I love the taste of Fuyu, which is sweet and crunch. I wonder if there is any persimmon better than the Fuyu.
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Of the PCNA’s I have tried. Izu ,Fuyu, Jiro & Matsumoto wase fuyu. They are all very similar. I think it’s better to focus on ripening time and adjusting your choice based on how many growing days/ heat units you receive.
I will say Izu was softer texturally, and we didn’t like it.
Matsumoto ripens early enough that I can keep on tree to develop sweetness before my season runs out and it stays crisp.
Fuyu and Jiro are both solid. With fuyu being a tad too late to ripen well sometimes.
I see your in zone 9 any should be a good choice.
Look into Sugura, you can ripen that and it’s supposedly a PCNA that is able to attain high sugars
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For PCNA, it is hard to beat Fuyu Jiro. It has been my most reliable and best producer. This may be location dependent though.
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Suruga. Sweeter than saijo and very rich. Not one dimensional like most asians. Can eat firm like fuyu but I prefer them riper and softer.
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Does it need a lot of heat to ripen? I have a few on my young tree but I live in a heat challenged place.
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The winter before the pandemic (2019?), we went around Andy’s orchard to collect scions for the CRFG exchange. At the end, we walked through his persimmon collection sampling a handful of PCNAs which were ripening at that time (Jiros are done by then). I was with a group of Japanese and Chinese folks (most of them grew up in Japan/China) from the Bay Area and all of them loved the different varieties and commented on the subtle differences in flavor between them. To me, all of them tasted bland, I mean spit out bland. I guess eating sugary fruits ruined my taste buds. I was polite to not spit the first one out but couldn’t continue after that one. I love Jiro and yet to find something that’s significantly better (for my taste buds). I should try Suruga as I have seen it mentioned a few times but don’t know how that fares here.
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Yep. In Z9 this may not be an issue for you but it is the central issue for any grower in the North.
That said, I feel compelled to point out that the taste of a persimmon changes as it ripens. Any tour of a garden where multiple varieties grow will be a snapshot of those varieties at different stages of development. The snapshot misses future development. It’s like looking at a family and assuming that the youngest child will always be the shortest.
Ideally, you’d have a Time Machine that enabled you to move back and forth through time so that you could pick and taste fruits from different varieties at the same stage of development, same degree of ripeness.
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You are on point.