maybe give it a hard pruning to reset it’s internal clock might fix that issue have male flowers that leave your fruit seedy…
I cant find a non astringent persimmon for zone 5, so i must buy the other types. like Makita’s gift or Elmo and Early Golden.
Do you mean Nikita’s Gift?
You may need to go with an 100% american persimmon, rather than a hybrid like Nikita’s gift. I think @mamuang had a lot of dieback in zone 6 with it.
I was think about that very thing, some nurseries say it’s a zone 6, while others say zone 5, i think i should plant it in such a place that wind and frost is less likely, like behind my house and on a small rise in my yard, the prevailing winds will not hit the tree, the frost will be less intense due to the elevation and the sun hits it fully in winter. But that is my assumptions and it’s too late now because i paid for it and it arrives tomorrow. any opinions about my reasoning? also thanks for this warning now i am sure to find a safe place to plant it.
I’m not sure that full winter sun is actually the solution. The lowest lows of winter likely happen during the night, not when the sun is out. If you have a South wall on your house, particularly in front of a window (which leaks a more heat than an insulated wall), that could be a good spot. The South facing wall isn’t to get sun during the winter, but to get more sun during the summer. When that isn’t available, you could use a E or W wall, but the issue then is that it might not get enough sun to fruit much.
This is the same thing I do with figs. Here, in the open, they will generally completely die to the ground. If you have it well positioned you can sometimes get away with only partial dieback. This winter was warm enough (A low of +12-15F) that even some of the figs in the open were fine.
These figs have a window in between them and the one on the right has a built-in AC unit next to it, neither of which you can see much of in the pic, due to the strong growth.
I have some figs in front of a South and West facing stone wall (a retaining wall, not the side of a house) which have died back as badly or worse than the figs in the open. I don’t think that putting them up against a non-heat producing wall helps.
I did plant one (at a different site) where the hvac system vents, under the theory that it will be running on the coldest nights of the year. That one needs a bit more time for me to evaluate.
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You want JT-02, not Nikita’s Gift.
I think Bob is right. There are two issues in winter. One issue is absolute cold. For Asian persimmons, death comes somewhere between roughly 0 F and -5 F, depending on the variety. Americans are much tougher, but there are no true non-astringents. Hybrids fall somewhere in the middle, with a lot of variation. But -5 F or lower will kill many of them – and again there isn true non-astringent.
The second issue is early emergence from dormancy. The above estimates apply to dormant trees. When a tree leaves dormancy, it becomes much more sensitive. For a growing tree, 25 F can be fatal. So at ll cost, you want to protect your trees from an early emergence. Planting them near a house, facing south or west, warms them enough to ensure that a decent cold snap will kill them.
There’s an old trick in New England of planting apple on eastern slopes. When the sun is low in winter, the hill shades the trees. When the sun is high in spring and summer, the sun hits the trees. This strategy minimizes winter damage. If you have a similar location with a low barrier (e.g., a big rock) on the west side, plant on the east side of that barrier.
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Well i guess i cant grow it here, the tree is on Virginia root stock if that helps the tree survive zone 5, i did get -20 in my area that can last two weeks. i paid 38 bucks for the tree, i hope it beats the odds, and I’ll follow your advice. i do have a place like you described where it can be planted. Thanks
some good insight, i didn’t know about the New England trick. Apricots will benefit from that too. Thanks.
I did something similar, planting it a bit North of my house (not right up against it, but 10-15 feet away) with several apricots. I didn’t notice much difference, but delaying their bloom even a bit could make a difference in some years.
That is good. Lotus would have hurt your chances a lot.
Recent years have been warmer and warmer. Now, it seems that it occasionally gets down to 0F. 10-15 years ago when I started planting fruit it got down closer to -10F a couple years. And if I look back in the historical records, I see some really cold temps, -18F I think.
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I have a Moorpark Apricot not wake up until late spring, it was on the east side of my house up against the wall all winter, in a giant pot awaiting it’s final placement and it was there for two years, i almost got rid of it thinking it was dead, but it is full of life and sill in a pot. it only got sun for a few hours a day in the spring.
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