I have a 3 year old seedling persimmon tree that I got from the Maryland DNR that I’m debating grafting over. To me it’s it’s too beautiful to hack up. It was over 12ft tall before I topped it last year. If it was a male tree I wouldn’t hesitate, but it looks to have female flowers for the first time. I have JT-02, Kassandra, and other bud wood ready, but can’t decide. I have other grafted persimmons trees, so maybe I’ll keep this one in it’s natural state. What do you think?
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You make the decision, experts here will tell you to graft it over, that the odds are no good, but they don’t really know.
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Thanks for the reply. Yeah, there is a tendency to graft here.
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Hopefully you get fruit this year. That will make the decision easier. The branches are still small caliper. It can be grafted later if the fruit isn’t worth growing.
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Im confused. Its not root stock you have so many graftable branches your not going to just top work it to one cultivar.
That’s what i was thinking. Hopefully i have a winner, but if not, I can cut it low to do a bark graft later.
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It was rootstock, but i just didn’t get around to grafting it and let it grow. I guess i could make it a multi-grafted tree.
My persimmon seedlings are going into year 2. I seriously doubt they will look like that at year 3. Good job.
How big are your grafted trees from the same batch?
You can graft at the very top any named variety and it will not change the shape of the tree one bit.
No need to chop the tree down and do bark grafts.
I think Ram offers the best option to consider. My understanding is that the native DV tends to grow quite high making fruit gathering quite a chore, but on some varieties you cannot typically eat them anyway until after frost hits them and they ripen an fall to the ground. By then they are not so astringent. So perhaps use your Asian and hybrid grafts on the lower scaffolds leaving several of the higher scaffolds as the native but determine where you can comfortably top it for grafting a hybrid. The more you can avoid bark grafts the stronger your tree will be for carrying loads. A lot to consider, but if you believe you have a female DV, it’s worth a year or so to see if you like the variety.
Dennis
Kent, wa
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Thanks. A lot of good suggestions. There was a minimum order of 25 seedlings when i ordered. I scattered them all around my property and in the back woods, not all in great locations. I forgot about some of them like this one. My property is only a half acre. This one is the only one that gets full sun all day and is the largest. It makes all the difference. I grafted most of the others to asians recently, fuyu, jiro, saijo, etc.
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I got impatient and couldn’t wait. I made it into a frankentree. If this works out, I can be more patient next year. Although, this will open up a world of possibilities for my other trees…
BTW, all my american persimmons grafted to asians last year failed, but I kind of expected that. The hybrids were ok. Below is Nikita’s Gift grafted on a fuyu.
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