Fruiting Persimmon trees are prolific fruiting & very ornamental looking with a naturally semi-weeping habit, lush glossy emerald green summer foliage that turns rich autumn tones in autumn before falling in winter.
They are compact smaller growing trees and don't take up too much room in the garden. They grow 3.5 to 4m tall naturally, but recommended you prune manage height lower for easier tree management and harvesting. Can be easily pruned to maintain a lower height (we keep ours around 2.5m tall). They are also a good espalier tree.
Of course, as we all know. The best time to prune a fruit tree is immediately after harvest.
Nutritionally, Persimmons are similar to carrots, apricots, mangoes, rock melons - loaded with healthful carotinoids, vitamin A, B & C compounds & minerals.
Persimmons thrive in warm sheltered sunny spots in good draining but moisture retentive organically enriched fertile soils. Adding coarse pumice to heavy soils helps a lot to improve drainage and aeration. Keeping a good bark mulch layer around the tree, year round, keeps the roots cool, moist and protected.
They are hardy to cold winters & frosts as they are deciduous (dormant) over winter.
Once planted, Persimmon take about 3-4 seasons to grow/mature before they start producing fruit. The better the growing environment, the faster they grow and mature.
The spring/early summer flowers of a Persimmon tree are small and completely green. So you may not even notice the tree is in flower, as they are hard to spot in amongst the glossy green foliage.
"FUYU"
Non-astringent grafted variety. It's the commercially grown variety you see available in supermarkets, etc. Delicious sweet flavoured fruit can be eaten when the fruit is firm (crunchy and crisp like an apple) or soft and juicy (almost jam like).
"HIRATANENASHI" A highly regarded astringent variety used in Japan to make sweet dried Persimmons (Hoshigaki) or let to go soft and juicy (almost jam like) and spoon out the delectable sweet flesh. You can't eat hard astringent Persimmon fruit.
Pic #4 : Hoshigaki tastes like dark rich sweet dried apricots and is easy to make by simply peeling the unripe hard fruit and hanging them up to air dry. Check out the Youtube links below.
Although very astringent when hard and unripe, they contain higher natural fruit sugar amounts and are much more flavourful when fully soft and ripe compared to the non-astringent variety.
As per pic #5 : Trees are grafted in tall p8 bags standing aprox 1.3m tall from the top of the bag to top of growth. Trees are on a central leader stem. Handle the tree by the bag, not the main stem so as to not damage the fragile root system. Ideal time to plant now, so they establish in the garden and ready to put on new growth in spring.
Full cultural growing information provided.
Great video on Persimmons in Japan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxCVD49hWis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O95v1N8cgHM
Highly recommend Kath Irvine's NZ book "Pruning Fruit Trees, a Beginners Guide" you can order directly off her website ... https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz
