About Princess Persimmon

[Goodbrake]

Longevity of Fruit
It is said that fruit without seed will wither and fall off the tree sooner. The question is what does 'soon' mean here? By mid-November all of the fruit on my trees seems to have gone through its full cycle of color changes, and I remove it in order to harvest seed for sale. In principle, the fruit should hang on and stay nice-looking all the way to Kokufu (February), but personally I have never allowed it to do so.

I'd love to know what factors affect fruit longevity. Do we any broad patterns that hold across diospyros e.g. do we know if nutrition, or temperature, etc effects fruit longevity?

 

[NaoTK]

Once a fruit ripens and the connection to the tree is dried/severed, the fruit will quickly degrade just like any fruit. The fruit has a waxy coating and can persist well into March (I still have fruits on trees) but the inside of the fruit is brown mush. Some cultivars ripen very late and don't ripen until January. Other cultivars put out a late round of flowers and have fruits that are green in January. In general, if you want to keep the fruit longer don't let them freeze.

 

[Goodbrake]

Do environmental factors influence how quickly the fruit ripens on the tree? I assume they do, but to what extent can we control them to time fruit display?

 

[NaoTK]

This has never been a problem because the fruit persists for so long and we don't show trees until the fall anyway. You can spray ethephon to speed up ripening. Perhaps you can keep a tree in the shade to slow down fruit development and ripening. But once the fruit undergoes abscission it is going to start breaking down and ripening. There are a bunch of exotic chemicals that interrupt the abscission process to delay fruit drop.