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)

Let me start by saying I live near Florida's panhandle where it seldom gets below freezing more than a week or two each year. I've recently bought kiwi purchased from Lowe's for a second time.. The first time, the kiwi grew quickly and had fruit after the 3rd year.. The vines are very robust and will quickly consume a trellis or fence area and after about 5 years they actually got to the point that they were too large and in the way so I had to remove them. I never bothered separating the vines, but made sure the majority of them had room to run. A couple of sturdy poles with wire, rope or clothes line placed 15 to 20 ft apart makes a satisfactory home for the vines. Our soil here isn't the best (mostly clay) so I kept the young plants watered well until they were established and let Mother Nature take care of the watering after that. They are a hardy and fast growing vine in the summer so give some thought to where you plant them. I recently bought more plants and planted them where they won't be in the way this time.

We live in the northern county of San Diego in an area adjacent to chaparral. I've seen coyotes, squirrels, bunnies, hawks, gopher (yes, I actually saw the gopher - but my husband took care of that - RIP), and I understand there are owl boxes courtesy of our HOA. The bunnies are eating my husband's lawn (and sometimes my plants). The squirrels come in to eat too. The hills are dry this time of year, but we have kept our lawn and plants watered, making them yummy meals for the critters. We finished putting up some kind of fencing we were told is used to keep bunnies out. Ironically, the bunnies chewed through the fence where the back gate goes out to the wildlands - or from the wildlands into our backyard. A perfectly sized hole with nice little bits of fence scattered around the wrought iron gate. Although I did have to chuckle about it, we did work hard putting up that fence in the hottest part of the year. The rabbits were probably laughing too (rightly so - what a couple of dingdongs we are). Now my husband wants to shoot those bunnies with a pellet gun (he'd rather use something bigger, but I don't think that's legal - I'm not sure killing rabbits is legal in our area). I can understand his frustration, but I'm glad to see all the postings - you have my sincere appreciation - and will ask him to help me out with the bloodmeal and/or ammonia. I'll let you know whether it works for us or not. If those things don't work and I can't convince my husband to replace that fencing with something more sturdy, I'm afraid the rabbits will be meeting the gopher's demise. By the way, we did try other methods to deter the gopher (hair in the tunnel, plugging the tunnel) - then I read several posts and determined there was only one way to take care of the gopher; it was not the way I wanted, but the last resort. Best to all and your yards/gardens.

TheNewLandscape, I hope you get some fruit to form for you soon. Your planting zone there should be suitable for this heat loving tropical plant. Mine, unfortunately, died in this past Winter and never came back. I left it out in the pot because I simply had too many plants to move inside my home during the cold this past Winter. I also noticed when mine fruited last year, there was a lot of white cottony stuff on it. I think it's the white flies. For some reason, the white flies love to attack it. I harvested a couple of fruit before the infestation got worse. We all loved the taste of it, but it was too delicate plant to have for me around here. It would be nice if you have some pictures to share of your plant. Have you thought of using a brush to hand pollinate the blooms? I think I did that to my blooms as suggested by some forumer in this thread here and had some success to get fruit formed that way for me. Hope to hear some good news of your fruit forming for you soon.