One day of very early but heavy snow. All leaves of my NG are on the ground. The fruit are hanging on tightly.
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My NG out of a paper bag today. Deep red.
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They are soft. I cut up one. The texture is soft but not gooey like American persimmon. It still tasted faintly astringent.
It is not intensely sweet or aromatic as Prok. I also like mildly sweet and crnchy Asian persimmons. NG offers neither. Overall a disappointment.
The other two went back in the bag.
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It took a while for mine to produce consistently! Hang in there! Mine went in the ground as a small tree in 2013 or 2014. It is now 14 feet high (estimate) and produced nearly 400 fruit this year. I used to complain about its lack of productivity.
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Let them ripen a little longer. Hopefully you’ll feel differently second time around! Mine are excellent!
I tried this method a couple years ago. While they came our sweet, I felt like the NG lost a lot of the American persimmon overtones in flavor. I asked on this board years ago, and someone said they should be ok on the tree until about 20F.
I planted mind almost 2 years ago. I appreciate the positive outlook and hope that it may produce well in the somewhat near future! Do you have additional varieties to pollinate? 400 seems like a lot of fruit. I know it’s supposed to be “self fertile” and as a hybrid of Asian /American I can believe it. I am thinking about planting a Prok or Celebrity to have some variety.
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My thinking is that a NG’s fruit drop issue is a combination of a tree’s lack of maturity and lack of cross pollination.
The first 3 fruit were picked on 10/29 and put in a bag until now 11/9.
I picked another fruit today and put in bag. The remaining four will be on a tree as long as possible.
@RUenvsci - I hope you are right about NG being excellent. Right now, mine was not that good.
@mamuang, be patient. Here’s the progression of production from my first NG:
Planted 2013 or 2014
2015 - 2016, no or negligible production
2017- 14
2018- 77
2019- 146
2020- 347
I need to prune the height for next year, so production should be less.
Regarding flavor, mine usually aren’t ripe until December. I’m in NJ. So maybe it’s too early… I also hear sometimes that first year or two of any fruit is usually subpar. I felt that way towards my Korea and Steiermark- this is year two of those for me.
Regarding pollination, I have no males nearby that I know of. However all of my hybrids appear to be seeded.
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Picked my Nikita’s Gift today after they were through 6” of snow 3 weeks ago and 21/22 F for about 6 hours Tues night.
They are soft and darker red now.
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@mamuang when do you think it’s safe to assume NG is done with fruit dropping? We are at end of June and I’m left with 21 fruit so far. Started out with 50+. This is my first year seeing a fruit on this 4 year tree.
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Susa,
Glad to see you back. To be honest, I can’t recall. All I remember was that it continued to drop everyday until all were gone, hundreds of them. The year before last I had 9-10 fruit. Last year was 3.
This year, several lower branches were dead. The upper branches have flowers but not sure how many fruit will stay on.
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Thanks. Sounds like better prepared for disappointment.
Get a pollinator grafted onto your tree. That should help in the future.
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I have Saijo and IKKJ grafted on the tree but they are not flowering. But I have seen a yard with persimmon trees few blocks away. Maybe that’s close enough.
Saijo and IKKJ are both females so they wouldn’t pollinate NG. Maybe the neighborhood tree has male flowers though. Do you know what kind it is and if the fruit are seeded? We have some kaki around the neighborhood, but I think they’re all females.
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Not sure what varieties they are. Which ones are the male persimmons?
The most common male flower producing tree that’s available commercially is Chocolate. There are some obscure ones out there too, and random seedlings could be males.
Hey Susu, nice to hear from you again, hope all is well.
Sorry to intervene here, but I had a question about this also. My graft of either chocolate or coffee cake persimmon had the obvious three flowers bunched together, making it a male, right? Those male flowers are growing into persimmons as I write this. Is this normal or am I missing something? Otherwise, the tree is covered in fruit and I haven’t noticed any dropping yet. Looking back on this thread, it seems a lot of the fruit dropped last year in July, so we’ll see.
thanks guys.
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Wow! This is very interesting. Both Coffeecake and Chocolate can produce males. I’ve only observed 2 types of flowers on my Coffeecake and the males withered away this year and last. My Cheong Pyong appears to have 3 different kinds of flowers. Males, females, and some sort of intermediate flower that is forming smaller fruit than the females. Maybe that’s what’s happening with yours.
Female Cheong Pyong fruit
Fruit from intermediate flowers
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