I’ll be staying in Berea this evening and tomorrow night. I’m helping out prior to the event or else I’d be up for breakfast. If anyone is out on the town this evening, message me.
Currently free charging my Bolt in Charleston compliments of the Cadillac dealership on my way down.
I dont recall seeing an address or directions, so i assume we meet Cliff at the same main farm as last year.
These directions are from his website:
Directions:
I thought I lived out in the sticks…
Cliff has me beat. Pretty country.
We ate at a Texas Roadhouse in Somerset KY… on the way up here… 16 oz ribeye… oh man… good.
We found our cabin… nice.
Since no real intrest was shown in a group breakfast… we may just fix our own here at the cabin. We brought some eats.
TNHunter
The drive in from the east is quite something. Pretty and pretty steep. Wouldn’t want to drive during the rut.
Please write down reviews of all the fruit you try :).
My wife and I had a good time at Englands Orchard tour.
We both got to try pappaw ice cream and it was delicious. I think he said it was a mix of 50% pawpaw fruit, 25% vinalla yogurt, and 25% cream cheese. It was not overly sweet but was very good.
We tried slices of a couple varieties of pawpaw too. Nice and creamy… mild flavor.
We bought 3 bags of euro pears… which we will make pear preservs or butter with.
The orchard tour was nice but also a little hectic and confusing.
You had what 50-60 people trying to follow Cliff around the orchard.
It was not easy to find the trees you wanted to see… Cliff and crowds walked near a 100-46 lemans delight… but did not stop and visit it. I walled over to it… just noticing the large ripe fruit… sort of fought my way in to the base of the tree where the tags were located… to find out it was actually 100-46.
That was the first one I ate and it was large and tasted delicous. A huge mouth full of mostly seedless pulp. It tasted a little different than my wilds at home… it was a clean, clear pulp, very nice fruity flavor.
After making my way back to cliff… i asked him where H63A and H118 were… and he pointed me in the right direction. I did manage to find them both… but H63A had not one fruit left on it or the ground. H118 had no fruit left hanging… but I did find a decent one on the ground below H118 and tried it… my wife did too… and we both agreed that H118 tasted very much like 100-46. Very little difference that we could detect.
100-46 was larger than H118.
I wanted to taste the varieties that I have planted that have not frruited yet.
Mohler, Journey, H63A, JT02, Nakitas Gift, Barbaras blush, Kasandra, Prok… but the majority of those I simply could not find or found some but no ripe fruit left or no fruit left.
I tasted of several other persimmons that cliff was making his way too thru the tour… some I have never heard of (crosses of this and that)… but again most of them tasted very similar to 100-46 and H118.
Found some CHE fruit that tasted good… and some that was blaugh aand seedy.
I actuaally found some jujubes that I really liked… but they had those tiny tags and you had to fight yiur way thru thorny limbs to get to the tag.
One thing that would have really improved the tour for me would be if Cliff invested in some type of sign, identifying each tree… something you could easily read 15-20 ft away.
I might have found a prok or mohler or journey… if they were clearly marked.
It was good meeting a few growingfruit board members.
Sorry I cant give a lot of juicy details about the various persimmon varieties with taste details. To my suprise… and my wife agreed… most of them tasted very similar… very good but similar.
Hopefully some of the others will have better taste buds than we did.
TNHunter
They are all pretty similar to me as well with minor differences. Probably cause almost all of them are Early Golden offshoots. I actually like the taste of the wilds better, but they are basically bags of seeds. Wish you had found the Mohler. That’s an actual wild and I’ve been thinking about grafting it.
I wish someone had a nursery that offered strong trees of some of the really good varieties of selected domestic persimmons. I’ve ordered trees from England that didn’t survive and the ones that did are not what is mentioned here, maybe because I was always asking him for non-astringent varieties. None have really panned out.
I have what is supposedly a Szukis, which is small and tasty that I got from an orchard I manage. I also have a Great Wall with a couple fruit this year as well as what I think Nick called Dave’s Candy that has exactly two fruit at the same state of not quite ripeness as Great wall. The Szukis has lost almost all of its leaves and fruit while the other two are completely green and still growing. It will be interesting to see if they ripen completely. They’ve still got 3 weeks but this has been a long growing season.
@Robert … I added a graft of Mohler this spring to a wild dv here.
Cliff says it starts ripening mid August up there in KY… could be late July for me. Hopefully in a few years I get to try some.
TNHunter
Did he sell you a tree? Is he back in full commission?
@alan … he had some persimmon and CHE trees in tree pots there where we all met up that morning.
I checked a few of them out… looked like they were grafted to rootstock this spring. I assume he had them there for sale… but did not see a price tag and did not ask… since I did not need them.
TNHunter
I wish he’d size them up for an extra year so the graft is strong.
I have to agree with that. I bought a H63A last year. It snapped at the graft when I first watered it.
I could taste some differences between fruit last year though many tasted the same. Last year, i could taste pumpkin and cinnamon in a few, which was a nice flavor (one of them was D-31 x Unknown). My daughter was a little better at determining flavor than me, but she seemed to generally agree when we compared each tree both years. Orange was the most prominent taste for us. We tried a number this year and were fine to eventually move on to other fruits. Thats not to say they were bad by any means, but the taste was repetitive. A local forum member allowed me last year to try his Prok, I tasted some brown sugar. Prok, to date, has still been the best to me so far.
I wish I could taste all the nuanced flavors others seem to enjoy, but it hasnt seemed to be in the cards for me to this point. 100-46 was mentioned. I tried it both years and cant tell much difference between it and most other than being on the larger side for an American variety.
This year, every last one of them had the same flavor notes to me. I mostly get honey on the front and orange on the back. I will say that last year, most of the hybrids seemed to be honey only. This year, many of them tasted more like the American persimmons with notes of orange. I cant explain the reason though. The size, texture, and seediness were the biggest variables between trees that I tried. It could be related to the drought we had or it could be me.
We both agreed that jujubes may have been our favorite again but it was nice to try a pawpaw. I’m not sure which cultivar I sampled but it tasted like cantaloupe to me. We took one pawpaw fruit home: Prima. Later when Woody Walker spoke about them, he said Prima wasnt good (just my luck). After trying it, it wasnt as bad as expected. I again tasted canteloupe. My daughter liked it. I thought it was fine, but it didnt get me excited that I’m growing a few either. I dont particularly love canteloupe flavor. I have 3 trees i planted last year (Susquehana, Shenandoah, NC-1), so I hope they arent that flavor profile.
Have all three of those myself and they are great varieties. Not canteloupe flavor to me. Think you will be happy with them. Pawpaw have slightly better flavor variety than persimmon.
While at England’s Orchard… I saw this guy collecting video for his youtube channel. I talked to him once to see if his Journey hybrid had fruited yet… and it has not. I knew he had one grafted a year or two ago… by watching his youtube channel.
I wondered when his youtube vid would be posted and just happened to find it this morning.
I can see myself and my wife in several of his clips.
TNHunter
I’d have loved to attend if I was closer and without a newborn. Maybe one year if they keep having them we will make the trek. Glad you guys had a good time.
