Nikita #4 Persimmon

General Fruit Growing
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I haven’t found a ton of information about this one, but it seems to be spoken of well. Curious if anyone is growing it out and has any thoughts on it, especially vs Nikita’s Gift.

Rock Bridge Trees has a picture (I think via England’s) and description:

Nikita #4 Diospyros Persimmon
Nikita #4 Diospyros Persimmon1536×2048 496 KB

“This is a super productive persimmon with medium to large fruit. The fruit is longer than it is wide and the color is a reddish pumpkin color. Fruit ripens late in the season. The tree has thin wispy branches so the fruit pulls them down. Fruit is mildly astringent.”

It was reported here that the tree has seen -14 F at England’s.

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Cliff probably the only one that had a mature tree. I got a grafted one this year and probably won’t fruit until the 3rd leaf.

Tony

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Tony,
How do you manage late ripening persimmons? I used to have Nikita’sGift. It did not ripen until about now, mid Nov. You are a zone colder than me.

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I just pick them at the light yellow stage and let them ripen on the kitchen counter.

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You did not do anything to get rid of astringency? Like alcohol or put in a bag with apples, etc?

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Just a ripe banana in a plastic bag.

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Thanks!

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Did you remove it or did something happen to it?

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After 8 years, it died this spring. Not sure what was the cause. It grew fine last year.

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I had a horrible time with my NG. It dropped all fruitlets for several years. I got fruit for two years with a total of a dozen fruit.

I have no male persimmon in my yard.

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Trees of Antiquity:

Nikitskaya Bordovaya
Pollination Requirement: Self-Fertile

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Yes, self fertile. I had 9 fruit one year and 3 fruit another year to prove that claim.

But when hundreds of fruitlets dropped more years than they set fruit, I lost faith in the self fertile claim.

Too bad the tree died this spring. Maybe, it would have set more fruit for a 9 years old tree had it lived.

I was not the only one having a horrible time with NG dropping fruit.

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I will test it here, beginning 2024.

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Different location yields different result. I think. @ramv has no fruit drop issue but others do.

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Yes, no fruit drop and my favorite for taste.

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That’s rough. Eight years is a long time to invest to have it die randomly.

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Does Nikita’s Gift have a similar shape as Nikita #4 like above, with the wispy branches?

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I don’t think so. But the fruits are so heavy that I had to support the branches.

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@Buckeye Seems there is a contradiction between the photo and the description in your first post. The description from Cliff says longer than it is wide, but the fruits in the picture look flatter. Will the real Nikita #4 please stand up?

I feel like I saw a post from Cliff on facebook at some point that showed the fruit looking similar to the shape of the original NG, but not as red when ripe. But that is just a memory, so who knows.

I grafted it onto a 3 trunk seedling at my in laws place in WV. Since I only get out there once a month or so, it had to contend with a lot of competing shoots from the original seedling, but NK#4 made it and is the middle one in the picture. JT-02 (left side) and Rosseyanka (right side) grew taller, probably because there seemed to be a lot more competing growth on the middle one, but perhaps, like NG, NG #4 is on the smaller side as a tree.

NakitaInTheMiddle
NakitaInTheMiddle1920×2560 1.04 MB

This picture was from mid-July and there was probably 2 feet more growth since then, but some tip die back on NG #4 and JT-02 as well so we’ll see how this multi-grafted experiment fares long term.

I will be thrilled to get any fruit off the tree next year, but if I do I’ll certainly post any observations here.

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@zendog Thank you for the information! You are right about the description. Someone on FB also stated it is slightly cold hardier than NG, but I’m not sure if that’s substantiated anywhere.