about A pears. In my experience, they will hang on for a few weeks without rotting. Sometimes, I pick my first and my last pears almost a month a part. They don’t rot as quickly if overripe like other fruit.
When you cut open the first one, you can tell if it is ripe by the color of the seeds. Black/very dark brown seeds are a good indication like apples.
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Hi everybody,
Checking over my little trees yesterday (bench grafts from the spring), I found aphids all over the newest growth on a Kidd’s Orange Red. So, checked out the other trees, and happily found nothing (yet) except a somewhat less serious infestation on my other graft of KOR. This is out of fifteen or sixteen varieties of apples and three varieties of pears. Sprayed both the affected trees with water mixed with a drop of dish soap and squished all the aphids I could. I think I got most of them, but will keep checking. Both seem to be doing fairly well in other respects.
My question is, has anyone else found Kidd’s Orange Red to be especially attractive or susceptible to aphids?
Thanks!
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Try explaining that to the local cops when your neighbours report a peeping Tom with a flashlight wandering around 
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Not particularly Kidd’s, but certainly its parent Cox. Aphids, leafhoppers, anything to keep the leaves from looking healthy and growing vigorously. Lousy nursery tree- takes forever to size up without continuing chemical intervention.
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Thank you for that information, Alan. Interesting to learn that about Cox - I was aware that it was hard to grow, but didn’t know about the role that insects played in that. Hopefully our Kidd’s won’t have an extra dose of that legacy. They seem to be growing ok, though not particularly fast, and the aphids seem to be in check for now.
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I grow Kidd’s and it certainly is easier here than Cox, but a much different apple with lower acidity as you’d expect from the Red Delicious influence. At least it has more Cox flavor than RD and is a good and fairly grower friendly apple.
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Sounds good. Your comment about “more Cox flavor than RD” threw me for a minute, because I read it at first as damning with faint praise (taking it one way, more Cox flavor than a RD could be virtually no Cox flavor at all). But then I realized (I think) that you meant that it favors the Cox side more than the RD side taste-wise. Still waking up here…
That being said, it made me a bit curious to know what the RD that Kidd used would have been like. According to a link provided by Orange Pippin, this was like 1912, and while RD was apparently already a major commercial variety, I wonder if it was still quite a bit closer to its “Hawkeye” roots, and not quite so cardboardy as it would become.
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Good point- although seedsavers says 1924 was “birthday”.of Kidd’s. Starks started marketing RD in the late 19th century, but Kidd’s is from New Zealand so the RD is even more likely to be an early if not the original strain. Anyway, back then they probably hadn’t started marketing bright red cardboard- people were not eating wonder bread and other industrial food, so presumably their taste buds were still functional.
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Just for the sake of interest, here’s what the link I was looking at says about the introduction of KOR. I missed a few things skimming too quickly before. (This appears to be coming from an online text of the New Zealand Dictionary of National Biography.)
“Kidd’s first major success came from a cross-pollination of Delicious with Cox’s Orange Pippin in 1912. Once the plant fruited it became obvious that it had commercial potential, and Kidd planted five acres in the new variety, which he named Delco. He sold the propagation rights to the New Plymouth nursery firm of Duncan and Davies for £2,000 in the early 1930s; they marketed it as Kidd’s Orange Red.”
If this is correct, then perhaps the date cited by seedsavers would be when Delco/soon to be KOR was introduced to market? But if the original cross-pollination of Cox and RD took place in 1912, then I’m thinking that the strain of RD used would have to date back somewhat earlier than that.
That being said, the DNB also says that “Although impressed by the attractive appearance of new American varieties such as Delicious and Jonathon, [Kidd] was less satisfied with their flavour. Seeking to combine their visual appeal with the better flavour of the familiar English cultivars, he commenced a breeding program.” So maybe even Kidd’s Delicious wasn’t as delicious as all that, at least to Kidd’s taste. Or maybe he was canny enough to emphasize the Englishness of his apples to their initially NZ market. Who knows.
In any case, it looks like there may be a fair bit of aphid squishing between me and my first taste of Kidd’s…
Incidentally, and surprisingly to me, Wikipedia dates the introduction of Wonder Bread to 1921.
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Seems like you’ve got the inside story. Nice.
I don’t think Wonder Bread became an American staple before well after WWII, but then, both my parents were raised in NYC so there were bread bakeries on practically every block. My Mom did serve us Wonder Bread in my southwestern youth, but also home cooked meals every night. We switched to whole grain breads in the mid '60’s (CA lifestyle thing). May have been a Pepperidge Farm product, I’m racking my brain for the name of it.
Oops, I was wrong, by 1941 over 80% of bread consumed by Americans was from industrial bakeries.
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Squirrels decided that I deserve 5 peaches (out of hundreds that I started with) and let it stay under the net. It’s almost August now and I’m anxious to pick them before squirrels change their minds. But they are still very green, not even a sign of turning color. Variety is Elberta. So I was looking online to see when Elberta ripens in my area and came across below chart. But it doesn’t list Elberta. Can somebody tell me two varieties from this chart Elberta ripen in between? That way I can get an idea.
Susu,
@mrsg47 grows Elberta peaches. She is in RI. Hope she will chime in to let you know when Elberta ripens and what the ripe fruit should look like. Hard to find green peaches that taste good.
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