Persimmon protection, Saijo persimmon hardiness, and deer

Beautiful. 99 Ranch in the Portland area doesn’t have them :frowning:

I’ve got my brother checking.

2 Likes

They’re gone in 99 Ranch market. Then I bought a lot more in Hmart market last week. Hopefully they still available there. @murky

2 Likes

Are those in the same packaging, or bulk?

2 Likes

No. They’re super inexpensive $.68 per pound
Some fruits may too soft (overripe). They’re all the same coffee cake but I feel the others from 99 Ranch tasting more delicious. Don’t know why, maybe because more expensive.


And A couple of them were not pollinated. They have lighter color and seedless, a little astringent but still okay to eat.

4 Likes

They are very tasty. I bought a ton thanks to Vincent. All of mine appear to be pollinated.

3 Likes

I just ate small Allegheny and keep the seeds separately for seedling. Very tasty fruit , let you write the report for everyone. And finished 6 coffee cake persimmons right after by myself. It’s wonderful day. I don’t know where is the perfect place we can live and planting all fruit trees . Pawpaw, persimmon, pluots, Peaches, nectarines, pineapple guava, loquat… maybe Woodburn city about 30 miles of south of Portland Oregon. Warmer than Seattle and still raining to keep everything green.

2 Likes

I think I found the same ones at a local Whole Foods. Not as cheap as what you got yours for but nothing expensive. I bought all 7 fruit that were available. The one I sampled was nonastringent and tasty, but I will let the remainder soften a little more before eating. The one shown had 5 seeds inside.

5 Likes

Great, keeps all the seeds for seedling Andrew.

1 Like

I planted a coffee cake tree this year. It grew well. Hopefully, it survives here!

2 Likes

So you also need Chocolate one for pollinating.
I will seedling mine. All offspring should be new varieties.

1 Like

Yes, I planted chocolate and grafted another pollinator variety. Maybe more pollinator varieties next year if I can secure scions. I don’t mind seeds in the fruit. It appears pollination can also improve fruit qualities in varieties that aren’t pollination variant. I found this interesting abstract a bit ago about a PCNA variety benefiting from pollination. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.researchgate.net/publication/324540803_Effect_of_androecious_genotypes_as_pollinizers_on_‘Soshu’_persimmon_fruit_quality/amp

We live in a colder zone so I plant most kakis next to the house to shield them from cold winter wind.

It’ll be interesting to see how the seedlings grow for you. Maybe you will get something with more desirable qualities.

2 Likes

The pollinated coffee cake (or is it chocolate) from local Asian store - Hmart is very good. I think the flavor is more complex than Hachiya-- though Hachiya is still one of my favorites for just taste.

1 Like

I bought a handful of not quite orange Fuyu at $3/lb to hold me over. I’m jealous of the folks getting the PVNA persimmons locally.

2 Likes

@PharmerDrewee, those look amazing. Maybe I’ll have some like that in 5 years…:grinning:

1 Like

They tasted great once they softened a tad —very juicy. I gave 2 coworkers some to try and they fell in love and asked me where they can get more. They had never eaten any sort of persimmon before.

I didn’t think that persimmons took that many years to fruit. I hope mine doesn’t if I can even keep it alive that long. The ones I planted last year were 3-4 foot tall whips and are all about 7-8 feet tall this year. A few even fruited this year.

1 Like

I ordered a little bare root Saijo persimmon on Spring 2018 and it was almost died only a couple inches above the grafting union survived and grew a few inches, still in container. Last Summer (September 19) I gave them some fertilizer (16.16.16). Amazing it’s pushed out over a foot long on every branches and started blooming. Too bad it’s too late for the fruiting season now. I will do the same for my persimmon trees in early Spring next year. Hopefully they will bear some fruits sooner. Its pictures of flowers below.

5 Likes

@Vincent_8b, I think persimmons really respond to fertilizer. Yours is evidence of that. I fertilized mine during their first two years, then stopped. According to some readings (I forget which - maybe Lee Reich’s book), if you give them too much nitrogen fertilizer, they will set fruit then all of the fruit will fall off.

On little persimmon trees, this is a bare root Chocolate persimmon tree that I planted this Spring. The little thing was only about a foot tall, and was covered with flowers but not leaves. Then it turned brown and I assumed it was dead. In July or August, it leafed out again and now looks pretty good. So I cleaned up around it, mulched, and put up a better deer cage last week. I will add 1-inch plastic mesh some time this winter, because this is the main deer area and they will pull leaves through the steel mesh once they become more bushy.

One thing I noted on fertilizing for Saijo. My soil tests low for Calcium and Magnesium. I was using lime for the calcium. However, the Saijo leaves were pale, yellowish green. When I fertilized with Epsom Salts, the leaved became greener, larger, and thicker. The NIkita’s Gift, on the same D. lotus rootstock, did not have that problem. Now, each year before it leafs out, I give that tree a dose of Epsom salts, about 1/4 Epsom salts in 2 gallons of water.

1-chocolate%20persimmon

4 Likes

Very good information, too much fertilizers is not very good for trees.
I didn’t use much fertilizers before, some years almost nothing. My persimmons don’t have any fruits especially this year. I will use not much some slow release fertilizer 13.13.13 Osmocote (8 months) next year. Thank you for information, great to know Daniel.

1 Like

I planted my persimmons where there used to be 3 large (60+ year old) pine trees. The soil is very rich in organic matter, quite acidic and blueberries do very nicely there.

I’ve fed my persimmons nothing but home made compost for 2 years. The leaves are lush and the trees have grown a lot (atleast 2 feet) each year. Acidic soil seems to agree with persimmons quite well. My saijo is around 10 feet tall and grown well all round. Its just in its second season in ground. (it was less than 6 feet when I got it)
NG has grown much less but is a heavy producer.

1 Like

Dolomite lime may be the answer for you. It is a non-chemically treated lime that contains both calcium and magnesium. It has a very mild buffering effect on the soil, and does not buffer above pH of 7.0 It generally takes a lot of dolomite to get the pH above 6.5
It is not an immediate solution to cal-mag problems, but it can make them less pronounced over time. It is a very popular lime for container plants as well. I prefer a 4:1 ratio of dolomite to eggshell flour, with Epsom salts when needed. Bone meal can be used in place of egg shell at 1/4 to 1/2 the rate, if more acid soil is preferred.

1 Like