Hello, group! After several weeks of reading the forum, I joined Growing Fruit a few days ago and this is my first post. I’m glad I found you! Garden Web no longer does it for me.
Though I’ve had success with berries in my SE PA zone 6b/7a location, my previous efforts at growing fruit trees (peaches and cherries) have left a trail of death (doubtless due to my no-spray approach). I decided this year I’d try growing something supposedly easier - persimmons. I expect to leave further casualties in my wake, but hopefully have a few successes.
I have orders in to several nurseries for Maru, Nishimura Wase, Kasandra, David’s Kandy, Smith’s Best, and Kung San Ban Si. I have an existing 7-year-old male American persimmon I plan to cut off at the 2-1/2" diameter and try to top graft. I have an order in for one scion each of Great Wall and Chinebuli, thinking that’s enough for a start.
A couple of questions…
(1) I am hoping to get some inexpensive D. virginiana seedlings to try my hand at grafting. Can anyone recommend a source in Lancaster or Chester County, PA, or a mail order source?
(2) Scions I hope to find are Matsumoto Wase Fuyu, Rojo Brillanti, Giomo and Saijo. Any suggestions as to where might I find them?
Thank you so much for any advice!
Yoda Do you remember persimmon Bob from the garden web. He got so much flack for his name in the GW citrus forum that he dropped the persimmon from his name.
We use both at work and I can recommend both. I prefer Pikes Peak because they are local for me (Indiana County) but their website is lacking, so I highly recommend calling them to place an order. They are super friendly.
I would try England’s Nursery www.nuttrees.net for an impressive selection of persimmons. They might not have as much this late in the order season but I’d ask. Cliff is on the forum as @KYnuttrees
I was rickl144. I spent most of my time back then interested in discussions about trees for landscape use and Osmanthus fragrans, not fruit (I was still smarting from the bad experience of losing two peaches and one cherry tree!). I still monitor it once in a while, but no longer actively participate. My landscape is pretty much set now… except for the fruit trees I’m now preoccupied with! Everyone who is of retirement age needs an obsession.
Hey, those links are great! I have not run across them before, will check them out. I have already been carrying on persimmon discussions with Cliff, and purchased two persimmon trees and two scions from him for delivery this spring. He has given me some great grafting information, too.
Hey local! Welcome to the forum. There are plenty of folks growing persimmons near you. I believe @ampersand is very close to you. Unfortunately, I don’t know any cheap sources of rootstock nearby that still have any in stock for the season.
I got some D. virginiana seeds on ebay for rootstocks next year, it was $2.41 for 15 seeds but the seller is maybe running out, it’s 10 for 3.50 now. this puts me a year behind getting rootstocks right now but it fits my plans so that’s ok
I have identified a potential source for getting some relatively inexpensive rootstock, but the minimum order of 10 might be too many for my available space (1 acre in the country). I’m waiting to see if he will sell just 5. Otherwise I might go the seed route @z0r suggested.
In a PM, @cousinfloyd and I were discussing how to put my existing D.v. rootstock to use, and I want to bring that to the whole group for further thoughts. At the 5’ height my existing male D.v., the rootstock is 2" in diameter, which is probably where I would cut it off to topwork the tree with scions. Maybe four scions? The tree is 2-1/2" inches in diameter at the 4’ height, which seems excessively wide. Ought I to make all of the scions of the same type, and then select out the strongest to be the new leader and direct the others into more horizontal positions as scaffold limbs? I don’t know how long the Great Wall scion I am getting will be, potentially allowing multiple grafts.
@cousinfloyd also suggested the idea of cutting my D.v. down to a stump and grafting onto the resulting sprout, which would have a more manageable diameter. I’m curious if others have tried this? Did you and wind up killing the tree? Is there any doubt that it would resprout? Possibly even generate some satellite sprouts that could be harvested for more rootstock?
@Yoda
Older Persimmon trees cut at ground level while dormant,
Will ,almost 100%, sprout up new shoots , usually getting 4+ ft. Tall
that season.
a nice size to graft to the following spring.
I prefer this to grafting onto a tree where I have to make large cuts
to graft,
cuts on persimmon over ~ 1 1/2 inch don’t heal well.
Another beginner here. I can only post 1 pic per post so I tried to show success and failure. The one on the left was cut off @ 2’ and grew 6’. The scions from left or right are NGxV, NG and Prok. Just to the right farther out double failure. I grafted too far out on the limbs, they leafed out but got broke off later. Then I tried a inverted T graft with Ichy using just parafilm. If you look hard you’ll see it, two mistakes you can avoid. The far right both scions V, cut off @ 2’ and grew 3’. I didn’t have all this good advice when did it I was just winging it. Good luck! Oh yea this is my first picture post, if it doesn’t show up I’ll try again.
Thanks for the tip, Rick. I got high quality rootstocks from him last year. The owner comes off as a good guy from conversations I’ve had with him. They were sold out when I checked a month ago, but I ordered some more to supplement what I already purchased from a new source in case those are no good. Support local small business!
@Hillbillyhort - thank you for that confirmation, I am almost certain now that I will just cut down the whole tree, anticipating at least one new shoot. Trying to work up the guts to do it. I am a little hesitant due to a discussion at Northern Pecans: Bark graft maintenance. It makes it sound that after one year, if I do a single bark graft, the next year I can simply cut off at an angle the “shelf” left by the mismatched diameters. The result would in time allow the graft to merge much more gracefully in with the larger rootstock, and save me a year of waiting.
@JCW - a picture is worth a thousand words! I am trying to learn from “them that’s been there.”
@PharmerDrewee - I’m glad I brought him to your attention.
My rootstocks arrived today. They were all about 4-5 feet tall counting the roots except for a couple larger ones— a very good value in my opinion. I’m sure I’ll get good takes.
Well, I bit the bullet and followed the advice of @Hillbillyhort and cut my male native persimmon down to a 6" diameter stump. Here’s hoping that suckers come up for grafting to next year.
Can you harvest suckers as a source of your own supply of more rootstocks for next year? Don’t such suckers need some special attention to put down their own roots and live independently of the mother stump, such as wounding and dusting with rooting hormone?
