>> One of my favorite fruit trees is the Persimmon tree.
It's super easy to grow and there are Persimmons that are very small and so they can fit into
any yard and they have very few pest problems.
You don't have to do a lot of spraying.
The wood is very hard.
In fact, it was used to make wood iron golf clubs for many years and still is.
Since it's so strong, bore damage is just not something that you have with those.
If you are into low input fruit trees, Persimmons are a good tree.
And many of the varieties are fruitful or self fruitful.
They don't need a pollinator and they produce a lot of fruit in a very short time.
You often have 30 to 40 fruit on a tree by it's second year.
And before too long you are inundated with Persimmons.
And that can be a nice thing.
Now, there are different sizes of fruit.
One of the most productive trees is the tanenashi, which are these smaller fruit here.
But the fuyu is a good one.
The Hachiva is another one I've had good luck with.
When you harvest the Persimmons you can harvest them when they're still quite hard and you
want to make sure you're getting the KAYlicks when you're cutting the tree.
You may have to use a basket to harvest them when they're hard.
It's a bit tricky to harvest them when they start to get soft on the tree because they
bruise to ugly and that's one reason why we don't see Persimmons in the grocery stores
that often except the firm ones and those aren't my favorites to eat.
I would like to put them on a tray or in a basket where they're in a single layer and
bring them indoors from October and November before they're quite soft.
Now, if you eat them when they're hard they're very acity of Austin gent.
They taste bad.
Cold weather or time will make those taken anyones break down so they're not astringent
tasting, but they almost have a chalky flavor if you eat one when they're bad.
I promise you if you don't like Persimmons, if you eat them that way they won't taste
good.
They need a jelly or pudding like consistency when you eat them.
When one is soft enough so you actually is leave a fingerprint in the side of the Persimmon,
then that's a soft ripe Persimmon and it won't be astringent.
Like I said, there are some like tamopan that can be eaten when they're firm and they're
not astringent, but these are the astringent variety.
Once they start to get soft they can be refrigerated for five to seven days and they go bad quickly
so it's nice to have ways to preserve and store them.
One of the things I like to do is take a Persimmon and just slice off slices, put it on parchment
paper, put it on a cookie sheet, put that in the freezer until all the slices are very
frozen.
You want to slices to not be touching as it goes into the freezer.
Once they're frozen you can put them in a baggy or a plastic container and take out
a few slices, put them in a smoothy.
A pineapple and Persimmon smoothy is one of my very favorites and I'll be putting the
recipe for that on the website.
You can also make a delicious Persimmon ice cream very quickly in your food processor
with cream, sugar and the Persimmon slices.
That also will be on our website.
And then you can take the Persimmon pulp from ripe Persimmons and put it in the container.
I like to put lemon juice in it so it doesn't discolor, but you can use it in baked goods
and it keeps it nice and moist as fresh.
The easiest way to store your excess Persimmons is just to take the ripe ones and put them
in a freezer bag and store them in the freezer whole.
Once they come out of the freezer they are very soft and ready to use.
And you can easily harvest the pulp and separate it from the seeds so you can enjoy persimmons
all year long from the fruits of the harvest.