Making friends!
Hand someone a bucket of baseball bat sized zucchini and they’ll give you a rueful “thanks…I guess…”
Hand them some non-astringent persimmon and they’ll either be nostalgic and excited or dumbfounded and curious.
I give out a significant percentage of my crop as host gifts and conversation starters.
One of my favorite Japanese persimmon recipes uses persimmons as a lactofermented pickling bed for daikon radishes. The fermentation process removes the tannins, so both astringent and nonastringent persimmons can be used. I’ll have to check the cookbook for the exact proportions, but essentially, persimmons are smashed (they can be soft or hard, regardless of variety), mixed with 2% salt by weight, and layered in a crock with daikon that have been wilted in the sun until flexible. The whole thing gets weighed down and covered like for sauerkraut and ferments for a month or so.
The cultivar Beaver was said to be the best flavored for freezing. It won the persimmon pudding contest at the Mitchel Persimmon Festival for several years back when they had those contests. I’m pretty sure there is still a grafted Beaver at the Claypool evaluation orchard-for how much longer I’m not sure, though.
100-46 had 20 persimmons on second year for me also. grafted onto 1.5 inch diameter rootstock. I also have branches breaking form weight of fruit.
@NativBill1 … what State/zone are you in… and when did your 100-46 start and finish ripening?
I have several mid to late ripening varieties already… 100-46 is tempting me. But so is H63A H69A and i suspect they may all be mid to late ripeners.
@parkwaydrive … i looked last night online & youtube… no luck finding any info on the Beaver Persimmon.
I would like to hear more about it… fruit size, taste, when it ripens. Pictures. Where i could get some scion wood.
I agree that 100-46 is very productive early.
According to claypool:
In years past , I have made some very good persimmon wine.
Using wild fruit , mild flavors , could definitely tast / smell persimmons. Good.
I have made fruit leather in a drier, though it would be amazingly sweet. But it did not seem that sweet , for being the sweetest fruit on the continent. Still very good.
Have frozen fruit whole ,also frozen pulp.
Neither of which retained the flavors of what I put in the bag.
So far ,for the American varieties, I think they are best eaten perfectly ripe , under the tree.
A person can only eat so many !
Have picked straight into egg crates one day, sold at farmers market the next, limited demand .
Most people have never ate a good improved American Persimmons.
May be best used as gifts, conversation starteters ,at markets.
Many folks won’t buy them , until you give them one,
Then you can see their eyes light up.
With comments like “ Oh my ! That’s good ! “
Need to come up with good preservation methods soon,
As I will have a lot in coming years, many trees planted.
Also the health department / government, frowns on selling fruit
Picked off the ground. I have had short conversations with them about this, where I said “what about strawberries they grow in the ground you let people sell those “They had no good response.
American persimmon varieties fall to the ground when ripe , that’s what they do.
That’s my problem as well. When you say limited interest at the farmers market, does that mean near zero? I was hoping to sell some of them also.
Has anyone tried canning the pulp?
Well , not zero. Just that the general public has not seen / eaten large ,sweet ,seedless American persimmons.
That’s why free samples are appropriate.
Otherwise , many are not interested.
@Hillbillyhort — I have had very good results by picking wild americans when showing ripe color… some still firm, some a little soft, some ripe and ready.
I put them in a bowl with the most unripe ones on the bottom and the most ripe on top, 3, 4 layers at most. I cover that bowl with a larger glass bowl, rim down on the counter with a layer of paper towel down on the counter. That sort of lets them sit and ripen in their own atmosphere.
Every day eat a few, just remove that large glass bowl and pick out the most ripe ones.
I have had them sit on the counter for 3-4 weeks like that and eventually eat them all.
I usually give them a few days before trying any… some can look very ripe and still zap you.
If that happens just give them a few more days and eventually no astringency at all.
I do pick a few up off the ground at my sisters house… just the very good looking ones… but mostly pick from the tree, the ones that are showing ripe color… anywhere from firm to extra soft. I bring them home and let the bowl thing work its magic.
Her trees have a lot of low hanging limbs, so plenty in reach from the ground.
I wish you could just freeze ripe fruit and take them out later and have that full flavor in a frozen treat. That would be ideal. I have not tried that yet with wild americans (that is all I have now)… but will this fall. I tried cooking some jam last year, and froze it, and that did not work. Lost pretty much all flavor.
TNHunter
I was actually just thinking about trying to lacto-ferment the fruit from a wild American plum to see if that might cut down on the astringency of those, but hadn’t thought of using them as a pickling bed. I think that maybe I heard Sandor Katz mention that at some point but I may be imagining it.
I almost wonder if people would be less skeptical of American persimmons if they’re completely unfamiliar with them as opposed to only being familiar with biting into an astringent one as a child.
I’ve never had them dried, and though I imagine it completely changes the flavor I think it’s easier to see how you might integrate them into savory dishes like you might integrate another dried fruit. Based on what I’m projecting them to taste like dried (which could be entirely wrong, but I’m thinking somewhere between a date, sultana, and apricot) I think they’d work nicely with some of the core flavors in the cuisines of North Africa, particularly in Tfaya. I’ll let you all know in about half a decade (I just put in Szukis, Prairie Dawn, Mohler, and five seedlings for future grafting assuming the first winter takes out a couple).
Yes , I think older siblings playing tricks on the younger siblings.giving them unripe very astringent persimmons has done more to ruin the market than anything.!
Many of whom will never eat another persimmon.
@snowflake… thanks for the mention of john rick & morris burton…
I can find some info on those online… just found two different sources say John Rick has butterscotch/caramel flavor. Hmmmm that is tempting. Sounds like Morris Burton ripens late no luck finding ripening time for John Rick… probably late or mid late like most wild americans.
Cliff at nuttrees.net does not have either of those… but some other sites do.
I noticed Cliff said that Prok was his favorite persimmon for “cooking and eating out of hand”.
No details on what kind of cooking… and no mention of freezing.
At my new home location… I have several mid to late varieties already… with Kassandra being the only one I found mention of being mid season… the others are said to be mid late or late… IKKJ, Nakittas Gift, WS8-10, Zima Khurma.
If I add another mid-late or late persimmon… One that is known to freeze well might just get in there.
I have 4 wild dv set apart for grafting next spring. Thinking hard about what those 4 should be.
Possibly Journey (hybrid), Mohler, Prok (for earlier persimmons)… room for one more could be JR or MB. I will have to research those.
It’s my understanding that John Rick is late. Morris Burton isn’t late but has a very extended drop time (maybe over a month according to Claypool?) that makes it less desirable for commercial purposes.
I heard of the possibility of John Rick mix ups (in trades), but I’m not sure about that.
Sounds like I need a Morris Burton.
Hopefully a trade is out there somewhere.
Super detailed and helpful how-to guide on hoshigaki: https://www.instructables.com/HoshiGaki/?amp_page=true
Used it a few years ago with great success.
I’m in Illinois just north of St. Louis, MO, in zone 6a. 100-46 ripens in early to mid September. It continues 4 to 6 weeks.
