I’d graft them all. Container culture and if a good root mass in a 1-gallon pot judging from your seedlings, plant them in early Fall. Or, sink the containers in the ground and plant the following spring.
You guys need to understand that nurseries graft bare-root trees just the same as you’re both talking about every year. Then they line them in a field or container culture them.
Sure there are nurseries ahead of the game with their seedlings in the ground a year, but, it’s not necessary. I’ll graft 900 bare-root trees this year as bench grafts and then line them or containerize them. You do need to wait until temps are warm enough and all frost has passed. So containerize them now and graft on them when there’s temperatures in the 60’s plus Fahrenheit range for weeks to come. If you need to wait like I would here in zone 5b, those are small enough seedlings you could wrap them in plastic with media over the roots and put them into your fridge. Then (anytime) pot them up and graft on them later when desired temps have shown up.
There are literally so many ways to approach this. Heck you could go outside and dig a trench and toss the seedlings in there and cover them completely and come back and dig them up when it’s nice again. Gosh I don’t know how many ways there really are. 
Dax
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All I need is for someone to say “Do it!!” I already have mine in pots and I’m in a zone that will get lots of heat soon. So by 60’s do you mean daytime temps? Mine have not started bud swell yet but I’m watching for it…
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I’ll take your advice Dax. You convinced me. My seedlings are quarter inch, which is kind of small. Would you recommend a cleft graft or bark graft? With that diameter, I would think that bark graft would be very difficult.
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I’m bench grafting a good number of 1/4" Persimmon (wish I had ordered 5/16" or 3/8" stock) and will report back on the results. I’m hopping they are less sensitive to transplant then stone fruit. You definitely could error in the other direction of letting stock get to large in a nursery. Large Persimmons are not fun to dig up.
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Have you bench grafted persimmon or Paw Paw before? What was the take rate?
Personally, I would not graft them at all. I’d plant them as is in the spots you want them and let them grow. Persimmons don’t transplant extremely well. They are quite easy to bark graft in the field. I have American persimmons growing natively on my farm. I’ve bark grafted well over 100 of them in the field often converting make trees to female. Unlike apples with dwarfing root stock, Persimmons take a lot longer to fruit. Grafting may shorten the time from seed to fruit from 8-10 years by a year or two, but it will still take time. When I graft well established rootstock in the field (say 1" in diameter) I often get fruit in the 3rd leaf after grafting.
So the time to get fruit is about the same, but you don’t waste time and effort grafting trees that don’t survive the transplant shock. Also, when you bark graft trees when they are larger, you can graft multiple scions and cull down to 1 the first winter after grafting. The increases the chances of at least one scion being accepted.
Thank,
Jack
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I have been grafting both D.V and Kaki for the the last 9 years or so. I used the Cleft, W&T, and Bark grafts. Bark graft is my preferred method on a larger under stock with a high percentage of take but a weaker graft union. I have to brace them due to heavy growth up to 2 to 4 feet on a large under stock. The newly graft will snap right off from strong wind. I usually graft persimmon when the under stock leafed and the temperature is in the upper 60s or low 70s for a 2 to 3 weeks span. After care is very important, I rubbed off all new growths below the graft union every 3 days so the newly graft will get all the sap flow. If I forget to do this step, the graft will die at a 90% rate. I have not try bench graft yet. I want to mention one more thing here, a few years ago. The wind snapped one of the persimmon graft off in Late June. I took a fresh green persimmon bud from 2 months new growth and t-budded it to the under stock of the broken graft. The green bud took and grew like a graft. Scott Smith does this method once in a while.
Tony
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Good points, Jack. Fortunately I ordered enough to satisfy my urge to try grafting now, and to save some for next year.
Thanks Tony. Although I don’t have experience yet, I do think bark graft allows for the most contact, which I suspect will give me more takes. Waiting another year will make it easier to bark graft.
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@k8tpayaso Yes, like Tony said. I wanted to say mid-60’s or warmer… I just didn’t want to have you thinking you had to wait a really long time in case your rootstocks began pushing before that happens. I found great success even a month after bud break with persimmons.
@RUenvsci I don’t do cleft grafts unless I have a situation where I’m standing in a ditch and am off-balanced etc. I whip and tongue just about everything if I don’t use either of my V-cut grafting tools. On large stuff I bark and 3-flap but for 1/4" I guess if @ILParadiseFarm says clefts work, then by all means.
I think it’s extremely easy (for me anyway) to whip and tongue 2mm / 1/8" whatever and above. They’re real easy once you do enough of them and how you do that is to practice on wood you snip off trees.
No question bark grafting/3-flap in the field is the greatest. I love it. You see tremendous growth the second year after the graft and as @forestandfarm Jack said, you get fruit quickly…
I’ve done a bunch of bark grafts this winter on 1/4" rootstocks but my scions are 1-2 mm. Definitely not 2 mm. They’re pushing after 3-weeks. There’s always a flat side on any seedling. You just look for it.
Dax
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My experience with bark grafting is similar to Tony’s. I typically wrap the scion with parafilm-m to help keep it from drying out. I tape a piece of bamboo to the tree as a stake for the new growth. I find this especially important while the graft is healing. If the graft is the tallest point on the tree with now side branches, it is and attractive landing spot for birds which can move it before it is fully healed. They will land on the bamboo instead. I then loosely attach the new growing central leader with zip ties to the bamboo to train it as a vertical central leader for the first growing season. After that, I’ve had no issues with any trees breaking at the graft. Keep in mind that my trees are primarily for wildlife so I want a central leader and don’t top them for fruit picking purposes.
I also build a sun shield for the south side out of aluminum foil to keep the scion from getting too hot. As Tony says, frequent after care is required for the first season to remove water sprouts. If a graft does fail, I simply pick one water sprout near the top as my new central leader and remove the rest. The following year, I have the option of cutting the tree below that and bark grafting again or whip and tongue grafting to the top of the water sprout.
Thanks,
Jack
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So long as buds are actively swelling or leaves are forming my take rate in containers has been close to 90% but persimmons really need to be waking up first. I doubt there is any magic to it, just that they might swell a week afger warm weather…But more likely a month. Graft on the dormant And you’re just begging for your scion to die before it even starts getting sap. Graft when they are growing and in terms of ease they might be a bit harder than apples but beat peaches and plums, in my hands at least
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Mark,
You may be right. This is my first year grafting persimmons. I am throwing everything at the wall and will see what sticks. I have 80 benchgrafted. People told me I was not a great idea, but none of them had tried it themselves. I will take your advice and field graft the rest when they wake up.
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Here are my 28 root stock waiting to be grafted. Some are pot grown and
some bare root. The bare root are in 3 gallon pots and the pot grown are 1 gallon upsized to 2 gallon pots. A few have just begun to leaf out but will wait until fully leafed out to graft. A few trifoliate citrus rootstock are in the background.
rss by philip sauber, on Flickr
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Nice size root stocks you have there. Good luck on grafting them.
Tony
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Just to follow-up on this thread, some of my persimmon rootstock are starting to bud out. I’m excited to see what I can do. I’ll wait to graft until they are fully leafed out.
This evening, I grafted some Hosui pear. The first one took me a while, and the last one only took me ten minutes. I did a cleft on the larger rootstock, a two bark graft attempts, and two whip and tongues. I personally found the whip and tongue to be the easiest.
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Thanks for that info! I just received mine today and I thought they were dead! In your opinion, how long before they leaf out ?
Here in 7B, all of my persimmons have leafed out by now. They leaf out relatively late compared to most fruit trees - about the same time as mulberries. I have several varieties, and some leaf out earlier (i.e., Tecumseh, Giombo) and others later (i.e., Saijo, TamKam).
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