I picked my Prok around Nov 20 but they had turned yellow several weeks before that. My friend has a Yates. He always picks his in Oct and they are fully ripe.
I think my Prok may ripen sooner after this. Last year was its first fruiting year.
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Prok starts to ripen here in mid/late Sept. I have to believe that coastal ME would be a month later, which could be too late. I get GDD = ~2370 a/o last 9/01, ~2800 a/o 9/30.
Separately, I’ve found Prok to be somewhat bland. I’ve read people attribute blandness to lack of heat. If true, it would only be worse in ME.
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Hi all, just saw this thread… I am in zone 6b NJ. Accounting for polar vortexes, my Nikita’s gifts have had no issues at all. Not accounting for polar vortex, Tamopan has done well for me and others I know- which is surprising. I also have Zima Khurma, Kasandra, sestronka, steiermark, and Korea. All from Cliff. I’ve had no problems with these at all and they’ve been in the ground since 2015ish. Fuyu varieties also do well for me but they did back during polar vortexes. I think timing of the cold is key. I compare Cliff’s climate to mine for comparison. Usually they are pretty similar- but I think he gets more volatile springs than I do which I think can have a huge effect on whether certain varieties survive. I think it’s for that reason that steiermark, Korea, Tamopan, and fuyu varieties do well for me.
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Forgot to add that I have a Saijo that died back significantly maybe three years ago and didn’t fare well at all during polar vortexes. I dug it up and placed it in a pot for the last couple of years- leaving it outside not really caring if it dies completely. Strange enough it has done well the last couple of years! However I do feel a polar vortex would wipe it out completely.
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@RUenvsci
How close you are to the ocean? Just wonder if such a large body of water would play a role in moderating your weather.
NC-10 is usually dropping ripe fruits by 10 Sept. most years.
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Early Jewel H-118 ripens fully in cool puget sound region of western WA. Flavor is excellent. It may be a good alternative to Prok.
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I’ve read other scattered reports of Prok being bland, you’re probably the third. I haven’t yet pinned down a pattern, but also haven’t seen enough info to rule out lack of heat. I could definitely see that being a likely cause. There are two aspects to heat as well: GDD and high temps. I wonder if it has a higher threshold temp for good flavor development than for growth and ripening. You get more GDD in Rhode Island than I do here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I get more really hot days over the summer since I’m in an urban setting and not right on the water. Either way, Downeast is not an improvement on either front. I’ll have to see how they turn out here. @SMC_zone6 has them growing about halfway between you and I and seems to like the results.
That being said, I think my friend would take bland ripe persimmons over fruits that never ripen.
The other factor I wonder about is genetic variability. I’ve read that kaki persimmons are prone to making sports that are hard to detect visually, but can impact taste, ripening, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if D virginiana was similar in that regard, and there’s more than one strain of Prok in circulation.
@ramv I’ve had my eyes on that and Yates as well. I placed my bet on Prok for the time being knowing I can top-work if it flops.
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Big fan of how prok tastes in my conditions. I prefer the taste of hybrids more, but prok has definitely been a top-quality persimmon for me. I’ll add, though, that my dad prefers 100-46 because of the lingering astringency it can have. He feels like that gives it more depth of flavor.
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Agree with @SMC_zone6 that Prok here (our orchard is 45 mins apart) is not bland at all.
We don’t have really hot summer, either. My friend’s Yates (15 mins away from me) is tensely sweet as well.
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I agree with you on heat. I have a friend north of me and inland, 1/2 zone colder in winter. But his fruit trees bloomed 2 weeks ahead of mine.
I’m in southern Bergen county. I tend to get NYC weather. Jersey shore is warmer with less snow.
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i bought one in the photo from EL and im in zone 8b it died over winter it was potted when i received they never sell bare root. listed as zone 6-9 im not so sure. it didnt even make it in my area. i never replaced it.
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That’s interesting, because although Prok ripens in that same window here, so do almost all the wild trees. I wonder if chromosomal differences have any particular relation to ripening times.
Certainly in comparison to any part of New England I have plenty of heat in zone 7 North Carolina, but Prok (as well as the other 3-4 very large-fruited named varieties I’ve fruited) have been rather bland in in comparison to Early Golden and some of the wild trees here. Some years I’ve liked Prok quite well, though.
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My 5-6 year old tree produced roughly 100 fruits in 2019 and 80 fruits in 2021. That seemed a lot. Is there any chance that thinning the crop would improve the quality of what remains?
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Just wanted to post just a snippet on my experience with the cold hardiness or hardiness in general of virginiana persimmon. We get great heat here in the summer which allows persimmon to get some great growth, but winters can be tricky. We hit -29F this winter and the high was maybe -12F for 24 hours. A good number of my persimmon are planted in a lower area, so it could well have been colder there. It’s a good test of hardiness.
I don’t have long term experience, but with the bad winter last year, my grafted trees last year that got nipped back were killed from the tops (second growth) working down. Some of these trees were 9’ tall although more whippy in form. In some cases, the second growth was totally dead. Not sure if it was the second growth necessarily, or just the way the temps. In some cases, the regrowth occurred from the lower first growth (and for at least one Dollywood, only one bud from near the original graft point woke up). I think it wasn’t just a diameter thing because I had some really good/thick diameter second growth wood (maybe 1/2"-3/4"?) that was killed back. So here, at least for winter hardiness, I prefer to graft early to get some good growth.
Also, @SMC_zone6 had mentioned this, but I think it bears repeating. For me, seed started trees have been much more reliable/successful for me. Either seeds started directly in the ground, or in cells that are immediately planted before the tap starts to poke out the bottom. I have high success with those. Seed started trees that I leave in a pot too long don’t take off as well, or even languish for years. I had no die back on my seed started seedlings last winter. It was a totally different story for purchased seedlings from Missouri and Kansas. Not sure where their trees are sourced from. Though none of them were outright killed, many were killed back from the tip to make grafting too problematic/risky.
Here are some pics to illustrate that experience. The first one encapsulates things perfectly. In the foreground, is a Missouri persimmon seedling planted 2020 which got killed back down and which I couldn’t graft this year (and this one was the healthiest of all the MO seedlings). It’s regrowing. All the Missouri seedlings had identical damage and were unusable this year. In the background to the right, is a seedling I started in 2019, grafted this year, and is currently at about 6’ tall. The 2019 seed starts in the background row were as tall or taller than the Missouri seedlings by the end of 2020.
Here is winter damage to a KS seedling. Quick and the Dead hole through it. It hardly knows that a hole has blown clear through it. I didn’t look it over close to try to make sense of it, and didn’t care to. The tree is perfectly alive though.
I think for those of us in the colder locations, sourcing seeds or seedlings from the farthest northern locations should be a consideration. The following pic would be at the extreme of non-cold hardy. A 60-chromosome southern persimmon. They generally winter kill back to the ground each winter here.
I still need to take an inventory of which of my grafted varieties suffered damage, and how much. WS8-10 was a winner though.
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This is what some of those hybrids look like right now after -17. Gora Goverla
Pamjat Pasenkova Chuchupaka Gora Roman Kosh jt-02
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That is great @ctduckhunter !! Some of mine are really starting to take off too! Hopefully we can preserve these!! 
It’s really weird how this works! For instance I have had my Nikita die back 2 winters of the last 5, at only about -3 or -5, and only the fact that my graft union is burried saved me, but this past winter undamaged at -12F, yet someone else out this way their big mature tree was totally killed. I want to graft low and then bury one plant of each of these potentially borderline hybrids like Gora and Sovietski and Rossey x Saijo and the hardy kaki types for a safety net.
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My Ichi Ki Kei Jiro from EL that was planted in 2015 died in February’s polar vortex. Our temps got to a low of -15F. I did have some sizable shoots come out above the graft, but they were knocked off on an extra-windy summer day. 
I also had a newly planted Great Wall, also from EL and grafted on virginiana rootstock, that died. I’m still kicking myself for not protecting it better. But on the positive side, the rootstock is healthy and can be grafted to a hybrid scion… just trying to decide which one.