Hachiyas put to bed for ripening
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I’m in Southern CA and a newbie to persimmons. Can you tell me which of these beautiful persimmons belong to the Fuyu (sweet) category, and which belong to the Hachiya (astringent) category? Thanks for the post!
A friend in Tacoma @steadystan, recommended I try this for ripening.
On last Saturday I had purchased Hachiyas and Jiro, all requiring further ripening. On Sunday I sealed one Hachiya and two Jiro in a clear plastic bag with a ripening apple and several ripening tomatoes. All three were very firm, not soft. Today the Hachiya is fully ripe (soft and a bright red). Both Jiros were also softer and ready to eat!
So this technique seems to work very well!
Dennis
Kent, wa
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I do a lazy version of that with banana. The cardboard boxes have holes in them that I only partially cover. This will take a few days to ripen and the fruits ripen at different times. Thats perfect for me as I can’t consume all of them in a few days. We slowly finish them over a couple of weeks.
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I’ve got 3 IKKJs that look like this. Eyeballing, there’s roughly 20-25 fruits on each tree. I’m trying to wait as long as possible to pick them. I’m not afraid of a mild frost but I want to avoid a deep freeze. Except for a light frost (32-33 F) forecasted for Thursday a.m., there’s no freezing weather for the next 2 weeks.
Anyone object to my strategy of waiting?
FWIW, last year I picked them on 11/09. I stored them in a cool garage and ripened them in the house as needed. Ripening took ~7 days.
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Most of the persimmons depicted in the recent posts are astringent until soft. The only non-astringent varieties listed are Chinebuli, Ichi Ki Kei Jiro, Gwang Yang, and Jiro.
I’ve seen reports of Chinebuli surviving -16F with only minor dieback, so it was something I really wanted to get grafted this spring. @ncdabbler was nice enough to send me a lot of wood, so I made 31 grafts of it on 3 trees. Plenty didn’t take and even more painfully, some took, then grew so much that they broke under the weight of new growth, like in the below pic.
Here’s one with 6 of 10 which took, as well as making a large sucker that I’ll try to transplant in the spring.
But, I’ve got at least 1 Chinebuli graft which seems to have taken on each of the 3 trees.
Here’s a nearby Kassandra graft. Only 1 of 3 took, but that one grew very well and I made sure to support this one with a stake, given how large it got (over 6’).
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Fuyus (Jiro) from a friend’s tree. It didn’t even look like I picked any.
Between this and ripening Hachiyas, we should have persimmons to eat daily for a few weeks. I can then go back and get more 
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I had a similar experience grafting Chinebuli this year. Four grafts (plus two redos) and I only had one take. Two of them even started growing a bit, but fizzled. This is in stark contrast to my success grafting Prok and JT-02 last year, which was 19 out of 21 taking.
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Inchon is the only true kaki that’s survived my winters without any die back. I tried about a dozen others but they all fully died or die back a lot each winter. The fruit tastes great too.
Kasandra is a really good hybrid – not quite as good as JT-02 in my opinion, but still really good. Its one issue is that it ripens a little unevenly, working backward from tip to stem.
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Those Inchon look delicious. Have you checked a local arboretum like Arnold Arboretum to see if they grow any locally hardy trees? I tried to do that but there doesn’t seem to be much interest in kaki. Plenty of people grow them in Philadelphia including in the community orchards around the city, but they are half a zone warmer than where I’m at. It rarely ever falls below zero in the city.
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They have american persimmon, but no kakis. It’s a great arboretum though with a lot of beautiful plants. Definitely worth visiting if you’re in the area.
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I’ve been picking at least a few of each persimmon over the last day or so.
Size notes:
| Variety | Smallest | Largest |
|---|---|---|
| IL Mok Jae Cha Ryang | 253 | 258 |
| Jiro | ~200 | ~200 |
| Picudo | 166 | 174 |
| Korea | 127 | 166 |
| Miss Kim | 119 | 132 |
| Inchon | 110 | 110 |
| Nikita’s Gift | 83 | 116 |
| H-120 | 24 | 36 |
The only one which is soft ripe on the tree is H-120. Some come off at just a touch, so I probably lost quite a bit of fruit.
I split one of the H-120 with my younger daughter. It didn’t have any astringency left, but neither of us was all that fond of it. We both loved the Jiro that I picked though. I was only able to save a small sliver of it for my wife. Here’s the bowl I brought over to her
The Jiro was crisp, sweet, and tasty. It was also good sized, almost equaling the largest (though I forgot to weigh Jiro before eating it). I only have two of them this year on a 7gal potted plant, but really want more in the future.
There is a massive differential in size between the largest and the smallest persimmons- over 10X.
Picudo is a bit more pointed than Korea.
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I’m not sure if anyone here has tried to remove the astringency with CO2. I gave it a shot with a somewhat amateur setup.
First, I put a variety of persimmons in a plastic bag, then did my best to suck the air out of it.
Then, I emptied a Pepsi into a 1 liter bottle. After replacing my mouth with bottle top, I started swishing the bottle back and forth to release the carbonation.
I didn’t get as much as I expected, so I repeated with a second can. Then, twisted and tied the bag off.
Finally, I closed it off in a bucket, so hopefully the CO2 concentration stays high, even if there is some leakage from the bag.
You may think this is a waste of soda. But, I’m actually fine with that. I don’t drink it myself and don’t want the kids to consume the HF corn syrup. They like it and sometimes buy it when playing sports. My wife feels like it is a waste of money, when it is much cheaper by bulk. at Costco. I’d rather see them sacrifice more money for it, to discourage consumption, rather than making it easy to consume a lot. So, I’d actually be fine with getting rid of all of it. But, using Pepsi this way isn’t actually an unpopular action in the house, as my daughter informed my wife that she likes Coke, not Pepsi…so there is nobody who would actually drink it. Its highest and best use is for the carbonation. The Coke she got has been hidden away, to be produced at my wife’s request in single can increments.
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Citric acid + baking soda is actually a way described in a procedure in an academic journal. I want to say it was a study done in Egypt? Maybe Korea? I have to go back and look. Basically, they used a small cup containing citric acid (canning additive or lemon juice would work) inside a container. Dumped baking soda into the cup, closed the container with a small opening to let air escape while CO2 formed.
The best CO2 setup I have seen thus far is from @ncdabbler
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Here’s today’s pics…enough pics for 3 posts. We had a mild frost last night (first of the season).
Miss Kim started to drop its leaves. Turns out I’ve got 6-7 fruit on there, not 3-4.
When checking the 3rd tree which was grafted over to Chinebuli, I noticed that the low-growing rootstock branches actually produced fruit. I have no idea if these will be any good. Anyone else ever had a Persimmon produce berries?
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Are they smaller than a quarter? My “persimmon berries” were off of a male persimmon. Cliff told me that male to female sometimes happens.
Those look like lotus persimmon fruit! The leaves don’t look like virginiana either.
Thanks for taking weights on your different varieties! That’s really good information.
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Some of them are smaller than a dime. The largest aren’t much bigger than dime-sized.
Hopefully you aren’t about to tell me that Lotus persimmon are poisonous? I hope…I tried eating one of the soft ones earlier today, but it was astringent and I spit most out.
I’m not sure how the leaves differ. It was originally a Izu from Burnt Ridge in 2013 (winter-killed and re-grafted several times). From what they have now on the site, you can order Diospyrus virginiana as a rootstock from them, so I would think that that is what I have.
Here’s a pic with the top of the leaves. The one from the previous post showed the bottoms, as that was where the fruit was on that branch (I cut off the branch, then picked the fruit).
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They aren’t poisonous but I’m sure they tasted so! Lotus leaves seem very glossy and have a narrow, pointed appearance.
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I googled “Lotus persimmon fruit” and found the following, as well as some pics which look similar. So, I think this is what I must have. I’ve probably gotten near it’s hardiness limits, as several years ago it got down to ~-9F.
Diospyros lotus:
A deciduous tree bearing yellow-black fruits about the size of a walnut. Fruits have an excellent flavor when over-ripe, and when dried, have a date-like flavor. The fruits are esteemed in Asia and in much of the Middle East. The small tree is hardy to well below 0F
From what I’ve heard, “well below 0F” is a bit of an exaggeration. But, it sounds like I should try drying them.
I don’t have any citric acid handy, but I do have vinegar. Kind of embarrassing for a guy with a chemical engineering degree to not think of the stereotypical middle-school volcano science project… 
That does look like a nice setup. Maybe as I get more astringent persimmons I’ll need to look into something more elegant than my current approach (most options will be more elegant than that…).
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