When I lived in Michigan, I used tree tubes for the first two years. Out of several dozen trees (grafts snd seedlings), I never lost one to overwintering. I think they created a mini greenhouse environment.
The person who bought my old place leveled every one of them, though. So there’s that. 
Up to now I’ve avoided purchasing tree tubes. I have instead been using rolls of hardware cloth that I have on hand and mulch—but I’ll try the store bought tubes. Certainly won’t hurt. Grafted nursery stock isn’t cheap, so might as well invest in helping them overwinter.
Honestly I like the grow bags. Grow bags get your tree a nice big root system with a big tree.
@hobilus Dear Sir (I presume) I tend to agree with you a lot because I believe hardiness zones is a rough estimation and do not take into consideration a lot of factors. If I had listened to all supposed specialists I had spoken with who said I had zero chance of successfully grow quince so near the North Pole I would not have planted quince trees but I did and everything is just fine.
Right now I have a pawpaw trees that has survived 2 freezing winters and had 8 flowers Spring 2022:
And since I am so very stubborn I’m growing persimmon trees to plant in 2/3 years. We’ll see who will have the last word!!!
Marc
Most experienced gardeners will tell you zone is just a starting point. My issue too is many plants people will debate heavily on which zone it truly grows in. I have 2 of each different kind of 4 in 1 pluots stated to only grow down to zone 6 on order despite being zone 5. You may ask why I have invested in something as costly as that being in a colder zone. Well the individual varieties on it are rated to zone 5 and many state it will survive zone 5 but for some reason they state the 4 in 1 only grows to zone 6 on nursery websites. Same with pluerry. I have a pluerry on order which some claim is zone 6 but others claim is zone 5. My Utah Giant cherry some claim is zone 6 and some claim is zone 5 but it has survived 2 winters in zone 5 just fine. A lot of my hazelnuts people debate can be zone 5 or zone 6 as well. There is so many things that go into growing things it is not even funny. There is rain (too much rain can cause issues with stone fruit or too little can cause issues with things like Paw Paw), how variable the spring time temps are (mine fluctuate a lot which can create more of a challenge than zone 5 places that are gradual), seasons very a lot even in zone (my zone 5 is a entire month over some other zone 5 area), how hot the area is also matters (jujube and pluots are examples I have found where they rate them higher zones because they expect a longer hot summer but my summer is pretty hot a decently long but I am zone 5) and I could go on. I have found the trees that do amazing are often times mentioned in news articles or county extensions. Plums, pears and apples do amazing here and will grow like weeds in CO and you can find many articles about them. I have seen mixed articles on persimmon. I see the CSU article I mentioned above and then I see many news stories about them growing here. Persimmon have done well for me so far. I should also add that some people may do one thing differently and that can change a entire result. A year or two ago I grew strawberries. All the strawberries died when I had them in ground. I simply could not water them enough even at watering every 2-3 days. This year I bought strawberries again and put them in a pot. The strawberries prospered in the pots and I only had to water every week or 2. Sometimes with fruit trees you can get a rootstock and the tree will die or decline and then you get another rootstock and it will do amazing. Sometimes even the same type of rootstock can make a difference. I bought a Warren pear tree from Edible Landscaping and it struggled all summer. It almost looked like it has been grafted two to 3 times which I found weird. The trees had no growth all summer was black on the branched out leaves and looked all around bad. I ended up having to cut it back too because to blackness spread into the stems. I almost wonder if it was a mislabeled Warren and had fireblight since Warren is supposed to be heavily resistant to it and have not heard of much else than fireblight spreading into stem tissue that is black. I spent 92 dollars plus 17 dollars shipping on a callery pear only it was a Comice from Nature Hill Nursery. Sounds expensive until you realize Edible landscaping charged me something like 60 dollars shipping for the Warren pear. Even though both are on callery rootstock the one from Nature Hills nursery seems to be doing better in my area. ironic since Comice is supposed to be harder to grow than Warren. My area gets so little rain that as long as you prune during winter you don’t have to worry about fireblight though. I just think maybe it came with it.
How hard is it to obtain fruits from said Meader, and how are the fruit? I have a 25-ft tree that’s on its way out and I’ve been thinking about getting a persimmon in its place, thinking that it would (hopefully) drop fruit and save me some effort picking.
They are about the size of a golf ball. Astringent until ripe, but will ripen off the tree if they have started turning orange. This one had seeds about the size of pumpkin seeds, but it doesn’t need a pollinator to set fruit. My guess is that the fruit hangs a long time and only falls off once it’s gone through some freeze-thaw cycles.
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/diospyros-virginiana-meader/
You could consider basically any variety of American persimmon. www.nuttrees.net is a good place to start for descriptions. If you are looking for the absolute best taste, from my reading I’d recommend 100-46, H63A, Lena and Morris Burton. If you are going for production, England’s lists Celebrity and Barbara’s Blush as more than enough for one family.
This is a little silly to admit in a forum about fruit production, but the old tree was in a statement area of the garden and I’m also considering looks. I also only have room for one tree. I had heard that Meader was somewhat self-pollinating and had some rather fine autumn foilage, which was what caught my eye to that variety in particular.
All female American persimmons should be parthenocarpic, i.e. they do not need pollinated and will produce seedless fruit in the absence of male flowers. If looks are what you want, Dollywood is a wider spreading tree rather than a tall grower based on England’s description. Also a select few hybrids might work, I’d research JT-02.
Thank you!! I appreciate the recommendation and will look into both of those.
Dollywood was one of my varieties hit the worst by -30ish temps two winters ago. It fared the worst of all of my “hardy” varieties. They were young trees but consistently burned all the way back to the grafts across multiple trees. JT-02 would be worse. I don’t know that I would recommend that for Madison, WI, but maybe Madison doesn’t get cold these days 
WS8-10 was not injured at all. Many other varieties were. Tom at Red Fern Farm says that SAA Pieper are very cold hardy, although I don’t know how that variety might taste. Whatever you try, I would recommend full sun for the best ripening, and an early ripening variety. There was a discussion on here about early varieties. As @disc4tw mentioned, varieties vary in size/shape, and in terms of how quickly tall they will get. Female persimmon generally take quite a while to get height… so a 25 foot tall female persimmon might be fairly old depending on conditions.
People report that there are a number of better cold hardy varieties than meader… and I have read that it isn’t necessarily more cold hardy than some others… but it got that reputation, I’m guessing partly by chance.
Oof, that’s good to know! It does still hit -20F quite regularly in Madison, although the last few winters have been quite mild so I don’t think we’ve gotten -25F in years. Is there any variety you’d recommend? I’m not above a bit of strategic weighting and pruning to make it look pretty if it’s a hardy, tasty tree… it would be nice if it was naturally good looking, but hardiness AND taste AND looks is a lot to ask for.
I grow and fruit persimmons in z4b Maine, Meader and Prok have done well so far and I’m hoping to trial others. Season length is another limiting factor besides hardiness
There was a discussion about earlier ripening persimmon here:
https://growingfruit.org/t/hello-what-are-the-earliest-ripening-american-persimmons/42796/3
Just shows how different zone 5 places can be. It hardly ever hits below 17 degrees here and can’t remember the last time it went past -9. We had a day go to -9 a few years ago and we all freaked out. If it is regularly going to -20 and sometimes -25 I wonder if you are actually zone 4. I was under the impression zone 5b was only supposed to go to -15 and 5a to -20. My grandma claims we have had -15 or -20 temperatures but I am pretty sure most would just call into work under transportation because our cars may not work at those temps. I question if we are a 6A or 6B now and they have just not updated our listings. Our Asters literally just burned up and died this year.
Goodness, I’m jealous! I long for such a balmy zone 5. I definitely try to buy zone 4 rated plants if I can get them.
It only gets to -20F for us once or twice a winter, but a low of -15 to -20 happens nearly every year. -25F only happened once in my memory and that’s the lowest its ever gone, but that did happen pretty recently so maybe I’m just traumatized
I have productive trees here in SE Wisconsin (zone 5a) that have proved winter hardy. All are from seed and, so far, they have fruit that ranges from tasty to superb. Some females are just beginning to fruit, but others have fruited for two to three years. All the trees are around 10-11 years old.
Stubbornness can be a necessary trait in our craft.
Balmy indeed. Zone 5 here, and like you we get at least one -20 day per winter.
