This year I had my first-ever homegrown persimmon, a single fruit on my third-leaf David’s Kandy tree. I decided to pick it on November 9 (in zone 6b/7) when it was slightly soft and a decent orange color. This turned out to be a mistake - it was mouth-puckeringly astringent!
Since I obviously don’t have a good sense of the right time to harvest fruits from this tree, or how it’s ripe flavor compares with other varieties, I’d like to find out more about it. If you’ve grown it, is this cultivar really worth growing, or should I think about top-working it next year?
I don’t grow it but it sounds like it wasn’t soft enough yet. My astringent kaki and hybrids of kaki and virginiana are mostly still sitting on the counter finishing their bletting. Hopefully someone else can provide feedback on this particular cultivar.
A weird thing was that the single persimmon I got had 4 seeds in it! As far as I know nothing else in my immature persimmon patch had flowers, so I am stumped as to how those seeds got there. We don’t live in an area known for wild persimmons.
Hi Rick,
Did you wait until after frost defoliated your tree? I grew up in West Tn where our native persimmons were very astringent until a real hard frost hit them, then all at once they were very nice to eat. You might try that next year before giving up on it.
Dennis
Kent, wa
You should plant those seeds and you will have a hybrid DV rootstock and perhaps an even better tasting fruit from them!
I planted some seed from native persimmons from my home and now next spring can graft onto them
Dennis
I plan to do that, Dennis. I put the seeds in my fridge in a Ziplock to plant next spring. I had forgotten that one of my nearby tiny one-year grafts of Nikita’s Gift had a few flowers early on whose fruit quickly dropped, so that may have been where the pollen came from.
Rick,
NG is reputed to be one of the best in my region, growing those seeds out would be a real good chance to test their fruit quality against their expected parents. Ram in Seattle says it’s one of his best varieties. He recently posted some pics of fruit. I have it grafted onto my Chocolate which also has male flowers and hope it fruits next year. Next year I will let the male flowers do their thing to seed what they pollinate. Good luck with those seeds
Dennis
First crop for me, last year, from David’s Kandy Korn. I don’t recall much about it, other than it held in the tree until I cut them all free, as birds were damaging them, after leaf-fall.
Late spring frost eliminated all but 3 fruits on DKK this year. I checked them before we left on a trip, last Wednesday; fruits were still firm and not fully colored; leaves have not yet dropped.
@Yoda … my only experience is with wild south eastern DV… but with them. . It is not a good bet to pick them off the tree and try them out the same day or possibly even 3 or 4 days later… give them 7 days on the counter and your chances of getting a mouth full if stringy decreases significantly. That is if they were ripe color and pretty soft when you picked them… i would still wait 7 days and make sure they were very soft as i try them. Any that still feel a little firm or even lumpy… wait longer.
Only having one fruit to work with and being a little impatient as anyone would be with a new potentially delicious fruit… i understand exactly why you got those results.
Even though I know better… it still happens to me. I am normally picking a dozen or 2 or 3 dozen at a time and if you have that many to work with you will eventually get to the point that you get to enjoy delicious fruit day after day for a week or two with no astringency.
Early on with each batch i pick… it is not uncommon for me to try a few with stringy results. When that happens i simply wait longer and for them to get softer then i try again.
I store mine in a little ripening chamber on the counter… until i eventually eat them all and then i pick another batch.
A picture (or two!) is worth a thousand words. I will remember the good advice next fall, and keep my grabby fingers in my pockets at least until leaf fall!
