I have an Ichi ki kei Jiro tree that I planted spring of 2019.
Since two years old it has flowered setting a few fruits, but every year it drops the majority before ripening. The 2022 experience was similar to this year, nothing held until turning color.
As of 9/1/23 of 18 fruitlets set, only 9 remain on the tree. Nothing turning color yet. I would like to ask if any member has this variety recently planted and when if ever it held fruits until they ripened? If you have this variety please advise when your tree was successful
Dennis
Kent, wa
This is approximately the time when persimmons do their last fruit drop in our area.
Most of the rest should progress to ripening. It’s healthy for the tree to drop fruit so it doesn’t turn biennial bearing. Even so, they may not bear much in the coming year. Some varieties like Jiro and Saijo bear so much that they produce only on alternate years - atleast for me.
Yes, I planted 3 IKKJ in 2015. I had fruit set in 2019 but it all dropped. I got my first small crop in 2020 then large crops in 2021 & '22.
In the recent good years, the trees had a ton of blooms, set a ton of fruit, then dropped 80% of it. But that was OK – It saved me having to thin them. Most of the remaining fruit ripened. In 2021, I harvested ~100 from each tree; in 2022, ~40 each.
Unfortunately the trees were nearly killed this past winter. So now we are rebuilding.
I have an Ichi ki kei Jiro that I planted in 2016, but moved it in 2018 to a better location. It has finally recovered from the move and is growing, is maybe 7’ tall and 7’ across, looks healthy. Bloomed last year but dropped everything. Was loaded this year with blooms and small fruits but all have now dropped but maybe 5. I was thinking of getting rid of it, or maybe getting another one for a pollinator (some say that might help) but from these posts, maybe will give it some more time.
I have 3 IKKJ planted here in 2015. They started to ripen fruit in 2020. I got heavy crops in 2021 and 2022 before severe cold damage in Feb 2023.
For each crop 2021-2022, there was an enormous fruit set followed by 80-90% fruit drop. In rough numbers, there were 1000 fruits immediately after flowering and maybe 80-120 ripened, per tree. That was a great harvest. It seems to me that the tree sheds fruit that it can’t ripen, managing its load.
My recommendation based on this experience is that you be patient. Please don’t move it again. Based on my experience, a tree (trans)planted in 2018 should be bigger – maybe 12-15’ tall and 8’ wide. Maybe it needs time to to grow. Have confidence that the tree will do what it is supposed to, given a chance.
Thanks for the comments. Yeah, I couldn’t move it now. But where it was before, after two years, it had barely grown at all so I took a large root ball and moved in it early spring before leafing out. So it took the move fine. It has grown a lot in the last couple of years, but tends to get some kind of bug on the tips of new growth that limits the spread of new shoots. It looks like around 10 fruits have held on, so I will see what future years bring!
Update: I have 9 fruits ripening! Weird, 7 of them are all on the same branch, and all 9 are on the same side of the tree. Now to figure out when to pick them.
