I think @aap recommended manganese and micronutrients to help prevent fruit drop in persimmons. Applying both certainly helped with my kaki and so did pollination from Cheong Pyong and Nishimura Wase once they started flowering copiously. However, Prok still drops insane numbers of flowers. 100-46 holds onto practically everything with the same treatment. I don’t have other virginiana varieties fruiting yet to further compare though. There’s also something flowering that pollinates both 100-46 and Prok. They’re normally seeded.
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@hambone when do your Giboshi usually drop? I’ve got about 10 fruit on a little 2nd year tree (about 4 feet tall) that appear to be hanging on pretty well. They are quite possibly pollinated by a chocolate that is about 10 feet away and had all male blooms this year.
I’m almost feeling cautiously optimistic, but that probably jinxed it.
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You already solved the drop problem by getting Giboshi pollinated. And you improved its taste at the same time. It will blow your socks off. I envy your Chocolate!
My Chocolate graft here years ago died during its first winter so I gave up on it. You may have some city heat island effect going on.
Oh- my G. drop all through the season, more heavily as the season progresses.
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Gurneys just listed two new ones…
edit i didnt see the post on this… i got this link in my email today.
Caramel Cocktail and Sugar Daddy Persimmons
The best American persimmons you’ve ever tasted-guaranteed!
A hybrid marvel more than 10 years in the making, Caramel Cocktail has a craveable flavor profile that includes honeyed caramel, nutmeg, clove and vanilla. Vibrant orange, larger-than-average fruits have none of the usual astringency. Offering nearly seedless harvests when planted alone, Caramel Cocktail produces larger yields when paired with pollinator Sugar Daddy. Grows 35-60 ft tall and, once established, produces 2-4 bushels of fruit from Aug. to Dec. Potted. Zones 5-8.
Both can be yours for less than $260.
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Huh, only $260? I don’t know if there’s enough hype in the entire world to get me jacked enough to spend that much on two trees, no matter who says that they are the most magical best tasting unicorn cotton candy glitter bombs in the entire world. My old boss liked to say that profit is not a dirty word, but I’ve got common sense working on my side.
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@krismoriah, if those are trees that you are really interested in growing then I would be willing to chip in for the donation plate to help soften the blow, and I would just ask for some scion wood in the future in return.
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I think a couple of folks on here said that they wont grow ‘cheap trees’ so maybe they will buy them. Also several members on some FB groups said that unless a tree costs over $100 its not grafted by an expert.
When Gurney’s comes up with a Gurney’s Exclusive…its usually something that someone else cant sell. They have a fantastic market for folks that arent the most internet savvy.
When is the last time that you saw these for sale?
I-115
C-100
H-118
H-120
I could call Prok ‘Worlds Best Persimmon’ and probably do pretty good with it for a long time. I mean where do u even buy a Prok if u arent a member of some obscure forum? Who even knows what a Prok is on the basic social media groups?
‘Sweet Giant’ blackberry that i just bought from them at $25/plant… is a U of Ark variety that is likely inferior to their others… But that name though… who wouldnt want a sweet giant blackberry?
Who wouldnt want a caramel sugar persimmon? That has no astringency.
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got mine at Starks.
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Fair point… i only buy the ones when they get cheap with free shipping… the high price tag items i never look at.
Well thats good then. I guess Prok counts as improved. Wasnt it grown from seed from John Gordon and just happened to have larger fruits than others?
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So… is ‘Sugar Daddy’ just a male persimmon that they’re grafting and offering as a pollinator (correct term: pollenizer… the insects are the pollinators)? Or is is a polygamodioecious (‘bisexual’), fruiting male, like Szukis or Claypool’s F-100?
No way in lleh that I’d pay $260 for two grafted persimmons, particularly if one is a non-fruiting male that’s going to make the fruit on my female fully seeded.
I also see Gurney’s is claiming ‘bushels of fruit from Aug-Dec’… I don’t know any persimmon that bears ripe fruits over a 5-month period… though I guess if you had folks growing it from zone 8a to zone 5b… the difference in ripening times between a tree growing at Mobile AL - almost to the Gulf of Mexico - and one in northern coastal Maine on the border with New Brunswick might span that timeframe.
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We know these are the oldest tricks in the book to get us to buy more and pay more.
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P.T. Barnum wasn’t wrong.
I keep telling my wife… the average person is not particularly smart… and at least half the folks out there are below average…
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Please don’t get me wrong, I recognize that there is a true cost to bringing something to market, I am just not willing to pay that much for those specific trees.
[Edit] I recognize that with the time that they said they spent to develop these varieties there will also be those additional costs factored in to what they are charging.
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There are times i pay gurneys price. The carmine jewell was one of those times because i really wanted that cherry a long time. They paid to import it from Canada to the USA. Gurneys pears come from Purdue University. As far as i’m concerned they sell some great things that i’m normally not willing to pay for. If you have a yard that will only accomadate one or two trees spending a few hundred dollars might not seem outrageous. Where i’m from we can lose 30 trees in one storm , it might not be smart to have more than a few dollars in a tree. Will need to graft 30 - 60 trees again from the last two storms that came through. 80 mph + winds can do a lot of damage. If they can snap off a two year old graft that has as much strength as a two x two then what can’t they break? It literally broke off two - three inches thick of pear. The top never was found which would have weighed at least 40 pounds. Literally half a tree is missing! Would you plant those persimmons here?
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I doubt that they developed them… likely took them 10 years to convince Jennings to release some of the Claypool varieties.
I think Lehman got a bunch out of Claypools orchards but not all of them.
Big question is are these new ones patented? If so lets say that they patented 100-46… does that mean that folks like Englands that have been selling them for years will be selling a patented variety? or do they become grandfathered?
I know the Praire Series is trademarked…but still sold as their common name.
It will take years to figure out what they really are… then i guess we go from there. You might even have it already?
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I always have to remind myself of that while driving… half of the drivers out there are literally below average. 
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