For fresh fruit eating, i think hybrids are probably the best for the masses. They produce buckets of fruit, the fruit hangs better, it is larger, it is easier to treat for astringency and the trees are generally more manageable.
I still think the highest flavor goes to american persimmons. For processing, brewing, extracts and icecream, american is probably the way. They definitely need a customized system for fruit harvest, like undernetting or something. They also ripen earlier, so could serve as season extenders.
In my eventual orchard plans, I imagined that the hybrid rows would be geared towards guided u-picks and tours.
I would not trust an average consumer with picking their own lol
Funny you say that. Just today I had to replace a persimmon tree I got from needmore trees. I planted it in Spring of 2026 (Zima Khurma). It hardly grew at all the entire growing season. Like maybe an inch. Over winter I tried protecting it with tarp and leaves as insulation.
In spring I did a very small scratch test above and below the graft on that tree. Both had green in the cambium layer. I’m not sure if our late frost did damage but the tree eventually ended up dying. When digging it out it was trying to regrow from below the soil line. But with all this being said… I did see a Banded Woolly Bear caterpillar in the soil when removing the tree. My other needmore tree made it through winter. Fingers crossed. That grew this season but eventually stopped growing a couple months ago.
I’m in the UK too, so I also have a short growing season, although my winters are milder than yours.
Your best chance would be with early cultivars, or perhaps mid season ones if you’re feeling a bit adventurous. Either American (virginiana), hybrid, or Asian (kaki) cultivars
H120 is a great persimmon. Some of them get huge.
I’m really starting to like these MB#3 more and more. They have a taste totally different from the standard fruity flavor. Maybe more of a wild taste?
H63a might get another year to prove itself before getting grafted over.
Still more varieties ripening.
I received Dar Sofievsky, Mohler and H-118 from this nursery earlier this year. All in great condition. Will get H63A from the same place next year. I am in a similar climate as OP (Aarhus, Denmark).
well this guy did great! I’ll be looking for more american variety seeds this season if anyone has any to send. I’ll be planting this out in full sun in October, early, as fall gets going. I’m happy with how fast the one seed that germinated has taken off. i can graft it over later if it’s not great, just having the tree going is a big start here as I’ve killed multiple of various stages so far and keep on trying.
Spent Saturday with some friends at the Claypool Orchard cleaning up fallen branches, collecting seed, and checking out the early ripeners.
Got introduced to a couple accessions I wasn’t familiar with yet. Confirmed J-42 has huge fruit. Not really firm enough to well manage the 30+ ft fall to the baked clay ground, though.
K-43A (pretty sure that’s the position- hard to tell these days with the missing trees) is a nice one. Going to have to get wood from that one this winter provided I can manage to reach it. Large fruit firm enough to hold intact after the 30+ foot fall (trees were planted on 5ft centers so grew tall and only fruit on the crown)
Another interesting find was what think is I-128A. Could be off a position or so. Freakishly loaded with nice looking fruit on a modestly sized tree. The original INGA fruit evaluators never really made it this part of the orchard so these were never evaluated as well as the earlier accessions.
Pretty sure the grafted Marion isn’t Marion. Looks like Golden Supreme which looks suspiciously like the Miller. An old USDA yearbook has a chromolithograph of Marion, and it looks nothing like it.
My tiny first year tree was recently almost totally defoliated by very camouflaged caterpillars. Since the damage, it has not grown anything new at all. Very worried. One full leaf and one half leaf remain.
