Look great. It is time to buy an orchard ladder !!
No climbing anything in general, Tippy! I dislocated my shoulder so I can’t risk any falls or slips.
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Sorry to hear that. Wish you speedy recovery.
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Since there seems to be a decent amount of interest in persimmons this year, I figured I’d post a line up of various varieties I grew or was given by locals.
From left to right are:
6 Picudo
2 Chinebuli
2 Ichi Ki Kei Jiro
2 Saijo (pointy ones)
1 Gwang Yang (underneath the Saijos)
2 Jiro
4 Generic nonastringent persimmons my aunt a mile away grew
2 Tipo
4 Miss Kim
2 Nishimura Wase
The small ones at the top to the right of the quarter are Nikita’s Gift, Great Wall, and 100-46.
@k8tpayaso Did your Chinebuli ever fruit? Those are the ones from your tree. They are very large but there are few pictures of Chinebuli out there to use as a reference.
Let me know if you guys want any pictures of specific ones before I eat them all.
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Nice going , Andrew. How can you load pictures, I can’t?
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I got this photo idea from one of the persimmon groups on Facebook. Not everything here is equally ripe, but it gives a good idea of size and color of these persimmons.
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I grafted Chinebuli in several locations this spring, as I really prefer non-astringent persimmons but have had problems in the past with them surviving the winter. I’ve heard that Chinebuli can take lower temps, so I really did a lot of grafts of it. Have you sampled any of the Chinebuli yet?
I addition to adding Chinebuli, I’ve also tried planting several of the hardier NA, such as Tam Kam, IKKJ, Gwang Yang, and Jiro. We’ve had milder winters(last two have been around +10F, while the ones that killed my persimmons were close to -10F) recently. And I’ve planted the persimmons at several different locations, all closer to the ocean (1-2 miles, rather than 5). Several are also along the S/W walls of houses, some near air conditioners or windows which should leak a bit of heat.
Here’s a Jiro that I didn’t plant this spring. The spot I had planned for it didn’t work out. But, I have a different spot planned for next spring. In the meantime, it looks like there is fruit which is almost ripe. The other 7gal Jiro from JFaE that I planted in-ground didn’t produce this year.
My wife confirmed that this is orange, but not a dark orange. Is this at a state you would pick or should I let it ripen more? The 10 day forecast goes down to 36, so while there could be a frost soon, I don’t think it would be cold enough to freeze a persimmon due to the sugar level.
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Of course, we want a complete review and flavor comparison of every variety! But just a quick note on your favorites would be great if you have time. I’d personally love to hear how you like Nikita’s Gift and 100-46 compared to the astringent Kaki fruit. I’m also curious what you think of those big Chinebuli and how productive the tree is.
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@aap I’m uploading them directly from my iphone. My laptop hasn’t even been loading this website for the past month, so I’ve been typing all my posts with my phone. It’s probably time to buy another laptop.
@BobVance Those are the first 2 and only Chinebuli I’ll have. The tree is still in a 5 gallon pot. I’m surprised and pleased at how large the fruit is. Hopefully, mine is true to type.
Have you tried growing 20th Century? That one sounds like a decent survivor too. I had one last year that was very good, but plucked all of the fruitlets this year to let my tree divert more resources towards growth. I too prefer nonastringent fruit, but sampling more astringent ones is opening up my mind to growing them. I had a few last year that were much better than the grocery store Hachiya I’m used to.
We are predicted to have a few nights down to 30 this week, and I didn’t want to risk them softening all at once from a freeze so they are all getting picked. I plan to dry a lot of my astringent fruit, so any softening is really not desired at all. You could shuffle your Jiro tree indoors at night if frost is a big concern, and let it ripen further on the tree. They seem to continue to color up on the counter as long as they’re not picked too early.
@zendog I really liked 100-46. It had a caramel flavor and wasn’t too aromatic like some other native fruit. The texture was pastier than kaki fruit though. It wasn’t unpleasant, but not my preference.
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Here is a Miss Kim that was soft enough to eat. Its texture was firmer than a typical Hachiya, and might be described as fruit jam (that congealed fruit texture that pectin helps achieve.) It was likely pollinated by its neighbor, Nishimura Wase, as it had 4 seeds. The seeds were not obtrusive to me enjoying the fruit. They were fully formed, but small relative to all the fruit flesh. This is a variety I’ll continue to grow as long as productivity increases. This is its 2nd year in the ground, and it yielded 7 fruit at 6 feet tall.
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Absolutely beautiful display!! Of those pictured, were Nikita’s Gift, Great Wall, and 100-46 the earliest to ripen?
Your earliest ripeners would be good info for cool-climate growers.
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@PharmerDrewee @SMC_zone6 Thank you for the big comparison pictures. It’s really helpful trying to get a sense of scale. It’s really hard to get a handle on how big different persimmons are based on pictures of one variety. It’s also really interesting to see how the seeds are all the way down at the bottom on the pointier fruits. I hadn’t really thought about that before.
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I did not actually grow the Great Wall and Nikita’s Gift. The majority were mostly colored up on the tree when they were given to me 3 weeks ago. My earliest were Nishimura Wase which I could start eating starting the middle of September, and Ichi Ki Kei Jiro which were mostly fully colored 2 weeks ago. I don’t think 100-46 is a particularly early American variety. There are still several hard ones on the tree even after most of the leaves have changed colors.
@jcguarneri I’ll try to weigh them when my digital scale comes in the mail. That’ll give more objective information. The pictures can only show so much. Some have much more mass than the pictures would suggest.
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@PharmerDrewee My Chinebuli died back in the vortex but has grown back. So, no, it was a tiny thing when I cut that scion and it’s big enough after growing back that I might get fruit next year. I have one single Rosseyanka fruit from one still in a pot and that will be my persimmon harvest this year. At least they aren’t all dead!
Love all the pictures!!!
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I picked all the Picudo persimmons that I could reach from my tree. It was planted as a bareroot in 2018. This thing is vigorous and productive. I would highly recommend it for those in 6b and up. I must have picked around 150 fruit off of it, and there are a couple dozen left that are out of reach. I pruned whole branches off when I harvested the fruit so I can have a stub of branch to tie them to strings for drying. The harvest next year will surely be reduced by all the pruning. It’s probably a good thing, since looking at all these persimmons and thinking about all the peeling I’ll have to do makes me feel a little overwhelmed.
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Andrew,
How does Picudo taste? Productivity is good but if its taste is only OK, it’s not OK 
Isn’t everything relative though? What would be considered “ok”? What is persimmon you would use as the measuring stick for tasting “ok”?
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I had one that got pecked by a bird and ripened early. It reminded me of a standard Hachiya, but the texture might be different since of the circumstances under which it softened. Maybe they will all taste the same dried up. It’s definitely one to grow if you want a surplus of persimmon snacks to “survive” winter.
Here are most of the Saijo from my tree that I could reach. There’s a large egg and quarter for size reference.
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these three im guessing the ichi ki jiro ripen earlier then, jiro and gwang yang. was gwang yang ripen was the same time or later than jiro?
Gwang Yang seems a little later than Jiro but I had so few fruits to really have reliable observations.
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