Who hasn't heard of persimmons?

General Fruit Growing
#32

And now you know. Pretty great, right? Once the astringency is fully gone, it’s quite amazing .The Asian persimmons are much subtler, but similar in flavor.

Did you pick it off the tree, or the ground? My rule of thumb for American persimmon is that they should fall off the tree on their own or with only a shake to be ready.

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#33

I picked the darkest one I could find and reach still on the tree It was already partially bruised.

I have heard for the American varieties you should let them drop.

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#34

Attorney’s get a really bad rap, even when discussing persimmons.

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#35

Hah! What an abysmal autocorrect typo. I’ll have to go fix that.

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#36

Years ago when I first got a smart phone mine autocorrected (don’t remember what I was trying to type) to ‘monotheistic llamas’.

I kid you not.

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#37

Anytime I get a new device, it takes a few days for me to convince it my name isn’t Jaguar Nero. An awesome name, to be fair. Just not mine.

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#38

Oh that is brilliant.

That would be my avatar for everything I could think of…

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#39

I have 2 nice sized female American persimmons that produce very astringent fruit. Could I just bud or graft other varieties to these trees? If that would be a fairly simple and reasonably successful thing to do, what varieties would be the best tasting right off the tree in the Seattle eastside area?

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#40

There are a bunch of threads already started on the best persimmons. You should start with reading there and then think about what variety best fits your space and climate.

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#41

Well, in a way, yes. Many female flowering persimmons are parthenocarpic, which isn’t exactly self fertile.

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#42

This should answer a few of your questions and give you a bunch more to think about PCA / PCNA / PVA / PVNA / persimmons and what this all means

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#43

Just to be sure, are you letting them soften fully? Like to the point where it almost seems like they may have gone bad? Most Americans, especially if they’re seedlings, need to be jelly soft to be non-astringent.

For more on individual persimmon varieties, this is a pretty good thread that’s been active lately:

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#44

I’d wager less than 20% of Minnesotans have heard of persimmons.

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#45

I’d think awareness of persimmons would be obviously heavily weighted to more rural areas, especially considering it doesn’t ship well so if it’s not in your surroundings, you just don’t know.

Folks growing up in cities are more ignorant of the variety of anything they don’t see in stores.

Ignorant meaning lacking knowledge or unaware, not derogatory.

The further anyone is from the source of anything we consume, the less aware they are.

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#46

Maybe more rural areas south of say northern Illinois. No persimmons growing wild anywhere within a good number of hours of most of MN. FWIW…the vast majority of MN would be considered “rural”

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#47

I think there’s more awareness of Asian persimmons in large cities. In the rural parts of my life, people were mostly aware of the American persimmons as the weird fruit that makes your mouth feel funny, or as deer bait. Even then, it was maybe 1 in 5 who knew about them. Asian persimmons were largely unheard of.

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#48

Thanks for the thread referral. I’ll follow it.
I definitely let them ripen fully on the tree. They eventually turn from their beautiful orange to black and squishy, but horribly astringent.

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#49

Yep, that does sound like you could do with a better variety!

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#50

Thanks, I will.

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#51

A couple of years ago I saw persimmons by the pallet load in a Portland Asian grocery.
They were small and firm, some orange patches. Individual boxes were perhaps 10 pounds.

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