First year in ground and is only about 7’ tall but had hundreds of fruit and hundreds already dropped.
I’m wondering what an experienced persimmon grower would do with this branch? It’s still pretty loaded in there and I’m worried about when they get larger and heavier. Thanks
A- Leave it. Stake the branch.
B- Thin the fruit
Or both?
I can’t see the whole tree or even the whole branch, but my inclination is perhaps both of those plus shortening the branch if prudent.
But then, those look like PCNA fruit that are just verging on mature enough to finish coloring up to palatability off of the tree. At this point I might not be able to bring myself to thin fruit that could be picked in a few days.
When most of the undertone is yellow/orange, I’d start picking some, prioritizing the ones closer to the ends of the branches.
In the meantime giving it some makeshift support.
Here’s a pic of the tree. It had a lower branch I trimmed off when planting in ground late winter that was taking dominance.
Those colored persimmons I believe are sunburned. It happened last year too on a few I didn’t protect from the sun. I normally pick the persimmons around Thanksgiving here.
I’d definitely support any branch that seems heavily weighted. The alternative is to risk catastrophic damage.
Given your location, picking in late November seems VERY late. How many seasons does this represent? For comparison, I pick an in-ground PCNA here in Z7A RI in late Oct / early Nov.
I used a wrought iron plant hanger and it seems to work pretty good for now. I got the tree about 3 seasons back in a 15g and put in a 48g redwood box. There wasn’t a lot but they were very tasty. I’ll show a pic below. Maybe in ground they will sweeten up a little sooner and better. I think your correct though it was around early Nov. according to the dates on the pictures.
This was last year.
In your climate, you can fully ripen the fruit. I picked mine maybe 80% ripe and finished them indoors.
Thanks again. Before those get ripe we get them from the farmers market and let them ripen inside too. Especially the Hachiya. Works out good.
Now I’ll have to figure out how to bag them to keep the birds off. They peck at them then bugs will come in. Maybe I’ll try netting the whole tree this year.
