Persimmons 2021

What all’s looking good in your yards this year? Any varieties that look particularly promising? Is anyone grafting anything interesting? A lot of mine look like they’re fruiting for the first time this year. I say look like because they might all drop before I get to sample them.
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100-46: This one seems particularly precocious. It’s holding onto over a dozen fruit as a 2nd year tree while a Prok quadruple the size seems to have dropped most of its hundreds of flowers.


Saijo dropped a fair number of flowers but is holding onto a couple dozen. They are by far the smallest fruit as of now. Hopefully they’ll catch up some. These look like they’ll be persimmon berries at the rate they’re going.

20th Century is ambitious as always. It’s a graft from 2019. I thought I plucked all the flowers to help it grow more but I still found a couple fruit that formed. The tree grew very little last year but had better vigor this spring. No second flush of growth so far even though many other trees are showing new shoots.

Miss Kim is holding onto some fruit. Hopefully the fruit are tasty. I planted it as a reliable selection for my area because of its reputed cold hardiness.

Nishimura Wase is holding onto perhaps a hundred fruit. I planted it for fun since it’s not known for being too cold hardy. Hope it proves me wrong or produces enough to be worthwhile before the next polar vortex hits.

Tipo is holding onto perhaps a dozen fruit. This one’s from Bass. I think he mentioned the original tree this one was propagated from was growing near him and survived temps well below zero.

Picudo is by far the most fruitful as of now. It’s also my most vigorous tree at 15 feet after 3 years in the ground. It’ll likely finish this summer a couple feet taller since it’s still actively growing in height. I’ve chopped several feet off of it each year since planting.

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Those are looking great! I’m just getting started growing persimmons. I wanted to graft Prok, but didn’t find any scion. And my 100-46 grafts appeared to take, but there weren’t very well developed buds on the scion. Maybe they’ll push next year, but it doesn’t look promising. Similar issues with H-118 & D-128.

My successes include Meader, H-128 (could be H-120, my source wasn’t certain), Rosseyanka, Saijo, CA Maru, Fuyu and Suruga. Not sure yet if my grafts of Izu, Nikita’s Gift, Zima Khurma and Kassandra will take off.

I purchased trees of H63a, Chocolate, Coffeecake, and Giant Fuyu. I also have a couple Jiro trees.

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Nice looking Andrew.
Your trees are considerably further along than mine.
I have fruit on Saijo, Nikita’s gift, H118 and H63A this year. H63A for the first time. H118 has dropped nearly all its fruit from the heat wave we got. Nishimura Wase had one fruit that unfortunately dropped.
I have to check my California Maru and Zenji Maru trees. They had flowers earlier – most likely they dropped.

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Andrew, I see something in your future, scratching your head not knowing what to do with so many. Looking excellent.

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Wow thats super exciting!!! @PharmerDrewee the Picudo you shared with me it seems to be among the most vigorous kaki on my grafts taking! Its exciting to see your fruit! It seems to me that kaki don’t graft to DV rootstock quite as easily as hybrids and americans do. So i might start using hybrids as a interstem for some kaki grafting to see what that does. But Picudo took as good as hybrids in the same conditions. I sure hope you get to try some fruit!! :slight_smile:

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@PaulinKansas6b Make sure to plant it not so close to your house. Picudo looks like it could grow into a small shade tree or maybe a large one if it can keep going. That’s an interesting observation on graft compatibility. I kind of want to start some hybrids from seed to use as rootstock to see if there’s any difference than the standard virginiana.

@AaronN Let’s see your grafts! Most of the ones I did this year are on single rootstocks in pots but some are multigrafted onto larger rootstocks I had already in the ground.

@ramv Our hot summer really pushes the persimmons along.

@aap You’ll probably hear me complaining about all the persimmons I don’t have time to peel for drying soon enough. I’m already there with raspberries, blackberries, and soon figs once they start to ripen.

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Hybrid seedling rootstock is a great idea!!! Thanks for your other thoughts! :slight_smile:
It will be fun to see how it does here in my climate. I plan to cover everything for the first few years annd also bury some grafts so you never know perhaos one day we might get some true picudo root sucker propagation going!

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@PharmerDrewee how old is your Nishimura Wase tree? I planted a potted one last year but no flowers or fruits yet. It’s almost 6 foot tall so I’m hoping next year.

It was planted in 2019 as a 1 year old graft. Mine isn’t quite 6 feet tall yet but is very spreading in growth. It flowered last year but a late frost made all the flowers drop.

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This year I have new persimmon varieties with immature fruit on them.
All trees that fruited in prior years have fruit on them. Except H118 which lost all fruit in the heat wave. But overall it appears to be a good year for persimmons

First the bad. H118. Dozens of fruit all burned up during the heat.

California Maru has one fruit! It also produces several male flowers as did Zenji Maru

Rojo Brillante has over a 100 fruit on a small tree. I had to prop up branches as they are dangerously close to breaking.

I have fruit on H63A for the first time.

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Looking good, Ram. I grafted A-118 this year. No H-118 yet. That Rojo Brillante looks crazy. Mine was damaged by a late freeze last year and is in recovery. It’s about 5 feet tall and looks healthy though. If the male Maru flowers pollinate your RB then it will develop some brown areas around the seeds but not as much as say Nishimura Wase from my understanding.

Where did you get your Zenji Maru? That’s on my to grow list.

Here are some of my late grafts waking up. I did them 2 weeks ago.

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Andrew, I got my Zenji Maru from a scionwood exchange several years ago. Don’t know who the source was-- just picked it up at the table where it was available.
I believe fruitwood nursery carries scionwood.

Rojo Brillante has been dropping fruit for the last couple of years. Maybe it got pollinated by Zenji Maru this year and is therefore holding fruit! Hope our season is warm enough to ripen this one.
I really much prefer pollinated PVNA fruit – Nishimura Wase is one of my favorite varieties.

I have several grafts I did this year and new varieties added – Huk Gam, Lena, A118/Elmo, Morris Burton. Also added some bark grafts of Kasandra, JT02 and Chuchupaka to my Jiro tree.

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Here’s how pollinated Rojo Brillante look like; they taste much better (more flavor) than the non-pollinated ones.

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I had some like that a couple years ago. They were indeed delicious. I couldn’t find any as good last year.

@ramv There’s a pollination variant hybrid out there now at Cliff England’s orchard if you like PVNA varieties. Maru should definitely be PVNA. Hope it ripens for you to sample!

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These are from California. I discovered a new Asian grocery that brings California persimmons from Oct-Feb. The ones from Spain are almost never pollinated.

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Is he selling that PVNA variety yet? I haven’t seen it in his catalog any time I’ve looked. Not that I have any room for it…

Just checked with Cliff. He isn’t selling it yet.

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Are you sure these were pollinated Ahmad? I didn’t see any seeds.

Good point @ramv. I was wondering the same. I am not a biologist, so don’t have a very good answer! The reason I concluded they are pollinated is the darker color and the increased (almost completely different) flavor, which are changes consistent with pollinated Pollination Variant Astringent types. Perhaps some Asian persimmons don’t develop much seeds after pollination? I noticed pollinated Sharoni for instance would have one or two seeds per fruit, while American persimmons are usually full of seeds when pollinated. I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can chime in.

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I’ve seen persimmons that show brown flesh even without seeds when I was visiting Japan. The sales lady could not explain how it was possible to show pollination variance and non-astringency while being seedless. She said it was due to “special growing techniques.” I could only tell that it was derived from a variety called Hiratanenashi.

I’ve since translated the text since I could only read a very limited amount at the time. Seems the fruit is covered in a bag with alcohol inside while on the tree to produce these results. This sounds like a fun process. I might try it on my Nishimura Wase or Picudo fruit since there are many on the trees. I doubt Nishimura Wase got pollinated much since it was the only tree I observed that had male flowers this spring. My attempt at hand pollination failed after a kind member’s male flowers got stuck in the postal system and got moldy.

@aap Do your RB persimmons ever show dark colored flesh or seeds?

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