Persimmon Spring Leaf Times

General Fruit Growing
#1

So I posted a Persimmon Cold Hardiness Resource topic for us to post our winter cold test & experience lists.
But, Another list we in the midwest especially need, is a list on spring leaf out times. Especially for us midwesterners, we need those cultivars that leaf out the latest to avoid some of the late freeze damage since that is so common here in the midwest, inland or also in high elevation locations!

Are any of yall up to the fun of compiling your trees and which are earliest versus latest to leaf out in your orchard. Include dates or days (and order of leafout) so we can see how many days later your latest one is from your earliest to break dormancy. And please include zone and state.

This will be a very useful resource for us all! Perhaps we can keep it going for a few years and gain great info! We probably need to do this with other fruits as well. :slight_smile:

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Persimmon Cold Hardiness Resource
#2

Thanks, that’s a very good idea. Mature trees open leaves gradually, and even if some of the 1st’s batch(es) get burnt the trees as whole tend to recover, in my observation/climate, at least.
The bigger issue has been with seedlings, i lost an entire batch 3 years ago to light late frosts that browned their leaves. Took me 2 years to get some growing again and just planed them in soil. Is there any way to delay their leaves coming out? shading, or something.

#3

Last spring my first to leaf out wild Tennessee DV persimmon seedling looked like this on March 28.

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Heavy bud swell

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It looked like this on April 8th… and I grafted Kassandra hybrid to it then.

I had other wild DV seedlings in my orchard that were much later to reach that leaf out stage… Prok was the last one I grafted…

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April 25.

#4

I’ve noticed my trees in pots leaf out faster than in ground trees, on average. Selecting for the later leafing seedlings provides you additional resiliency to shifting weather patterns into the future.

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#5

The problem with compiling useful budbreak data, is that budbreak in persimmons is strongly influenced by the rootstock. Since there are no clonal rootstocks, seedlings are used. Different seedlings used as rootstock grafted with the same variety can leaf out at very different times. There are also casual observations that higher grafts leaf out later than low grafts.

For late frost prone areas, it’s probably a good idea to graft the same variety high on different seedlings and keep the one(s) with the latest budbreak.

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