Kaki rootstock

General Fruit Growing
1

I hear a lot of discussion of virginiana and lotus rootstock but hardly ever any discussion of kaki as rootstock for kaki persimmons. Why not?

2

CF,

I got a couple Tam Kam grafted on Kaki rootstocks from a store bought persimmon fruit which were seeded. These two potted seedlings were 2 years old before I cleft grafted them. I have not trial them in ground yet because of all the infos indicated that they were not that cold hardy. BTW, no issue with germinating the seeds and it was an easy take on grafting them.

Tony

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3

I vaguely remember reading something about kaki’s intolerance to high soil salinity. I suspect 50% hybrid kaki X virginiana would make great rootstock for kaki persimmons. I know for a fact that grafting a hybrid onto a pure virginiana causes the tree to grow much more vigorously than an nongrafted similarly sized virginiana rootstock. In fact, my 100% virginiana cultivars are probably my slowest growing trees in my climate.

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4

What are the pros and cons of the different rootstocks for Kakis? Virginiana vs Lotus?

5

I found this blog entry informative, but it only compares Kaki to Lotus.

http://www.lecooke.com/le-cooke-blog/Kaki-vs-Lotus-Rootstock-for-Fuyu-Persimmon.html

I have struggled to find good data on how native persimmons as a rootstock compare in terms of size/vigor/etc to Lotus and Kaki.

6

I agree. Plus it should prevent delayed incompatibility issues like sudden persimmon death. I also believe hybrids might be able to dwarf American persimmon trees, which would help with harvesting.

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7

Producing the seeds with known parents is the main problem for me to not use the hybrids as rootstock. I could bag and hand pollinate for small amounts of seeds. If I were to just take open pollinated seeds I would end up with varying percentages of genetics. Also, factor in the possibility of 60 chromosome native males and things get very complicated. This would result in 30 chromosomes from the 90 chromosome female not combining.