A few years ago, I dehydrated my own IKKJ fruit. The dehydrated fruit was superb. One note, however: I let these fruits ripen fully before dehydrating them. So they were fairly sweet to start, and the drying concentrated the sweetness and flavor.
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I suspect the temperature and time involved in the dehydration are very important for the preserving of these particularly fragile flavor compounds
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Can American persimmons be made into hoshigaki ?
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It might maybe be happening this year! I have three flower buds on my potted Chinebuli. If the fruit stick, Iāll provide only leave one on, as itās still quite small.
Prok is a no-show still, Mikkusu Iāll know in another week or so.
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I picked up a couple thousand wetland planting trees from Pikes Peak for work this year, including 4ā persimmons. They were decent caliper. We always have good results with healthy trees from them, but I will say some years the graftable percentage of my orders is low. Not always.
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I believe the ātraditionalā strategies are making bread and pulping to freeze.
Also pudding. Itās good.
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lol, this must be 60s and 70s. After that, everyone started using sunscreen and avoided sun as much as possible.
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A neighbor has this astringent persimmon tree that he doesnāt know the variety. It was there when he bought the house. The fruits are about 2-2.5 inches wide and seems very late ripening. Does anyone recognize this cultivar?
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Just made a pie from some frozen kaki from last year. Flavor intensity was really down. Almost no good. Wonder if canning them would preserve them better?
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Iāve never had dried persimmons that were better than ānot badā. They just donāt have much flavor. I havenāt had real hoshigaki, but at this point Iām not so excited about it.
I also donāt like dried apples, donāt see the appeal.
Iāve been open to the notion that I just havenāt had good ones yet, but more likely it is a matter of palate.
Dried stone fruit set the standard for me. Ripe pears can be really good too. I also like jackfruit and longan dried, as well as many berries all better than persimmon.
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Advice needed:
My Dunaj DK persimmon got some frost damage - which is not completely unexpected as it can only be grown in the traditional wine growing regions of Slovakia. And which is also why veteran growers of this rare variety advise to wait and prune after flowering.
So Iāve only pruned the longest floppiest branches. And decided to wait and hopefully have some fruit however the end of spring turns out.
Now I feel like I should prune regardless of where thereās flowers left, because the frost damage seems to force the sprout tips to grow longer in order to have functioning leaves. And the natural habit of Dunaj already resembles my Mother apple tree with its half-weeping thin and long branches
Should I prune semi-heavily for structure or will it set the tree back too much on top of the frost.?
If this were any other species Iām more familiar with I would go for it. Iāve grown it for some 14 years (4 fruiting) but it is like a hot-house baby living just outside said hot-houseā¦
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Yeah, I hear you. Dried fruit will always taste different than fresh fruit. Iām just curious about finding a way to have and eat persimmons past their season.
But I have to say that I did enjoy the dried slices of hachiya persimmons I made last fall. To me they tasted a little like dried pears/apricots, which was satisfying. Although to be fair, I have never tried hachiya fresh, so I canāt compare and contrast the difference.
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Dried persimmons are good āfodderā for me. I can blindly eat them and they are nutritious and healthier than typical snack food.
Kaki flavor is already relatively subtle. Drying removes the nuance and its about texture and sweetness with no balancing acid.
Fresh Hachiya are sweeter, better texture (when soft), and a little more flavor than non-astringent persimmons. From what Iāve had, that distinction is lost by drying.
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I have been disappointed with the flavor of dried / frozen. named varieties of American persimmon .
However , this year I dried whole fruits of āSweet Lent āpersimmon with low heat and they are great !
In normal years ,this variety , on its own turns into dried , mostly seedless , raisins like fruit on the tree. That will hang on until the birds eat them , usually mid January.
This year I just picked them before the birds ate them.
Already partially dried on the tree.
Just finished drying inside this year.
If too dry they will be hard as a rock.
So , I find drying them to the point that they are still chewy like a raisin, ( not too dry ) and not getting them too hot.
The flavor was VERY GOOD !
Some had seeds in them , not too many.
I saved and planted those seed for rootstock, they are growing !
So , apparently , I did not get them hot enough to kill the seeds.
Some batches did eventually mold after months in storage.
So a fine line between
ātoo dry hard as a rockā
ā too moist - eventually moldā
ā or just right moisture - still chewy - no mold ālike baby bear soup !
Sweet lent is becoming one of my favorite varieties because of its long edible season.
I find it odd that there is little info / discussion of this variety.
A web search mostly just shows the post I made about it on this forum. Not much other info. ?
I ate them everyday from November - march this year.
Really good
Sweet lent persimmon
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Will the candidates for 2025 persimmon grafting rootstocks please stand up ?
Yepā¦ these are poping up out in my fields now.
My WS8-10 Barbaraās blush (graft from last spring)ā¦ has 4 blossoms.
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Iām curious about the timing of persimmon grafts. In the past, I would graft late April/early May when the leaves were āmouse earā size and near that time with about ~80F highs. I typically got 50% take rates. Part of that may be because I often couldnāt get back to the grafts (a decent drive) to routinely pinch off rootstock buds and part of it was just weak growth. Iāve had much higher take rates (~95% or better) with apples, pears and mulberries.
After visiting Englandās Orchard, he said he typically grafts late May. Heās not far from me, so I intend to wait a bit longer. Iām curious if grafting later may be more successful as a result of the consistent high temperatures, tree hormone levels at that time, or perhaps sap flows more in late Spring compared to early-to-mid Spring.
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My problem is that itās never routinely >80 F here. And Iām impatient. I have found that once buds break, the bark slips easily. As most of my outdoor grafts are bark grafts, thatās the major hurdle. So I do all my outdoor persimmon bark grafts in early May. At that time, buds are breaking; bark slips easily; but temps are typically high 50ās / low 60ās during the day and 40ās / low 50ās at night. By mid-May the temperature range shifts up to >50 F at night and ~70 F during the day. I have a very high success rate in this scenario.
Success with cleft and whip-and-tongue grafts is lower but I always assumed that bark grafts just ensure better cambium contact ā if the bark slips OK and the cut of the scion is flat, then good cambium contact is guaranteed. Thatās in contrast to cleft and W&T grafts where the positioning of the scion is critical.
I should ask ā isnāt excessive sap flow a problem? So if sap flow is increased in late Spring, isnāt that an argument for starting earlier?
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About a dozen flower buds on my Early Fuyu which is about 2.5ā tall. One on IKKJ, but it looks like itās thinking of doing more.
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Made a trip to walmart todayā¦ that is the little roadside tree I collect from there. It is under some taller trees in a tree line that faces west. It gets just a little evening sun.
I noticed it a few years ago and have collected fruit from it for the last 3 years.
The taste of the persimmons increased dramatically last year including a nice vanilla aftertaste.
It is loaded with blossoms again this year.
TNHunter
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