I’m betting MB has more of the classic wild flavor. At least that’s what I’m hoping for. Got a few more years to go before I see anything out of my MB. It was a bad year for american persimmons here. All my named varieties as well as all the wilds grew micro persimmons. A wasted year. I’ve never seen anything like it.
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Morris Burton dropped all fruit for 2 straight years. This year it is holding on to nearly all fruit.
H118 was a great performer and then went into decline when I transplanted it and had to break off the tap root while doing so.
It finally produced 1 (one!) fruit this year. I want to line up all the DVs for tasting at once.
I lost my DEC wannabe #2 this year. — reputedly better than all the above. But no one talks about these Donald Compton varieties.
I should be able to find a replacement next year.
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So it was just like buying an on-line tree. I’m digging one later this year myself and I’m pretty sure I’ll break it too. Anything to learn from your failure?
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Transplant when the tree is fully dormant. I think my tree was just out of dormancy when I transplanted. Bad idea.
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Yeah, I figured that. I’m thinking about saturating the soil with water and keep spraying as I’m digging. My tap root digging record is pretty low though.
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When you say transplant, do you mean moving an in-ground tree to a new in-ground location or do you mean planting potted tree into the ground?
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Moved a potted tree that had rooted securely through drainage holes.
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An H118 I ate today had a plump seed in it. It’s my only American persimmon. The rest are kaki or the hybrid Nikita’s gift.
Is it likely to have pollinized itself?
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Were the seeds soft or hard?
I’m seeing seeds in all my American persimmons this year and I’m curious too as to why.
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I saw some seeds in my Prok fruit in past years. Not a lot but I wondered if possibly some root suckers produced male flowers. That is, the rootstock could be male and the the suckers male too.
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I’m relatively new at American persimmons. I’ve had Prok for a few years and it has always been both (a) consistently bland and (b) persistently astringent. Until a couple weeks ago, the inedible fruits from Prok were the only American persimmons I had ever tasted.
These are fruits from last year’s grafts, topwork on Prok. The three small ones are H63A; the lone larger one is Dollywood; Barbra’s Blush has not ripened any fruit as yet, as far as I’ve noticed… I picked these four fruits soft on the tree, not waiting for them to drop.
The best news is that none of them was astringent. The three H63A were all sweet and tasty; the single Dollywood was somewhat less so but it may have been less ripe.
For someone who is OK with the texture, these fruits were all very edible. Unfortunately, my wife finds the texture unappealing. I’m going to try dehydrating the next batch both to reduce the gooeyness and concentrate the flavor.
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Try letting them sit on the counter till they wrinkle up some. The flavor concentrates a little. The texture will also turn to a thicker goo.
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Most are seedless. This seed was firm. And H118 is my only American Persimmon that flowered.
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Lee, I did a search of the Pomona archives to see if I couldn’t track down that 1980’s notice. I didn’t find it, but did notice a listing of persimmon varieties in 1999 where a member from NJ lists the Mohler persimmon variety with “Sadler” listed in brackets. Additional searches turned up the name of a member named Loren Sadler (1927-2011) of Elizabethtown, PA who had an unnamed persimmon variety. A post from a member living in Bloomington IL wrote in April of 1992 :
“For those who got to sample Loren Sadler’ s Dv persimmon in Geneva, I need to report that my 1990 grafts from him bore 12 fruit this year. They seem to have the same characteristics here as they do in PA, earlier and larger than Early Golden, sweeter than Morris Burton. The square flat fruit is a bit too soft but maintains its size when grown as a seedless fruit. I cannot verify yet that it will remain seedless here and maintain its size when without seeds. My grafts were placed next to a male tree as I wanted the seeds. Next spring I will place some grafts a mile from the closest male tree.”
Perhaps this Mr. Sadler was your source?
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Everything mostly checks out except its odd that they says the fruit is “too soft”. Id describe it as having a firm texture where many/most american persimmons are very goopy. When it hits the ground, it seldom splats despite also having very thin delicate skin. Otherwise, yes it is flat and sort of squarish.
Anyway, good detective work! You have to wonder how or why the name was switched: an intermediary named Mohler who distributed it more widely or just a typo?
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Do you anticipate:
(1) getting much dwarfing effect from 2-1 planting?
(2) slower growth because of the 2-1 planting?
Any other pros/cons from this over multigrafting?
I don’t have much available space so this is intriguing…
Yes, there is still a piece missing from this variety’s history.
John W. English (1917-2009), a former editor of Pomona, is the one writing that description. As I read his description : “earlier and larger than Early Golden, sweeter than Morris Burton”. I interpret these qualities as those that match those as when grown in PA. When he continues in a new sentence : "The square flat fruit is a bit too soft. . . " one could take this as possibly additional details that apply only to his first crop, or just a quality unique to his climate. Frank Henny (1939-2016) of Flemington, NJ is the one who had listed the variety name as Mohler (Sadler). Unfortunately all three men are beyond our asking for more details.
PPS : Another clue is a 2010 post by Jerry L. on the NAFEX Listserv : “I have (Martin) Mohler. It is early, large, nice color, soft, few seeds, black specs, delicious. Based on it’s performance here I recommend it.” Best match I find for such a person is Martin K. Mohler (1906-2003) of East Cocalico Township, Lancaster Co., PA.
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@fruitkismet … my one and only 2 in 1 planting of persimmons is more the result of not thinking things thru… rather than any kind of more fruit from less space planning.
I ate some rich tooie persimmons and planted 3 seeds in a 16 inch wide x 10 inch deep planter pot one fall… and left that planter in the edge of my woods all fall, winter and spring… and all 3 seeds germinated.
And yes… I should have spread those 3 seeds out some but (not thinking it thru all that well) lumped them all together.
I ended up removing the center one… and let the other two grow in that planter pot that first season.
Late summer they looked like this.
I left them in that planter thru that winter… and thought I might try separate them once good and dormant… but never did that… over winter the roots grew out the bottom of the container and it looked obvious to me that that 16x10 pot was going to be a mass of tangled persimmon roots.
So… i decided to just plant them as they were… 2 in 1… and see how that works out.
I have other fruit trees growing well here in 2 in 1 plantings… so i expected the persimmons to handle that well enough.
My sisters rich tooie persimmon trees … she has 2 of them in her side yard and they are both double trunk trees. Nice healthy mature double trunk trees that produce loads of fruit.
So my little grown from seed rich tooie seedlings… i planted them as they were… a very tight 2 in 1… and later that spring i grafted kassandra to the larger one and Nakitas gift to the smaller one. Both took.
I was not trying to conserve space… but perhaps this experiment will help answer the question for others on how well persimmons do or dont do in 2 in 1 plantings.
I hope they both do well… if i get a little less total fruit… but do end up getting fruit from both varieties… i will be happy with that.
TNHunter
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Hi Gene,
Interesting. I was pretty sure that I got it from the Mohler family, who were in PA. It could be that the Mohlers got it from Sadler. Just as likely is that I’ve been misremembering the source for years. At any rate, I’m very sure it was sometime in the 1980s.
What is the Dv in the name in the second paragraph.
I definitely agree that Mohler is earlier than Early Golden; also earlier than Morris Burton. I think that it tastes better than Morris Burton, but is not as sweet. To me, Morris Burton is just sweet, nothing else.
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