Majority of Astringent American persimmons or hybrids will ripen on the counter until wrinkle soft ripe just fine. My Astringent persimmons can sit on the counter for a whole month and still ripen.
@ZinHead â As far as I know, âtannin ripening methodsâ work only on Asians. I have no experience trying them on hybrids. I know that they donât work on my American Prok; and I could get no one to attest to success with other American varieties. So choosing Americans doesnât solve your problem.
Iâve never had fruit form a hybrid either, but I have the 1 fruit on the Mikkusu graft and maybe 300 fruits on a Kassandra tree. Weâll see.
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@tonyOmahaz5 â Agreed, BUT . . . ripening (i.eâŚ, fruit soft and sweet) does not necessarily imply non-astringency. Over a few years, Iâve had a ton of ripe Prok fruit that is still astringent. Nothing I did removed the astringency.
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Well you are zone 6B.
Iâm in a very hot 9a with a long grow season.
Hopefully, wonât be an issue here.
Right, if you can keep them alive in the desert. Good luck, and see us posted.
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To avoid the Astringency in your Prok is to.let it sit on a counter until the skin break apart with a touch. I have no problem with my 14 yreas old Prok tree with Astringent issue. Most of the fruits fell down when ripen and I let them sat on the counter until they are ready to eat.
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That might have worked for you but not for me. Trust me, I left soft fruit on the counter anywhere from days to weeks. They got moldy before they got non-astringent. Many of these were ripe enough to have fallen off the tree. Many were picked soft from the tree.
If your experience differs from. mine, there must be some other explanation such as heat during the growing season or chemistry of the soil.
FWIW, I wouldnât claim that 100% of the fruits were astringent. Maybe it was 80% in late Sept / early Oct, then 60% in late Oct / early Nov. But there was no rhyme or reason. When I bit into a persimmon, I had no way to predict whether the experience would be rewarding or repulsive. After a few bad experiences, my wife refused to touch them.
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I have H-118. It is delicious, but when we got a whole bunch of over 100 Fâs last year, it lost all its fruit. Probably not a great variety for your location.
JohnS
PDX OR
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Okay, thanks.
We hit 109°F in the first week of May this year.
Yet the last 10 days it has been between (91°F & 98°F) with rain.
Kinda bizarre.
I will take that under advertisement.
Thanks
Everyone else with H-118, who I also checked with also lost their fruit with lots of over 100Fâs. I think we had 5? but one was 116 F.
John S
PDX OR
This year again, I seem to have lost all of my fruit from the H-118 after the over 100 F temps. Despite our reputation, we donât get any rain or humidity in the summer. Dry as a bone. I may try to graft H-118 to a more shady location and water it more.
John S
PDX OR
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Our weather is real hot this year in the upper 90s to 103F but with high humidity. I still got some H-118 fruits on the tree.
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I too lost 100% of my H118 fruit this year. The tree looks very unhappy. If this continues I may have to replace it with a potted tree â I have several ready.
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Great info Tony, as usual. Maybe if I keep more water on it during the hot spells it will be ok.
John S
PDX OR
In 2021 the article was updated and as most of you know Mr. Claypool and Mr. Lehman and most of the old timers have since passed away. Mr. Compton is in his 80s. I think we would be very hard pressed to find 200 of the 2400 varities. @Barkslip i thought might be the next Lehman but is taking a break. Cliff England is focusing on many hybrids and has american persimmons as well. Im afraid most of those 2400 persimmons Claypool grew and much of Lehmans collection are pretty much lost at this point.
" Persimmons Can Offer Growers an Additional Revenue Stream
- Deborah Jeanne Sergeant New York Correspondent
- Apr 8, 2016 Updated Aug 24, 2021
SENECA FALLS, N.Y. â Jerry Lehman, who has spent 25 years developing a commercially viable persimmon tree for U.S. growers, shared his research with attendees of a recent âRare Fruit Workshop,â put on by Cornell Cooperative Extension in Seneca Falls.
The Terre Haute, Ind., native told the two-dozen attendees how he learned about persimmons. After retirement, he wanted to get back to his farming roots.
Lehman said he first explored apples, but felt he wanted to grow something more unusual. Then he met Jim Claypool, known as the worldâs most prolific persimmon grower, who collected and bred all 2,400 known varieties of persimmons. Lehman never looked back. He helped Claypool in his persimmon breeding efforts and tried to learn all he could from his mentor.
Claypool has since died, but Lehman carries on his legacy and shares their knowledge of persimmons as often and widely as he can.
Of the two main types of persimmons â 60 chromosome (60c) and 90 chromosome (90c) â Lehman recommends 90c for its larger fruit size â up to 2.25 inches in diameter â greater sweetness, fluid pulp and earlier ripening. Theyâre also parthenocarpic, unlike 60c which require fertilization to grow fruit.
By contrast, 60c persimmons ripen later, after frost, which can make them ill-suited for growing in the Northeast. The fruit grows to only 1 inch in diameter.
Growers cannot cross-pollinate 60c and 90c persimmons.
Lehman said growers can tell the difference between male and female trees by looking for one flower or, during winter, pedicel per stem for male trees and three per stem for female trees.
âBees are excellent pollinators for persimmons, but most varieties donât need pollination,â Lehman said.
Saplings may be planted 8 to 10 inches deep.
âPersimmons are not choosy about soil type,â he said. âIt is necessary to have nitrogen on persimmons Iâm beginning to believe, though I havenât performed tests on it.â
Lehman uses rotted wood chips and commercial fertilizer. The fruit matures in late fall. Many people believe that frost must precede persimmon harvest, but Lehman said new varieties are ripe before frost, which can make it possible for Northern growers to add persimmons to their farms.
To prevent his ripe fruit from dropping on the ground, Lehman said he constructs safety nets by building a PVC pipe frame and stretching landscape cloth on it. Though the safety net also collects bird droppings and can suffer damage from deer, he said he appreciates the amount of fruit it saves.
To clean the fruit, he fills a laundry basket with fruit and lowers it into a larger container. It holds a solution of one tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water. After soaking the fruit a few minutes, he removes the laundry basket and rinses the fruit.
Many people like making persimmon sauce as an end product. Since persimmons donât store long-term, saucing them can allow growers to offer customers a value-added product with shelf life.
Smaller operations can get by with kitchen-scale applesauce-making equipment, such as a Squeezo food mill.
Some growers may wonder if investing in persimmons is worth it if thereâs no market, but Lehman said thatâs backwards thinking.
âYou canât market a product if you donât have a supply,â he said.
He added that numerous people, including the late Col. Harland Sanders, KFCâs founder, considered using persimmons but could find no adequate source of the fruit.
âPass out samples and educate the public at your farmers market,â he said.
Lehman said persimmons graft easily and donât leave an open wound long. Any damage to the ground-level bark, however, can severely damage and even kill the trees, so growers must carefully mow and trim weeds among the trees.
Grafting side branches doesnât work well because they donât receive full sun. Lehman recalled his mentor, Claypool, grafting side branches on numerous trees only to see them drop off. The lack of sunlight caused the grafting failure, he said.
Lehman said growers planting persimmon seeds should insert the seed into the soil 8 inches apart with the âeyeâ of the seed upward. The eye is the rounded end that has a slight opening.
âIf youâre planting 1,000 seeds in a nursery, you may not want to take the time to look,â he said.
After six weeks, the persimmon seeds sprout, a trait which has confused seed buyers who thought Lehman had sent them home with duds.
Persimmon pests include twig girdlers, which cut slots in twig bark, lay seeds in them, chew the twigs until they fall off and allow eggs to incubate on the ground. Growers should pick up and destroy any fallen twigs under trees to interrupt the twig girdler life cycle.
âIt can be very devastating if you have a large number of trees,â he said.
The persimmon bore larva also chews into the tree, causing bark damage. Lehman said knocking off and destroying any structures built by the insects helps control them along with spraying and filling in their holes with tree wound sealer.
Tent worms also plague persimmon trees by eating their leaves. Lehman said to pull off their spider web-like structures and stomp on them.
Fungus can also affect persimmon treesâ leaves, turning the veins dark. He said that fungus spreads quickly on a persimmonâs leaves and oftentimes on leaves the following year. But it doesnât seem to harm the tree permanently, he said, just its harvest by splitting the fruitâs skin.
He hasnât used spray for fungus, but said apple tree spray would likely work for persimmons.
His favorite varieties of persimmons are H63A, Dollywood and H91A for their production and fruit quality. Cold-hardy, early harvest varieties can help Northeastern growers succeed in growing persimmons.
Deborah Jeanne Sergeant is a freelance writer in central New York. Connect with her online at www.skilledquill.net."
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