Ep. 234 Persimmon: Growing and Eating Illinois' Sweetest Fruit | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Omb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We are going to be joined by Nick Frillman, local food small farms educator over in the Bloomington Normal Region, and we're gonna be talking about Per Simmons. Oh, he's gonna he's going to educate us about picking that right one because I have never been able to do that. And you know I'm not doing this by myself.

I'm joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. I'm not sure if I've ever eaten persimmon, not knowingly anyway. So after this, I may have to go to the grocery store, see if I can find some.

Well, everything I know about persimmons, which is not much, is is pretty much me testing persimmons out that I've found. And it gives you something they call cottonmouth. And you feel like you're shedding the lining of your mouth for, like, twenty minutes or something. It's it's it's an unpleasant thing when you find the wrong unripe, I'll say, the unripe fruit. But I also heard that it's, like, one of the sweetest fruits out there, so I am excited to have Nick on to educate us about picking the right one so I know what to do next time.

Yeah. Wow. That's a that's a lot of responsibility. Hopefully, I can fit the bill.

I know you can, Nick. You got this. Well, I I guess, you know, without further ado, Nick, let's get you on here to to talk to us about about persimmons because we do have a lot of ground to cover today, this particular tree. So welcome to the show.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's been a while since I've been on. Appreciate opportunity to come back. And, yeah, for the listeners out there, this all started because a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I was actually myself hunting for some more information regarding American persimmons, Asian persimmons as we'll cover, and etcetera.

And I looked up the Good Growing podcast because I thought, hey. If there's any podcast platform in Illinois that I know of that might have something on persimmons, it's probably these guys. And I didn't find any, so I just reached out with a quick text. And shortly after that, I kinda figured out I had volunteered for a persimmon show. There you go.

I was was putting together a presentation for our our local master gardener chapter on on them. And so I figured, yeah, we'll talk a little bit about persimmon today, and I'll share what I know.

Excellent. Careful what you wish for.

Yeah. I'll have to think twice about reaching out next time for some information. But no. It's all it's good. So December's a a slower time usually for in person or or online extension programming.

So happy to happy to have something to do this week reaching out to the public. So Good. Yeah. Ask away.

Alright. Well, sounds good. Well, we'll we'll kick this off. Ken, would you mind getting us started, please?

Yeah. So you mentioned the American and Asian persimmons. You wanna talk a little bit about, I guess, what exactly is the difference between those and why should we care?

Yeah. Great question to start off. So there's two different types of persimmons. There are the American and the Asian persimmon. American persimmon is Diospyros virginiana is the Latin binomial, whereas Asian persimmon is Diospyros kaki.

And the Asian persimmon is the one that you'll typically find at not all, but most grocery stores. I actually don't know if I've seen them at places like Walmart, but just recently in the last month or two, I've seen them available at Meijer, Jewel, and even an Asian grocery store that I popped into for a couple things the other day. And I've actually got some props here with me today. So this is I actually have two Asian persimmons with me today. Again, Deospyros kaki.

Within that Asian persimmon species, just like apples or pears, we have lots of different cultivars. And there are many, many more different cultivars than what we'll talk about today in both categories. But typically, you'll see both of these at the grocery store. This is a Jiro or Hero, depending on how you pronounce the j, j I r o, kind of rounder, disc shaped, flat persimmon. And this one is a hachiya persimmon, kind of acorn shaped, larger.

This one's a little smaller and rounder and flatter. And they were both in the same section at the grocery store, both on sale for a dollar a pound about ten days ago. So I love persimmons. I jumped at the chance. And I'll say right off the bat, there's there's no comparison just like any other piece of produce you'd find at the store compared to a farmer's market item or better yet, right off of a plant or a tree at your own home.

I've had the privilege of tasting persimmons, like, at a farmer's market in LA. That was a a Hachia type a couple years back, and it was one of the best things I've ever eaten. These were good from Juul. I picked them up after they ripened, of course, but nowhere near, you know, the freshness and the quality of what you'd find at a farmer's market from, you know, that that mom and pop farm stand type connection. And the same is to be said with the hero.

Pretty tasty for a persimmon you'll find at the grocery store in in Illinois. So pivoting a little bit to the American persimmon, Diosperos virginiana. I am not sure that I know of any other growers in the entire area in Central Illinois that grow improved cultivar American persimmons except the one. And that is grown by Teresa Brockman. She runs Sunny Lane Aronia Farm, and she sells her fruit at her daughter's farm stand at the Peoria Riverfront Market.

Her daughter runs Kira's Flowers. That's Kira Santiago. But, anyway, here's my other prop. So this was the Asian one I already showed you. This one right here is a improved cultivar, American Persimmon called John Rick.

And as a size comparison, can see it's quite a bit smaller than the other two. But I'll tell you what, it more than makes up for it in flavor because the two I picked up at the store just have no no leg to stand on as regards flavor up against the John Rick cultivar. So so those are the two types. Those are kinda where they can be found. You'll be lucky if you can find an American type persimmon at a farmer's market near you.

Although, after this podcast, add a couple years on, and hopefully, that won't be the case after people get stoked.

I can definitely see a a plant named John Rick. It is Rick, not Wick, taking the legs out of everybody else in the in the competition here. But Mhmm. And and yeah, just maybe I'll throw in a little bit more descriptors for people listening. What you were holding with the American persimmon, it was probably what would we equate it to?

Maybe like a Roma tomato, but not as oblong, but in terms of sort of that the mass or the size. And then your Asian persimmons, you know, we're looking more like apple size to large larger slicing tomato size Yeah. Fruit.

Yep. Yep. I would say that's correct. And, yeah, the American persimmon here is maybe the size of a golf ball.

Yeah. A good one. Yeah. Mhmm. Alright.

So for people that are more interested in perhaps growing this in their backyard, we want to see this more locally, what are we going to be growing here on Illinois? Can we grow Asian persimmon? Is it hearty here? What's what's going on in Illinois?

Yeah. So American persimmon is actually native to Illinois, though it doesn't really grow naturally in Illinois north of about the Decatur line. So for those out of state listeners that aren't familiar, Decatur, Illinois is, like, right about in the middle of the state. If you were to draw a line north south from Decatur, it's about a three and a half hour, four hour drive to the north border and about the same distance to the southern tip. So right around there is where our native persimmon, which does occur in, you know, forest preserves and state forests and etcetera south of there, that's kinda where it stops.

I'm not quite sure why that is. They can grow north of that, but but they don't they don't do so naturally. So that's probably the only American that's probably the only type of persimmon you would see north of that line because primarily the Asian persimmons I don't think I'm aware of an Asian persimmon cultivar that has a rating of USDA grow zone lower than six a. And so, again, for in state, out of state listeners, McLean County, where I'm based in Bloomington, an hour north of Decatur, is right on the border between 5b, 6a. And so, yeah, there are a ton of persimmons available, Asian American cultivars, many different many different cultivars available all over the Internet, but it's really important to keep your eye on that USDA grow zone and keep well within that kind of limit of where where you're at.

So where where we're at, if I was a if I was a backyard orchardist and I wanted to get reliable production in Bloomington, I would be planting something in that was rated for five b. If you wanted to go crazy, you could say 5A and you'd be comfortably in the ballpark now in that 5B category. Or you could push it and be like, hey, our grow zones have changed recently to be warmer. So in another ten years, you know, the tree will probably live, maybe not bear fruit, but in ten years might bear fruit.

So our Northern Illinois listeners and watch viewers, you might have struggled a little bit unless you're in that kind of Cook and the Color County that that area that metro area that has sort of that urban heat island effect, but also that lake effect kind of warming in that area.

Yeah. And I'll clarify just a little bit. There definitely are cultivars of American persimmon that are rated for four b. So they there are a couple that are rated for four b, but not very many, like four. So if you're in Galena, Illinois, you can still grow, which by the way is like our coldest USDA grow zone of five a in Illinois, I believe.

You can still definitely grow persimmon. You're just gonna be limited to, for sure, American and not very many cultivars. Whereas if you're down in, let's say, Murfreesboro, far Far Southwestern Illinois, you can grow Asian varieties for sure, and you're comfortably in Zone 7 A there. So you can grow American or Asian. And there are native American persimmons down there in the Woodlands, and you can grow an Asian one in your backyard.

So we have a lot of options north to south just because we're a huge state.

Back in my day, Galena was zone four and Murphysboro was zone six.

There you go.

One thing when you proposed this, we did I did a little bit of looking on persimmons, and I think Chris has hinted at this. We have your your astringent and non astringent type persimmons. So is that a is both American and Asian doing that or is it particular cultivars? How does that astringency kind of work out?

Yeah. Great question. And, yeah, I definitely wanted to answer this fully since Chris trash talked my my good friend, the persimmon here by talking about a twenty minute shedding of the lining of the mouth as a result of eating an under ripe persimmon.

I will share yes.

Yeah. Yeah. I will share that misery. I've definitely had had that experience, although far from a twenty minute affair, maybe a two minute affair. But so yeah.

Supposedly, according to the Internet, this one, Hachiya, is supposedly an astringent type Asian persimmon, while the hero is a non astringent type Asian persimmon. But I tried both of these at the same stage of ripeness. For those listening, I'm just tapping both of them and they both have like the give of like a really ripe avocado right now. You want them to be pretty squishy, like a really ripe tomato when you eat them. And I've done that now with other fruits of these same two types at home, And I don't detect any major astringency difference in the Asian two types I'm holding in my hands.

However, that's not to say that it couldn't happen. I'm sure if I had not waited until they were soft and cut into them, they definitely would have been astringent. I do detect some kind of like, you know, you've had a if you've had a a big bodied red wine before that there is some tannin in there that'll suck some of the moisture out of your mouth. I do detect, like, the slightest bit of that in both skins of both of these. Again, I don't detect a major difference between the two, but what you were talking about at the beginning of the podcast is absolutely an experience that many people have had when attempting to eat specifically American persimmon under ripe, over ripe, and it's highly cultivar dependent.

So, like, there's a variety of American persimmon called Morris Burton. My friend, Teresa Brockman, who I got these persimmons from, the American ones for today's show, she said that Morris Burton to her, the the pulp is really sweet, especially if you wait for it to ripen as long as you should. But no matter how long you wait, the skin is just always unpleasant. It's always gonna suck the moisture out of your mouth versus this one that I'm holding right here that I told you about, John Rick. I've I've eaten about 20 of these.

So we had them for a Master Gardener project here. We're gonna make pudding out of the remaining ones. But I did didn't detect hardly any, if if any, astringency in the skin. Super thin, not chewy, not tannic whatsoever. So there's just a wide gamut of possibility.

And I think it's up to the cultivator to look at the descriptions on those nursery catalog pages or the the book pages of, you know, like a wildlife planting nursery that that has offerings such as these and and then definitely do your homework, get some reviews, look for other growers across the country that have grown the type you're looking at and inform yourselves.

So I've always eaten the skin too. Maybe I should peel the skin off when I'm trying these to help reduce that astringency.

Yeah. You could do that. I I ate the skin of one of these hero types, and it was a little tannic but not bad. And then I did kind of, you know, slice it and then eat the pulp while holding the skin and didn't have any of that tannic bitterness. And, yeah, it was a little bit more pleasant, but also the skin's good for you, high in fiber.

It's got a lot of nutrients. So I'd say, you know, try your best to get one that has that has a skin that's tolerable or better yet, like, not detectable.

Sure. Yep.

But, you know, we have some other questions down the line, like, how do you harvest and how do they keep? And so if the skin is, like, not really there, that makes it a little bit harder to harvest. So but we'll get to that.

Okay. Yep. Well, we're jumping the gun here. Let's let's get back to to growing these guys. So we did talk about, you know, they are hardy to Illinois.

The American persimmon is native to at least the central to southern half of the state. Are there I am curious. Are these cultivars are they pretty easy to find? Or if we're shopping for cultivars, do we wanna try to get those local ones like you described as the the local grower in your neck of the woods to because, you know, if we talk about buying like a maple tree, you can buy a maple tree and order it online, and it comes from Texas, and they ship it up to Illinois, and it's you know, it does terrible during the wintertime. So are we looking to buy as as geographically local as we can in terms of our cultivars?

Yeah. That's a that's a good question. And and I I did wanna preface this whole conversation. I should have said it earlier. I'll I'll say it here now in that I am not an expert persimmon grower at all.

I did plant three trees this year. All three trees were a cultivar called Nikita's Gift, which we'll get to later is a hybrid of Asian and American type. We'll get to that. But, yeah, to answer your question, I definitely don't think it could it could hurt to get something as locally, you know, close to you as possible, like you said, to assist with the actual, like, movement through the mail process, which, you know, no matter how you slice it, can damage or derange or whatever your your planting stock. But also, yeah, it would probably behoove you to get in touch with the closest persimmon grower that you're able to find on social media, on websites, etcetera, and pick their brain a little bit.

Just say, hey. I'm thinking about growing this. What's your experience been? What cultivars did you select? But also, as you mentioned, what was your vendor?

And so I would say just in briefly looking genetics for cultivars that I was interested in planting here in Normal or Bloomington, I did find it not as easy to locate really high quality, well known, interesting or common cultivars that I had read about on various persimmon resource pages. So quite often, could find a vendor, but they're sold out. I don't know if that's because they haven't posted their stock for the winter yet to order by spring. Most, like, commercial tree nurseries have long since posted their stock that will be available this off season to ship out in like March, April. So I'm thinking like Adams County, Wafflers, other apple type nurseries.

All those products are posted for the upcoming season and you're able to order those today. A lot of the time, the vendors I'm seeing are sold out of persimmon, and I'm not sure if the timeline on that ordering is different or not. So it's not as easy to order as with apple, pear, or, you know, other things. Probably in the same ballpark as like pawpaw. Sporadic availability, really interesting sounding cultivars not always available, and then some.

So you wanna talk about some of the improved varieties now or we wanna wait

on that? Yeah. We we definitely could. Yeah. So there are a good amount of varieties that lots of people talk about if you look into.

So for those listeners that that might be willing to take a deeper dive on some persimmon and non persimmon fruit related various items, there's something called NAFEX, the North American Fruit Explorers Association. They've got a Facebook page. The membership is super cheap. They have development, like, professional development opportunities all the time, presentations, Zoom seminars, online conferences. And there's lots of folks on the NAPVIX page that have been commenting on a thread I made a while back about, hey.

I'm thinking about planting persimmons, American in particular, or hybrids. What are your favorite cultivars? Let me know just to get a feel for what people all over the country are are growing American or hybrid persimmon wise. Some of the results that came back were Yates, Prok, p r o k, Lehman's delight, Deer Candy, which is an interesting name, Early Golden, Jewel, let's see, Morris Burton. Then the ones that Teresa grows here in Woodford County are Evelyn, John, Rick, and then Morse Burton.

And then she's got a male tree because some of these varieties, as I mentioned earlier, need a pollinizer. Some of them are self fertile. So that kinda throws a confusion into the mix as well. And those are just those are just the scratching the surface. There's meter, prairie star, on and on and on.

And those are all, I believe, American or American Asian hybrids. None of those are Asian persimmons.

When we order these trees, what are we getting? Are we getting like a potted plant or probably bare root if it's coming through the mail?

Yeah. I've actually seen both available on on multiple websites. So bare root for sure. They are typically cheaper. Sometimes they're sold in bundles.

And this also depends, Are you talking wild type American persimmons unimproved stock? Or are you talking the improved variety, improved cultivar, you know, breadfruit, better flavor, larger fruit size, etcetera? But, yeah, typically the improved stock I have seen offered in both just bare root shipping or potted plant shipping. And then for example, on a couple of different nurseries that sell for like wildlife and food plot deer hunting plantings, I've seen mostly bare root, mostly unimproved. Although for the for the very involved, very invested deer hunters like myself.

There are improved types of American persimmons specifically for deer hunting.

Is it maybe that that's the deer candy one perhaps?

Yeah. Deer candy. There's a couple others that have the word rut in there. I think late I should have come up with a couple other couple other recommendations or or rather just be knowledgeable about others than rather than deer candy, but that's one. And that one in particular is bred to drop much later than than as than is typical for Illinois.

So typical drop time in Illinois is September into October. This one is bred to drop October into November, correlate with the rut. So, you know, deer that are running around like crazies during the breeding season, during prime time hunting, stop for a quick snack at your persimmon orchard, and that might be the last move they ever make. So

At least they get a nice treat before the end.

Yeah. Kinda the last meal. Ribeye or ribeye steak for me, persimmon for them.

Alright. Well, let let's say we've we've got our plant in hand. We've got it ordered. We've selected our variety. I guess American persimmon, where are we planting these?

I mean, do they grow naturally in the understory? We need full sun. What's the planting conditions need to be?

Yeah. And here again, I'll kind of claim secondhand knowledge, first person ignorance. I'd love to get down to the Shawnee again. I've been multiple times, but I've never looked for persimmons in the wild. I haven't known about them really till this year.

So I wanna go I wanna go take go watch Chris Evans' Winter Tree ID where you get to identify trees by the bark. Gotta go watch that webinar, and then I can go out into the wild and maybe find some. But, yeah, they do grow in a variety of conditions, but the common denominator is that they prefer well draining soil. So they they don't like wet feet. They don't like poorly drained soil.

They also don't like super dry. So typically, they're found on hillsides or with some level of topography, sometimes in a old field edge. Yeah. But to my knowledge, they do grow in a variety of conditions and soil types as so long as that soil's relatively well draining. And and I think they do grow quite well in the understory, like in hardwood bottoms in the South in particular, where they're native to, like, the whole states of Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, etcetera.

That's some prime time deer hunting conditions there. It's one of their one of their favorite foods to eat where those trees are are native to, like, most of the state. But they won't produce a ton of fruit in the total understory. So that kind of mixed sunlight fifty fifty, they'll produce some fruit. And then from the cultivator perspective, we want nearly full or full sunlight if our object is maximum fruit production.

Speaking of fruit production, you talked about pollination a little bit, how some are are self fertile, some need a pollinator. So I'm assuming, you know, if if you're looking at these cultivars, just the descriptions are gonna say, you know, this is self fruitful or or self pollenizing and stuff. Is it kinda like apples where you've got a, you know, recommended cultivars and stuff that are gonna pollinate are male and female and all that?

Yeah. It's interesting. Some websites do explicitly say this tree is self fertile. It does not need a pollinizer. And then some don't say that.

And and my friend and I were both looking at that like, okay. Well, I guess that means it's self fertile. So and then other websites don't say anything about self fertile, but the other ones say, yep. I need a this one needs a pollinizer. So I think there's still understanding to be had there, and there's still work to be done.

I should mention the breeding efforts of American persimmons have first and foremost been done by, like, private company or private individual plant breeders. And then after that or kind of concurrently, it's been done by Cornell Extension or university Cornell University, University of Cornell in New York. And then actually most recently Savannah Institute in Wisconsin and Illinois. But yes, to your question, the labeling advising would be purchasers of needing a pollinizer or not is sporadic, can be sporadic. So reputable nurseries like all the ones, you know, that the three of us may know, I've I've found typically do list it.

But some other kind of mom and pop operations typically don't. And I think that means, hey. It's not necessary from what I can understand.

So do your homework beforehand.

Yeah. And buy a couple of them, I think. I don't know if I'd put all my eggs in one persimmon basket. Maybe at least try two. You know, even if it doesn't say it needs it needs one.

And then, yeah, I think most most persimmon vendors are doing the homework behind the scenes of growing out persimmons and then identifying, oh, this is a male tree. Don't send that one because or or they're sending a bundle. I saw one vendor in particular that was sending a bundle of trees for the agreed upon price with the knowledge that you were gonna get males. And whereas the females are the ones that fruit, males have the pollen. So kind of a crapshoot.

So is is there like a recommended ratio, male to female, if you've gotta do that? Do you know of one?

I do not know of an official ratio, but I can share that the grower in Woodford County has 25% male trees and 75% female trees. So with an n of one, it seems to be working out well for her, but it's an n of one.

So then and you said so some of them, you know, they're selling the bundles of male and female. If flowers looking at the flowers, the only way to tell if you've got a male or female?

They they weren't selling a bundle of males and females. They're selling a bundle of trees knowing some are males and females. And at the time of selling, they didn't know which is which. And that's primarily the case with the, you know, unimproved American persimmon that folks are looking at for potential rootstock. So as far as I know, which again is not a ton, there's there's no there's no trees like there are, you know, m nineteen eleven or like, you know, g two forty nine rootstocks like there are apples.

There's no persimmons, again, to my very limited understanding that are bred just to be rootstock. The typical practice, if you're gonna graft a tree, that's what improved cultivars are when you're buying that, are grafted specimens, is they'll grow out an American unimproved, unnamed cultivar VNS, variety not stated, persimmon tree from seed, and then off with its head and they graft your scion from the preferred tree onto that.

Well, Nick, I don't think you need to worry. As you keep saying this, the one saying comes to mind. In the land of the blind, the one eyed person rules a king. So Ken and I are blind, as you can see. We're wearing glasses legally.

I'm blind. So no, you're def this is definitely a lot more information about persimmons than I had ever even considered before. So but let's keep going here. Because now we've we have to talk got them in the ground, taking care of these plants. Now the word orchard keeps getting thrown around here.

When I think orchard, I think, oh, I I am going to be pruning a lot. So do these trees require pruning in the net terms of maintenance?

Yeah. As far as and we do, I can actually speak with a little bit of authority here. We have two fully mature, not yet mature height, but mature planted trees at the Refuge Food Forest in Normal, Illinois. So if anybody wants to come check out what a ten year old persimmon tree looks like, we either have this is is weird that I don't know the variety because it it predates my time with extension, but it's either Frock, Yates, or Morris Burton. It's one of those three.

The predecessor who initiated the food for us, Bill Davison, picked one of those three varieties. We have two trees. Not sure what they are, but they're 10 years old. They do bear fruit, and we hardly prune them. They're about they're about 20 feet tall, maybe 15 to 20 feet tall.

They have a really nice, like, fully developed, like, semi dwarf apple type shape modified central leader is how I've pruned them because they're interplanted with apples and pears, and that's how we prune all the apples and pears we have. But I've really had to not take near as much wood off those two trees as I have the apples and pears that they're surrounded by. And I just got off the phone with Theresa, the persimmon grower here before this call. And I asked her specifically, hey. Do you prune your trees?

And she said, pretty much no, except the damaged branches. And I had said, damaged branches from storms or wind? And she's like, no, from squirrels. And I was like, okay. Well, so they're kind of brittle, honched.

She concurred with that statement. So she said the branches are a bit more breakable than an apple or a pear and that the primary branches that are damaged on the trees are the first year's growth from the previous year. And typically that's done during harvest season by squirrels trying to beat you to the fruit. So so, yeah, they are planted at some places I've seen in an orchard type setting, like in a row hooked up to drip tape, oftentimes not. They're pretty drought tolerant after they're established.

But no, don't really need to be pruned all that much except for, you know, if there's branches going super down, super up, or often weird directions, you you wanna prune them according to good airflow and light penetration, but they seem to do a lot of that for you by growing nicely.

So you mentioned irrigation. You know, once they're established, you probably don't need to worry about fertilization.

Yeah. Quick note about about irrigation. Yeah. You definitely wanna water them in that first planting year for sure when when ground conditions are are dry, especially in that, you know, late July through October time frame as it seems like that's been the worst drought period the last couple years in Central Illinois that tap just kinda shuts off the last two years in that time now. But then, yeah, once they're established after the first year, maybe you wanna baby them a little bit for the second.

No. After that, irrigation not really needed except in extreme drought. And then, yeah, in terms of fertility, I can't speak with any level of, you know, professional certainty to this, but from what I've read, looking at the resources, moderate fertility at the time of planting, like a pelletized poultry litter fertilizer seems like best practice. And then it doesn't look like there's any harm in applying fertility, limited fertility, but they don't need anything like what a commercial apple would would need in terms of best production. But, again, I'm not a not a commercial persimmon grower, so I'd I'd happily be corrected.

So check your podcast comments and get back to me if if I'm wrong.

Sounds good. Let's think about being a a native plant, there has to have to be corresponding animals and insects that like to eat these things. We've already talked about squirrels. It sounds like they can be an issue. Are there any other pests that we need to monitor for throughout the growing season that could impact our harvest?

Yeah. And going back to my conversation with our local persimmon grower today, no, surprisingly not. Yeah. Which is kinda what perked my ears up, kinda piqued my interest, whatever you wanna say when I was looking into this a couple weeks ago is that once they're planted, yeah, you compete with the wildlife. But in terms of major crop diseases or pests, there's not really any that are coming to the fore from what I've seen in talking with a Persimmon grower of of ten years or so now.

So that that's impressive to me. I have also seen a Missouri persimmon grower who's running a a SARE breeding program project with American and hybrid American Asian persimmon cultivars. He has said all over his social media page, you know, all about the benefit of having a crop that doesn't need sprayed IPM wise to this to nearly if if anything like the level of an of an apple or a pear for commercial production. And his YouTube videos bear that out if you go watch them, at least, you know, visually and according to anecdote.

Alright. So we've got our our persimmons in the ground. We're taking care of them. We've got fruit. Probably the question everybody wants to know is, how how do you know when to pick those persimmons so you don't end up all puckered up?

Yeah. When I first saw when I first saw persimmon on the tree, it was probably 2022 or 2023, and I was getting it was 2022. And I was getting to know the Refuge Food Forest as its now primary caretaker. At that time, I was a year and a quarter into my time with extension. Now I'm coming up on year five already.

And I was like, oh, what's that? And I figured out what it was. And it was probably September and the persimmons were green but turning orange. And I thought, okay, I'll just grab one of these and take it home and put it on the counter and ripen it. And it was hard as a rock when I picked it off the tree, but I figured par for the course, just let it sit.

It never ripened. It it maybe got a little softer, and I eventually made the mistake of taking a bite and it's one of the most tannic things I've ever eaten, like like what you guys shared earlier. So right. How do we know when they're when they're ready? And that's probably the most important question for for home growers or or even aspiring commercial growers.

So I'm told when you see the first couple drop, just like a pawpaw, I'll kind of harken it back to that. If anybody's familiar with pawpaws, there's about a forty eight hour period where they're ripe on the tree before they fall and hit the ground. And you can pick them off the tree before they hit the ground and they're excellent. More or less that's the case with American Persimmon. You'll see first a couple hit the ground walking around the orchard.

So you'll need to become familiar with when your specific cultivar does bear fruit over the, you know, over the years and then mark your calendar for, okay, like last year, October 7 or September 30 or whatever, first one dropped. So once you see a couple on the ground, the method that I was taught is add a ton of straw, a thick layer of straw, some you know, you could even designate some secondhand harvest blankets or quilts that are, you know, too rough for house use anymore. Keep those for persimmon harvesting. And you would put all of those underneath one particular tree and then you shake the branches once you have like a good handful of ripe fruit on the ground. And so those will fall.

You really wanna cushion the fall of those fruits as much as possible. This is similar to the olive harvest technique you'll see on like home orchards in Italy. So they shake the trees. They have big tarp. In in their case, those those fruits are pretty hard, so they just use tarps or a catchment device.

But with persimmon, they're much softer. Like, picture a tomato falling 20 feet and, like, a small, you know, grape tomato, cocktail tomato, golf ball size. And then imagine how you might go about trying to cushion its fall. And that's what you wanna do. So that's how to know when, and then that's how to actually do it.

Teresa shared that she shakes the bottom branches of the tree, but now that her tree is 20 feet tall, she can only reach some, not all the branches with a shaking device or a hook. So she gets on the ladder and climbs up into the tree. And I kinda grimaced a little bit when we talked about that. And she said, oh, no. It's really fun.

I enjoy it. So so, yeah, insurance wise, as soon as you start getting up on a ladder as a commercial orchard, they'll put you in the same risk category as a carnival. You don't want that for your crop insurance or for your for your your farm or labor insurance package. But that's apparently what's done. Shake tree and then climb up and harvest the rest.

And if they do fall off the tree when shaken, you pick them up. And if they have some give, they're gonna ripen up and they'll be edible. She told me if you pick them up off the ground, the rest of them are ripe and you find some that are hard with no give at all, just pitch those because it's not gonna be worth the effort to store and then baby and monitor. They just won't ever ripen.

Sounds like she needs a tree shaker.

Yeah. I've seen those. Yeah. Again, for olive production, those are really cool.

I think your response addressed the thing that was in my mind about fruit on the ground, food safety a little bit. If you do find persimmons on the ground, what's the recommendation for that? Are we kind of like apples, we say, toss them, you know, there's too much risk when it comes to some of the potential bacterial issues that might come with that. Or we also have animals eating there. We have deer, we have raccoons and stuff.

And of course, there are scat that might be throughout there. So any suggestions about that? Or just as you said before, we need blankets, we need tarps, we need something to kind of separate that fruit to catch it, soft cushion that landing, and maybe keep it separate from potential contamination.

Yeah. Really excellent concern right there or or definitely important concern. And and I'd say absolutely if there's a bunch of fruit on the ground that have been there for no knowing how how long, I think it'd be an adequate recommendation to apply a pretty thick layer of a new, you know, catchment media, whatever we wanna call that. Mhmm. Thick mulch, straw, etcetera.

Usually straw is used. Hay is used as well. You know, dry hay, of course. And or better best yet, probably blankets because, you know, we can launder those and then bring them back out fresh and clean. Lots of small farms I've been on have blankets or cloth or whatever for various harvest protocols that are always secondhand kind of ratty, but absolutely clean for this task or that.

So I think that that'd be an excellent use case for those those quilts that get a hole in them or blankets that, you know, are pretty old, not quite fit for home use anymore. So yep. And and you really can't, to my knowledge, especially with I'm looking at this John Rick variety here. As I've touched it, the skin I'm holding it up to the camera now. The skin has come off.

And if you can see, the skin is like paper thin on this variety. So there's no washing this variety. You know, maybe I'll maybe I'll retract that a little bit. I don't know how it looked when it came off the tree or when it hit the the harvest blanket. But if it looked anything like that, I can only imagine if you got it wet, it wouldn't would not last very So probably the blanket or other barrier is probably best food safe practice.

Yep. Thank you for that. I know a lot of people locally here. They say, oh, you gotta eat it off the ground. I'm like, I don't know if I would.

Yeah. And I mean, with with with something like pawpaw, you don't wanna eat the skin and that does fall off the tree and you are doing just like what you'd probably wanna do with a wild type persimmon that you would find on the ground is the skin is gonna be god awful tannic. The pulp will probably be pretty tasty. You don't wanna eat the seeds. So you're gonna, you know, do the same thing you would with a pawpaw, which is, you know, cut it in half, squish out the pulp into like a conical sieve or a food mill, and then pitch the skin.

Or yeah. In that case with pawpaw, you you could wash it because the skin is a little thicker on them than persimmon, but not by much. So Mhmm. Yep.

So you mentioned they don't really ripen well indoors. How do they store? Like, so we you know, somebody has a tree, they get a rather large crop. Are they gonna be eating these right away or can they let them sit for a little bit?

Yeah. This is where they beat out their kind of common relative. I'm grouping persimmon and pawpaw in my mind kind of in the same family of harvested native fruit because there's actually a really nice webinar from a really good colleague and friend, Patrick Byers at Missouri University Extension on YouTube, and it's all about pawpaws and persimmons. That was one of the resources I checked out in putting together my presentation for our master gardeners. And the video covers that a little bit, but I I picked it that with Teresa before for this podcast today.

And Teresa will harvest her persimmons, check them all for, you know, making sure they have some give or a lot of give that they look like they're ripe or will ripen. And she stores them in a single layer calyx side down for so for the non plant nerds out there, the calyx is that green top or off green top of the persimmon that you find at the grocery store. That's the calyx is that four pointed leaf on the top of the fruit calyx side down. I'm looking at my John Rick persimmon, and the calyx is much smaller, but it is there. And it's the hardest part of the plant hardest part of the fruit, especially when it's first harvested or when it falls off the tree.

So calyx side down in a single layer in a bread flat, like a a bread case, like you would find at Aldi or wherever, and stored in the cooler, normal cooler temperature, like 37 degrees Fahrenheit or so. And Teresa says they'll keep for a good two weeks, sometimes three, depending. But they do go through every couple of days, fruits being their specialty. They've kinda figured out a process for these kinda more eclectic, you know, post process harvest and handling for fruits over there. They do go through every couple of days and do a a kind of smell test, she described it to me as.

So she said, it's very apparent when the American persimmon or the hybrids start to go bad in storage because they have the smell of, like, a yeasty beer. And you can kinda see the one. They start changing color a little bit. They get juicy. You could see the one that's going bad.

And so before it juices all over the other good ones, they do a feel and smell test. And if anything smells bad, they go through with a fine tooth comb and find the culprits and get them out of there. But typically with good harvest practice, you know, thick blanket, whatever, that doesn't happen all that often. But it's important to maintain awareness of your harvested stock and definitely get those out of there. And then they're sold for fresh eating or she does offer a really limited quantity of processed on farm persimmon pulp for people that don't just wanna pop them in the mouth.

Man, when this when this podcast is over, I'm gonna be hard pressed to get all these home and turned into pudding and not eat half of them on the way over because they're they're pretty tasty.

Let's talk about some of this processing and and some of the some of this kinda texture too I'm curious about. With the Asian persimmon, I've heard you can kinda cut those like apples when you're processing them. But with the American persimmon, it's a bit more pulpy. Is that correct?

Yeah. In just in the last few days, I think I've eaten four or five of these hero type, j I r o, is how I think it's spelled, and one or two of the hachiya persimmons. That's correct. I did wait for them to soften up on my vegetable and fruit tray at home. I I didn't give them as much time as I wanted to give them.

I just got too impatient and wanted to eat some. And they were sweet. They weren't as sweet as I've had them again at that Los Angeles farmer's market, not nearly as sweet, kinda. And, they did kinda maintain their shape in slices when I cut them similar to an apple. They they they didn't squish when I when I tried to cut them.

And my knives, unfortunately, I try and keep them sharp, but sometimes they're not all that sharp. But that said, no. They they kept their shape pretty well, these Asian variety persimmons that I purchased. But then, yeah, these I mean, I don't wanna I don't wanna squish this American one in my hand for you on on camera and, like, make a mess here, but they are pretty squishy, kind of gelatinous. Think of, like, think of, like, a a little fruit skin and then a bunch of fruit pudding inside.

And that is the consistency that all these persimmons will be when they come out of the freezer. And they weren't quite that squishy when they came off the tree, but they were halfway there. So, yeah, they are more they are more gelatinous and softer than the Asian cousins when they come off the tree. So Teresa said when they come off the tree and they hit that blanket, they're not gonna bruise like an apple. They will go splat and be unusable.

So that gives you an idea if if if you don't cushion them properly.

And and then, Nick, if we wanted to have these persimmons last a little bit longer, I mean, can we preserve these in, like, a jellies, jams? What what are some additional processing things to so we can enjoy persimmons throughout the year?

Yeah. Very very good question. So I don't have a persimmon tree in in my yard. We've like I said, we've got some at the Refuge Food Forest, but that's a food access project, food access site, public park owned by the town of Normal. The there's a lot of really cool advantages to that partnership, but one major disadvantage is you don't know when somebody is gonna come and thing or when multiple somebody's are gonna come over time, hopefully share with people and pick it all.

So so if you are lucky enough to come across some wild type or cultivated American persimmons, I'm told that a really cool thing to do, like something that's been done for many, many years, especially in the South, is drying them like a like a dried apricot or like a peach or something like that. So dehydrating persimmons is quite common and was done by some native American tribes, I read, amongst, you know, others, other populations that have gotten to know the persimmon largely across the Southeastern United States. But, yeah, fresh eating is is my preferred choice for something like John Rick. I've never tried dehydrating. I think I'd like to try that next year.

But then people may have heard of persimmon pudding. So basically making like a a cake or like a brownie type dessert with the processed persimmon pulp. So how do you do that? How do you get the pulp? Typically, food mill or a conical sieve is used.

Because again, some of these varieties have an astringent skin or a thicker skin. Other varieties have almost no skin and are not astringent at all, and then everything in between. And so again, like once you've gotten to know the cultivar that you're either growing or that is available to you at the market that you may or may not find, then you can kind of dial in your pulp extraction process or lack thereof a little bit more. And yeah, a food mill is a device that strips the skin and separates pulp from seeds and kind of squishes the pulp down through really small sieve like holes. And so what you're left with is just pulp in a bottom lower container and separating out the skin and the seeds on the top.

Lots of people use the same equipment for pawpaw pulp extraction as well. And then sauces, dried pulps, jams, jellies for sure, all good value added uses for for the pulp.

Well, that was a lot of great information about growing persimmons. We can do it here in our own backyard here in Illinois. That is super exciting. As I say every week on this show, I need an arboretum to add all of these plants because I want persimmons now. There is more to know about this plant.

We actually are going to be releasing in the future folklore about persimmon. These are the myths. These are the things that I think about when I think about persimmons. So look for that coming down the pipeline in a couple weeks. Well, the Good Growing podcast, a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth.

And a special thank you to Nick, local food small farms educator in the McLean County area, also serving Livingston. And remind me of the third one, Nick. What's the other county you're in?

Yep. Woodford County.

Woodford. That's it. Has got couldn't get that far down the alphabet. Alright. Nick, thank you so much for being on the show with us today.

Yep. No problem. My pleasure. And happy to come back.

And Ken, thank you so much for being with us as always every single week as we both of ourselves, we learned about the the world of Persimmons.

Yes. Yeah. Thank you, Nick. I I definitely learned a lot. Like you, Chris, need need more space.

Start buying those lottery tickets. That's right. Let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. We are going to be talking about Evergreens. We're gonna sit down with Emily Swihart. We're going we're going nuts on Evergreens next week. So we look forward to that episode coming up.

Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening. Or if you watched us on YouTube watching, and as always, keep on growing.