Hi guys, theme is old and I do not know if it's still active. I would like to get in touch with Kristian from Hungary and I was wondering if somebody's got his e-mail? I want to have hardy kaki (persimmon) in my backyard but can not find it in my country. Would seek in neighboring and Hungary is one of them, by the way I am from Serbia. I have tried to contact people from Bulgaria but with no success. So if someoene has some contact or knowledge about hardy persimmon on Balkan please send me. Greetings, Martin.

Cliff thought his Shin had completely snapped below the graft union because the fruits he was getting from his snow damaged mother tree were astringent. After consulting with me, he decided to change his idea about Shin being non-astringent. Really, if he was getting fruit from the rootstock what are the odds they'd even be edible? What I had was extremely precocious which should be a pretty good indicator of variety. Why are you debating about the shape? To me they look more like Fuyu than the astringent varieties in stores. Maybe I just have no eye for shapes. Let's move on.

For those looking for things to do with persimmons I thought I would follow up with what I did with all my Hachiyas. I was going to make a big batch of jam but I started cooking it and noticed it was getting more cloudy not more clear. I don't think you can make clear jam with persimmons. Looking at recipes it seems like persimmons make persimmon butter. I decided to instead take the pulp I had and try some other things. I made fruit leather in the dryer which came out very well. I probably over-dried it (20 hrs), the stuff is quite chewy. Last time I dried persimmons they rotted in a month, this stuff won't do that! Making leather required a bit more work than just drying the slices, but it is going to be a lot more popular as leather. I didn't find a lot of interest in my previous batch of dried persimmons in spite of their wonderful taste. I made some ice cream following a recipe on the Dave Wilson website, that came out very good as well. Lastly I made persimmon custard, basically take a custard recipe and add a couple cups of persimmon pulp. That also came out very well. The pulp separated to the top so the top was more persimmon-y and the bottom was pure custard. I just pushed the pulp through a strainer to get out the seeds etc and this gave me little chunks of pulp about the size of the holes on the strainer. To get it to go into the custard more uniformly a food processor on it would probably have helped. Scott

Now, this is my sort of topic, those of you who know me would agree lol... 1. I recommend you get all persimmons from Cliff England at England's Orchard & Nursery. He has an impressive variety of scion wood and a number of grafted trees, as well. Cliff only sends out quality stuff and always for a very reasonable cost. I just got, among other things, the American persimmon cv. 'Dollywood' and a seedling selection of Cliff's of an Asian persimmon which he calls cv. 'Shin-Na-Da'. I'm not recommending Cliff just because he's a great friend, but because I know of no other nursery (for jujube, paw paw, persimmon, nuts, mulberries) that I would rather patronize, this from the first time I placed an order well before I knew him. 2. Prok. Well, first-of-all, John Gordon jr. told me that George Slate selected 'Prok' (and 'Korp') are seedlings (open-pollinated) of the American persimmon cv. 'Pieper'. That's a smaller (much) persimmon; in the distant future, it will be genetically evaluated so this matter will be settled one-way-or-the-other; to me, although a bit similar to an American persimmon like cv. 'Morris Burton', I feel the foliage and new stems are a little too rubbery; it puts on a second-flush of growth, as does Diospyros kaki; the flower's a bit too large. Yet, I'll wait until it's tested. As for Burbank's cv. 'Keener', I think it has as much chance of being a hybrid persimmon as Slate's 'Geneva Red'/'Geneva Long'; Burbank said he failed - failed at making a good fruit or making a hybrid? and when did he say this, before or after 'Keener'. As David LaVergne said to me, Burbank may have had a lot of failed attempts as a result of, unknowingly, using 60-chromosome strains, and not just 90-c. What really interests me is to know: can 90-chromosome American persimmons freely hybridize (open-pollinated, without double-mentoring) with 90-chromosome Asian perismmons (or D. lotus, D. rhombifolia, for that matter, all being 90-c). 3. As Lucky points out, cv. 'Early Golden' wins the taste-tests and cv. 'Yates' is excellent and very large, although not as large as the questionable 'Prok'. 4. As for cv. 'Early Golden' being not just parthenocarpic but also self-fertile, Jerry Lehman told me that this is over-stated and there are not that many male limbs set forth, even on a mature tree. Yet, seedlings produced by crossing 'EG' with itself produce female seedlings, from which good cultivars often come. 5. Lucky, I spoke with John Gordon jr. a few weeks ago on the phone. He's doing good, but his home is not any longer on the orchard. Nuttreesnorth.com is now his page. As for F-100, if Cliff doesn't have it, you can ask Jerry - I should be getting some this spring, I'll send it to you. 6. Lucky, interesting: yet, I think, like you suspect, maybe the few male limbs on your Early Golden-family trees are responsible for the seeds. 7. Benny, I wish I knew for sure. Wes Rice believes that persimmons, in general, are parthenocarpic. Put it this way, I've found many persimmon (female) trees planted in areas without males and they have fruit; these are not cv. 'Meader' for sure. 8. Mk_in-Ohio, well... all of the sources I can think of have only scion wood. BUT, you can contact Cliff England and ask him if he would graft 'Szukis' for you. http://www.nuttrees.net/ 9. Benny, interesting - I'll have to look into that; re: F-100 not always setting fruit.. I've been curious about that cultivar for a while. Also, I agree with Lucky - I'm very interested in finding out how your D. kaki interstem experiment works out. 10. Lucky, cv. 'Hokkaido' is only supposed to stay true to its dwarfing form when grafted upon it's own species rootstock, not D. lotus or D. virginiana; for your area, that likely means I suppose you didn't grafted it onto D. kaki. Steve (p.s. changing my user name soon)