About 7 years.
2 Likes
These fruits were collected when hard. They soften up during storage on crates. In this stage that they turn bordeaux.
3 Likes
I had ripening issues with NG in the past. Leave them on the tree as long as you can, and when picked, put them in a closed bag. I found that many never truly ripened when left out in the open or in crates. When ripe, the color is amazing!
5 Likes
My Garretson took a long time to produce fruit, but now it is one of my favorite trees. NC-1 and H-118 are also finally producing and I can’t wait. They all took a long time, but they are some of my favorite fruit. All Americans.
John S
PDX OR
4 Likes
Two trees I grafted to Smith’s Best/Giboshi in 2016 both fruited last year.
2 Likes
@cousinfloyd Wow. I’ve grown Smith’s Best two different times in different locations here in 7B Md and both times it took forever to bear on what I’m guessing was DV rootstock. I’m calling “bearing” as holding fruit to maturity. t had fruit well prior to ten years but it would drop the whole unripe crop for three or four years prior to holding it to ripeness at around ten years. Did your fruit hang to ripeness?
1 Like
Yes, the fruit ripened for me. I’m sure there was some drop, but I thought there was plenty of fruit that fully ripened on the tree for the size of the tree. There’s fruit again on one of the trees this year – I haven’t looked closely at the other one – but maybe not quite as much as last year, even though the tree has a grown a little more. A third Smith’s Best graft from 2016 that was reduced that first year to a fraction of an inch by a twig girdler has fruit on it this year that I fully expect to ripen.
My big disappoint in terms of kakis taking a long time to fruit is Saijo. I think every other kaki I’ve grafted has either fruited within 1-3 years after grafting, mostly 2 years. (So far that includes 20th century, Tam Kam, Wase Fuyu, Smith’s Best, Tecumseh, Pen, Nikita’s gift…) I grafted Saijo in two places in 2014, and neither tree has given me any fruit yet. One of them set a tiny number of fruits for its size (~4" diameter and maybe 18’ tall) this year, but I think they’ve all aborted. That makes Saijo about 4 years (and counting) slower to begin bearing than my other kakis.
2 Likes
Saijo was my best performer… I think it depends more on maturity of the tree. My saijo took a significant beating this past winter, and in other winters. However, it would come back nicely. It produced so much fruit last year that it should have been thinned bc the quality suffered. I purchased the tree in maybe 2014 or 2015, which puts it at maybe 7-8 years old when you consider it was likely grafted a few years prior to purchase.
2 Likes
Just to follow up on my previous report, the two trees I grafted to Saijo in 2014 still haven’t fruited. The one tree, the larger of the two and by far the largest of all my kaki persimmon trees, that set a tiny number of fruits appears to have aborted all of those.
Meanwhile I checked the other Smith’s Best tree, one of the three I grafted in 2016, the one that had a smaller crop last year, and it has a very nice, full crop this year, quite a bit better than other Smith’s Best tree that had the bigger crop last year. Not to exaggerate the difference between the different astringent kaki varieties which wasn’t very big, but I particularly enjoyed the taste of (unpollinated) Smith’s Best last year.
3 Likes
At what point do you pick Miss Kim? I’ve got about 5 on my tree that look orange. Do you pick them as soon as they color, or is there some other indicator? I’m a bit nervous that something will eat them soon.
Sorry, I have not had it for a few years now and can’t remember exactly. But for astringent ones I usually let them hang until they are strongly orange colored.
2 Likes
6 Likes
Tony would pick all those, Bob. He said about this plate of persimmons the same color level as yours or, more:
Here’s @tonyOmahaz5 photo:
10/14/2020
Tony, what’s all that spaceship stuff you got there to ripen them with?
5 Likes
Bob,
Agree with @Barkslip. Yours have more color than Tony. You may want to keep it on your counter for a few days before eating
1 Like
Yeah, I agree , Tony has a lot of persimmons with a lot less colorthan yours. If Tony’s are sour green, he’ll pick them. Tony also picks with diluted orange, color.
It looks like something already took a peck at that persimmon. Thanks for posting a picture of this variety. There aren’t many out there of Miss Kim. It’s amazing you’re successfully growing kaki in New England.
1 Like
Nothing special. My wife bought for me a fruit flies protector/cover from the Asian Market and the shining stuff is an aluminum foil wrap to prevent leakage from the ripen fruits if I forget to eat them in time.
1 Like
Perfect.
Thank you, Tony.
Dax
1 Like
Thanks- I picked some back in September and one of my daughters asked “Why are you picking green fruit?” Evidently some shades of dark green can look Orange to me (light green can look yellow).
I picked another last week which has started to soften a bit on the counter. I’m not sure how soft I should wait for though. The H-120 American persimmons I picked in September needed to be translucent jelly-like before they lost (most) of their astringency,
Just after writing the above, I decided to try it. It was actually a bit softer than I thought and ready. I guess the skin is a bit thicker for Miss Kim, than H-120.
17.5 brix and pretty tasty:
I ended up counting only 4 remaining fruit, so something may have swiped one. So, I picked 3 of the 4 (leaving one, in case I made a mistake…).
Inertia made the decision for me. Miss Kim did shade out everything else on the tree, so it is now a 3-4’ tall rootstock with Miss Kim on top.
I checked it over and don’t see any bites in any of the 3. I do see some dimples. Maybe healed bug feeding sites? None appear to be open wounds.
Miss Kim seems one of the hardiest. I grafted it back in 2015, so there have been some winters at least a bit below 0F in that time (not sure if we got the -9F before or after that, but I think we had at least a -4F).
But, Miss Kim is astringent and I really prefer crunchy persimmons. I keep failing with non-astringents at my site, so I’ve started planting some of the hardier ones (Tam Kam (which took -4F successfully before being mostly killed by -9F), Ichi Ki Kei Jiro, and Gwang Yang) at rental properties which are about 10-20 minutes South of me, closer to the ocean. But in the one winter I’ve had them there, it has been pretty mild, something I wouldn’t mind continuing for a while, as +10F means even some figs can get by unprotected.
7 Likes
