Persimmons 2021

General Fruit Growing
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Hello All,
Just a gentle reminder that as your persimmon varieties ripen this fall, please keep careful notes that you can send me so that I can begin to assemble a reference for all members who like me live in a cooler climate and would like to select varieties that stand a chance of ripening. The data I would like to collect from each of you are:

The reference I intend to create would include the following information each year as new data arrives from forum members. So I hope it can be a living document as new varieties show promise.

Source: This would be the member’s forum user name. For example my growing fruit.org user name is @Dennisd. Other forum members can use this information to contact the source to ask any relevant questions. If for some reason you do not wish to be contacted, but you are willing to provide data, just let me know and your Source will be listed as “Anonymous”.

City: Large City near the Source of data. (Necessary to locate nearest weather station to compare growing degree days between any two geographic locations.

Zip code: Enter the zip code of Source . (Necessary to locate nearest weather station to compare growing degree days between any two geographic locations.)

Variety: Persimmon cultivar name: This would be the specific name of the cultivar for which the data applies.

Astringent vs. non-astringent: Enter applicable type

Rootstock: Enter the rootstock name (D. Virginiana, D. Kaki, D. Lotus, or Unknown if you are uncertain)

Age of Tree: Enter the number of years the tree has grown if known, or the approximate age if not known.

Date: (Month/Day/Year) The first date when fruit was ready to harvest.

Duration of harvest: Enter the number of days from start of harvest until all fruit was ready to harvest.

Condition of fruit harvested: Describe whether the fruit could be consumed immediately after picking or if it required additional time and/ or procedures to fully ripen before consumption or any special treatment to overcome astringency.

Applicable Microclimate: Enter N/A if the tree variety reported was growing naturally in an ambient outdoor location. In a situation where the grower provided any support methods that would improve the growing degree days, such as inside greenhouse, solar tent, shelter, heat absorbing wall, wind protection, State briefly the improvements provided.

Relative Climate difference: State whether there is a significant difference in the micro climate between your reporting location and the nearest weather station in your zip code. For example an altitude difference should be annotated.

Thanks
Hope to hear from your successes this fall- winter. I am hoping to complete and publish the reference so that by spring of 2022 we all have a better idea of varieties that will actually ripen for us
Dennis
Kent, wa

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82

Tony,
When is RB ripen for you? Do you pick yours when it turns orange or before that?

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@PharmerDrewee yes my sestronka is fruiting this year. It went up from 1 fruit to two!!! I find that sestronka has GREAT fruit size, but you can’t really expect a lot of production. It is also a smaller tree, that doesn’t grow nearly as fast as the Korea, Steiermark, Zima Khurma, and Kasandra that it is planted right next to. FYI, my grafts this year weren’t as successful in the past… Only half of my persimmons took and ALL of my pears that you gave me didn’t make it. I think it was a rootstock issue-- despite failed grafts the rootstocks died also.

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Does chocolate pollinate Tam kam i would think it would make it seeded if it was pollinated by chocolate? How late does tam kam ripen for you?

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I let it hang as long as possible until first frost then let it counter ripen at hard yellow stage.

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The Chocolate pollinated my Tam Kam so they are seeded. I am doing a trial with 10 Tam Kam X Chocolate seedlings right now. The seedlings are about 1 1/2 feet tall started this April from stratified seeds. My Tam Kam turn yellow in the third week of October.

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i think your persimmons ripen earlier than me in WA state. i think tam kam would most likely ripen early November in my area. We dont have as much heat as you do.

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I have as much manganese available as you could ever want at work. PM me if interested.

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Question about grafted persimmon seedlings not growing…

I grafted about 2 dozen D. Virginiana rootstocks with asian varieties this spring (cleft graft). I had good take - about 18 of them took. However, none have put on growth past the initial burst of growth (5-6 inches in most cases). None of them have had a second flush. They still have leaves. I’ve got them in 1gal pots and they get direct sunlight for a good portion of the day. I keep any suckers pruned off. I’ve given them a little fertilizer (but tried not to over do it). Anyone have any ideas why or suggestions? should i plant them in the ground? located in NW. FL.

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This year is exciting for persimmons here in the PNW — very cool summerand mild winter climate.
This year was hotter so persimmons have loved it.

My 4 year old Jiro is loaded with hundreds of fruit. Some are changing color. I will need to support branches.

Saijo is a big producer as in the previous year. But appears drought stressed this year. Some changing color.

Nikita’s gift is also producing but much less than others.

Rojo Brillante is my smaller tree but has tremendous productivity. Fruits are huge. Branches are all supported or they will break.

California Maru has one fruit for the first time.

H63a has 4 fruits. Can’t wait to taste it for the first time.

H118 dropped all fruit in the first heat wave.

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I’d focus on the health of the roots and/or the risk of dry soil conditions. One gallon pots might get too hot, damaging feeder roots. One gallon pots would also be very prone to drying. I think either of these could stall growth by restricting water supply to growing tissues.

I offer this opinion with limited experience. Currently I’ve got 10 rootstock D. virginiana trees, purchased with bare roots, that have been growing out in 3 gallon pots since April. Growth started on these trees anywhere from 1 to 4 months after potting. Though I thought I was supplying ample water, what I found was that trees tended to initiate growth after heavy, soaking rainfalls.

Meanwhile I also have a single JT-02 that I grafted to D. Virginiana this spring (March). It has gone through 3 spurts of growth, by reaching roughly 5’ tall by July. At that point growth again stalled and I up-potted it. It has been the same height since. It’s looking healthier than ever with firm green leaves and swelling buds, as if it is getting ready to grow, but I’m not sure it’s going to do anything more this season. Correctly or not, I attribute past delays in growth to episodes of dryness, correlating with some wilting of the leaves.

Bottom line, my best guess is inadequate water – either soil dryness (resulting from too little water supplied) and/or root damage (resulting in too little water transported).

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If these were bench grafted, as I assume, this may be about all the growth you can expect. Your rootstock probably had minimal root systems. The young tree you grafted has to expend resources (mainly carbohydrates made in the foliage) on both making new roots AND new foliage at the same time. These resources are not unlimited. So I think your results are satisfactory for cleft grafting.

You can’t compare the growth your trees made to the growth of a bud graft made into an in-ground tree with an existing system. That kind of tree has much more stored resources to use for growth.

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@agnt2000 thanks for the reply. yes, bench grafted and you might be 100% right about limited resources. Do these trees have hope for next season or are they goners? Hopefully, they have been re-gaining energy all summer with their (limited) leaves.

It seems reading online, that a lot of young persimmon trees are slow to get started. I have a 3 ft persimmon from a nursery that never leafed out after planting in March. The trunk is still green and it just put out its first root sucker. :worried:

also thanks @jrd51 for the reply - i will repot a couple into larger pots and test that.

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FWIW – I’ve had great success bench grafting apples and pears onto bare root rootstock but I was skeptical that persimmons would be so easy. So I’ve been growing my persimmon rootstock for 1 year in pots to create an established root system before grafting on any scionwood.

In my limited experience, bare root D virginiana can be slow to bud out. This year, my ten trees budded out in waves over 3-4 months. Last year 1 of 3 never grew. I think it would be very risky putting scionwood on these slow-growing sticks.

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Yeah, I got 2 bare root Virginiana, small trees this past winter. One leafed out in June or July, the other didn’t.

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I think they’ll be just fine. Your account sounds like what my persimmon grafts did last year. They were bench grafted to new mail order rootstocks, and most only grew about 5-6". A few grew more like 10", and one overachiever put on 2’ of growth. All were in 16" deepots, which are about half of a 1 gal container. I sold or gave away most of my extras, but all the ones I kept grew at least reasonably well this year. Still not a ton of growth, but more than the year before. I expect they’ll start to take off next year.

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My Potted second year Prok Persimmons graft holding on to 7 fruits. Now it is showing some yellow :sunglasses:. This will be my first persimmons harvest ever.

Prok Persimmons 09-09-21
Prok Persimmons 09-09-211896×1262 588 KB

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Put some pics of it if you get to harvest any. My prok is still to small, but would love to see what it will be.

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Ok I will do that.

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My lone Prok maybe, just possibly, starting to show a little color. My 2 young in-ground persimmons were really torn up by the cicadas and my Rosseyanka looks to have actually died back to the rootstock, possibly due to me pruning off too much of the damaged branches… Prok faired better and managed to keep 1 of the 5 fruit it set and put out a new leader to replace some of the damaged branches.

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