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)

Contrary to claims made by many, the research on the issue is rather extensive, and quite conclusively shows that pruning did not increase overall yields. Its effect on fruit size is debatable. These studies all seem to suffer from a number of methodological issues. First and foremost, most every study compared tomato plants staked and pruned to plants allowed to grow on the ground. This introduces too many dependent variables, and fails to examine the most important distinction: the difference between staked and pruned vs. staked and not pruned (which, after all, is what the question really is. As such, these studies most likely indicate issues with allowing the plant to sprawl directly on the ground more so than issues related to pruning. As to fruit size, these experiments are complicated by the fact that they all seem to examine fruit as a percentage of overall yield rather than presenting absolute numbers, so it is difficult to determine from the results if the claims about larger fruit size are based on total harvest, or individual fruit. From the data, it most certainly could be that both methods produced the same absolute number of larger than average fruit, but that the plants that are not pruned, having a significantly larger yield, had a smaller percentage of larger fruit relative to the more abundant total harvest. Regardless, since individual fruit size is mostly a commercial concern, it is largely irrelevant for the home gardener. Data on early yield is mixed. At most, it might lead to a slightly earlier first fruit set, due to stressing the plant.

I have not grown them side by side, myself to review them. One season ( long time ago ) I grew one of them. Can't remember which one. The plant was not very fast growing. The fruits were round ( ~ 4 -6 oz) grown in cluster. The taste was fine. But recently I have read quite a few reviews here and there. The general consensus ( ~80% ?) was that Better Boy is superior. Better Boy has been also compared to Big Beef and Brandy Boy but has not come out as the winner . YMMV Sey

I agree with John. Supermarkets are notorious for treating various fruits and vegetables with ethylene gas (which plants naturally produce to signal ripening events). This is also why tomatoes that are home grown taste many times better and have a different texture than those from the store. It turns out for shipping reasons and shelf life it's better for supermarkets to obtain realitively unripe fruit and then alter cosmetics with ethylene.