4-5 miles and under 200’ elevation was just enough to get us to 32-33F. Still, Miss Kim and H120 have dropped most of their leaves, while the other persimmons are still going. Many of the jujubes have also lost their leaves.
At ~1 mile and 50-150 ft, most of the jujubes and persimmons are still going at the rentals. I’m not sure how cold it got there, but I suspect about 35F.
Correct. But just a note that I grow Sung Hui in a pot (the others are all in ground).
FWIW, my hybrid Kassandra has a ton of fruit and no leaves. My American Prok that was top worked with a variety of other Americans has no fruit and lots of leaves. My Asian IKKJ has both fruits and leaves. I don’t see a pattern.
p.s. We have not yet had a frost.
re pattern, hint, stop looking at trees and start looking at the weather.
I’m basing my generalization mostly on all the wild D. virginiana growing around me that are usually among the first trees to lose their leaves each year, and my 10 year old D. kakis that usually hold on to most of their leaves until the first frost (av. is Nov 1st here) or later. My hybrids are all pretty young by comparison. This year we had an early frost (in mid Oct) that took out most of the kaki leaves, so almost all my kakis only have fruit on them at this point. I have a bunch of young D. virginiana that I’ve planted in the last year or two, and many of them still have leaves on them, unlike their more mature and well-established species-mates.
Do you feel the early defoliation is affecting the fruit quality and ability to properly ripen?
My first shot at low sugar chia persimmon jam…
Small batch processing with a potato ricer… worked ok. Not great… but ok.
The color was great… until cooking and adding a little coconut palm sugar and chia seeds.
Astringent ?? Will find out this weekend.
Persimmon pulp is quite thick… i added a bit of water… but it still turned out thicker than i would prefer.
I haven’t noticed any adverse effect on the fruit. I think it was late enough that most of my D. kaki fruit was already turning orange and mature (but not ripe). It got close to freezing three nights in a row, but it didn’t actually get low enough to freeze the fruit. Maybe that would’ve had more of an impact on ripening. It does seem like my D. kakis are ripening at different times than usual, though. My Giombo fruit are usually all ripe by now, and this year most are still hard. And my Tecumseh seemed to turn orange well ahead of schedule, but are still quite firm.
The risk from premature defoliation (meaning losing leaves before the fruit is mature) is that the tree won’t store enough nutrients in the root system which may limit production next year or possibly kill the tree. Pecans are notorious for overloading in an on year followed by very late maturing nuts after which the tree may die over winter. I’m going to predict that some persimmon trees with similar stress may have problems next spring.
I would wait until before the first hard freeze. Make sure you protect it from the squirrels and birds!
Just a FYI … follow up on the low sugar chi persimmon jam (post above).
My son and I both ate some this moring with breakfast… and detected no astringency at all.
The uncooked pulp had some astringency. Not bad but definately noticable.
The pulp was cooked including 1 tsp baking soda while making the jam.
After cooking and while jarring… it was tasted and the astringency was still there.
But after a couple days in the fridge absolutely no astringency detected this morning.
Ps. Other things added to the persimmin pulp to make the jam… juice of half a lemon, 6 tablespoons coconut palm sugar, 2 tablespoons chia seeds… 1/4 cup water.
How much fruit?
I had just enough to make 1 pint of jam… almost 2 cups of fruit.
Looking awesome, Andrew! I look forward to the time when I can taste some of my own persimmons. Right now I am just happy I had a bunch of grafts of different varieties from wonderfully helpful GF folks apparently take this year: Rojo Brillante, Sheng, Giombo, Saijo, H63A, Sestronka, Nikita’s Gift, Zima Khurma, Chuchupaka, Chinebuli, Garretson, Tecumseh, and Lehman’s Delight (100-46). Never expected that much success (knock on wood) in my second year as a grafter! This coming spring will tell if my expectations meet with reality.
My PCNA fruit are not ripe yet even though the leaves have turned red and started dropping on some. Their seeds weren’t fully brown but the fruit are still acceptably sweet. They’re so crunchy. It’s like eating persimmon apples.
Wow, those are nice and big!
I think my PCNA trees have the largest fruit. Il Mok Jae Cha Ryang, 20th Century, Tam Kam, and Jin Yong are all extra large. I’ll have to weigh them sometime.
@PharmerDrewee Do you notice any significant differences between those four in terms of size, shape or ripening time? I grow Izu, Wase Fuyu, Maekawa Jiro and Ichi Ki Kei Jiro and can’t really say there’s much difference between any of them except IKKJ seems a bit later than the others to ripen. They all seem smaller on average than Tam Kam, however.
Tam Kam seems to ripen later than the others I’ve mentioned, and their general shape seems similar. Maybe I’m just growing a bunch of Jiros. My Matsumoto definitely looks different. The flesh isn’t as hard as the previous 4 I mentioned. Its fruit are smaller, rounder, less flat, and the leaves don’t have wavy edges. It seems to ripen along with Il Mok Jae Cha Ryang, Jin Yong, and 20th Century.
I bought a tree as Izu but it looks like some sort of Jiro given its square shape.
