Persimmons and a Friend

A friend sent an email note that he had persimmons and did I want any. Of course, the answer was "Yes!" Joe and I went over to to his house, and we saw that our friend's little weeping persimmon tree was loaded with fruit. He stayed with us out in the Very Cold weather, picking persimmons. This is what we brought home:



I have some work to do! These will all need to be washed and then pushed through the ricer to separate the pulp from the skins and large seeds. The work will be worthwhile, though. The flavor of the pulp is exceptional.

My friend Eddie Rhoades grafts fruit trees, and he has grafted a piece of his weeping persimmon onto a sturdy rootstock, so he will have another one of these little trees producing fruit in a few years.

There is a persimmon in my backyard that he grafted. It should produce fruits that have few or no seeds at all. If I am lucky, it will start bearing in another year or two. It has already been out there for two full years, and the scion was from a fairly mature tree.

We have a young Ichi-Ki-Kei-Jiro (Asian persimmon) in the front yard that set three fruits this year, but they disappeared about midsummer. I am hoping for more next summer, and for them to stay on the tree until ripe. This particular persimmon is supposed to be non-astringent even when hard; American persimmons, like those that my friend Eddie gave us, are powerfully astringent until they become fully ripe.

Eddie is also the source of my shiitake mushroom log. His haven't produced mushrooms yet, either, but I am thinking that this spring we will both get plenty.