I have 2 NA Asians in 6b. They died back heavily this past winter, after weathering the previous few years without issue. I think you’ll have trouble with non-astringents. If you are open to astringent varieties, the hybrids are very hardy, and I believe a few of the Asians can also survive unprotected.
It looks like you have a nice way to manage your Virginiana in terms of picking up daily, rope system, etc. if I was able to benefit from that, I would be so happy. The tree I have experience with is at a park in Virginia near a creek with all sorts of wildlife likely snacking at night.
The fruit splatter can be so bad that it’s hard to tell what has snacked on the fruit and how long it’s been on the ground. For that reason, I’m a little weary. But if I had your situation, I’d feel much better about eating from the ground. The only drawback for me would be the size of tree since I don’t have much yard space for large trees here in NJ.
I keep my D. Virginianas at about 12 feet and they don’t seem to mind it. They’ve responded well to heavy pruning for several years now. But I think the hybrids are the way to go in terms of both flavor and tree growth habit.
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I’d second what SMC said about how amenable virginiana persimmons are to pruning. Virginianas aren’t super fast growing trees either, so even if no size-limiting pruning were done I think a virginiana persimmon would remain very manageable for a long time. And so long as the tree is smaller and the fruit within reach, the fruit can definitely be picked from the tree as it softens, at least with most of the good named cultivars. I do that, too, with some of my smaller grafted trees.
If I were in zone 6a or colder with limited space, I’d probably plant a virginiana first. In my experience, Rosseyanka fruit has varied from outstandingly good (when sampled at Edible Landscaping in Virginia in December) to mediocre (from my own tree, which fruited for the first time this year). Even the outstandingly good fruit wasn’t completely free of astringency, but it was so good that I call it outstanding anyways.
Nikita’s gift is great eating quality, but I’ve heard at least a couple reports of well established trees suffering severe winter injury in zone 6, even zone 6b (albeit following colder than average winters that went down to 6a temperatures), such that I would consider it likely to fail in 6a, probably even in average winters, and almost certainly in the occasional 5b winter, so if space were limited I’d want to plant something more likely to succeed. I don’t know about any of the other hybrids.
The seediness of the average virginiana persimmon is definitely a major drawback, but I believe that can be greatly reduced by selecting varieties that produce larger fruits and fewer seeds.
Fruit splatter is another trait that varies between trees. A thick stand of grass seems to be very helpful at minimizing splatter. I would have much less use for fallen persimmons if most of the fruit had splattered to varying degrees. The skin is still fully intact on most of the persimmons I pick up off the ground.
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