Saturday, October 31, 2020

American Persimmons. Meader, Early Jewel, and Lehman's Delight

I have a 5 years old tree of American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) selection H-63A. The original tree hardly makes any fruits.  I grow it in Vacaville, California Central Valley. The tree makes a lot of young fruits that all dropped with the first heat waves.  However, a number of recent grafts of other cultivars on it started fruiting.  Dressing the fruits into bags allowed me to get the fruits to taste this year. Last year, the birds took them all. Now the fruits are dropping into the bags when perfectly ripe.  They were collected and tasted on October 31, 2020.


Meader is a well known cultivar. Makes small fruits with dense texture, very sweet, has the expected strong butterscotch/rum flavor.  Excellent fruit. 

Early Jewel  is also known as H-118, and Prairie Star (R) at One Green World nursery . It is one of the selections that came from the late James Claypool breeding program. The fruits are significantly larger than Meader, but less dense in texture. It is also less sweet than Meader, and has a well pronounced butterscotch/rum flavor. Overall it is a very good fruit, but less intense in sugar and flavor than Meader.

The trees of both cultivars are available from England's nursery and One Green World nursery

Update from a follow up tasting on November 8, 2020

Last Sunday I collected four more fruits from my combination tree, a 100-46 fruit, two fruits of Early Jewel, and a fruit of Meader. They are in this order from left to right in the picture below.


100-46 is the largest fruit and it is excellent in the flavor and texture. It has everything you expect from American persimmon on top of it's large size. This cultivar is also known as Lehman's Delight. and available from England's nursery.

I found the fruit of Early Jewel to be much better flavored this time than the one in my previous tasting a week ago. The Meader fruit I got this time was past it's prime stage. I should have more of these later.


Update from a follow up tasting on Saturday November 14, 2020

I collected three more fruits, one from each cultivar, 100-46 (Lehman's Delight), Early Jewel (H-118), and Meader. They are in this order from left to right. 

Lehman's Delight and Early Jewel were excellent fruits here. This Meader fruit was under ripe.


Update on September 26, 2021

I found a few ripe fruits of H-63A, this is the original tree that I used to graft on additional cultivars. The tree is pretty large but the production is low as the tree drops most of the fruit in the fist heat waves usually in May-June. The fruits I got to taste are excellent with no astringency but very strong sweet butterscotch flavor.


D-128 graft (Dollywood) also produced one very sweet large fruit with the strong flavor.


Unfortunately, the branch of 100-46 broke off this summer.  It was overloaded with fruits and I should have thinned them. I will need to graft it again.  

Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com


Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Feijoa tasting in late October of 2020

The summer of 2020 was unusually hot allover California.  In the Central Valley, we experienced five heat waves with the temperatures over 100F. This was not an ideal season for the development of feijoa fruit.  I do not expect to have many fruits of good quality this fall.  But it seems, that some cultivars more heat tolerant than others.  In September, I had a good crop of Kaiteri with excellent large fruits. Kaiteri is my earliest cultivar, and it was done fruiting by the end of September. Below are the fruit pictures.

By the end of October I noticed fallen fruits under some trees.  They could be ripe, or they just fell prematurely. Here are the results from this round of tasting on October 26, 2020. I suspect that the fruit quality was affected by the unusually hot summer weather.

Chesterwoody - Sweet, little acid, pleasant, gritty, no jelly but relatively creamy and smooth, very good overall.

Marta 8 - One of my seedings.  Sweet, crunchy, no jelly, unusual, some bitterness maybe coming from seeds. I need to try more fruits.  These were not good.

Flavia - Sweet with significant acid, gritty, jelly is developed, good overall.

8 Ball - Sweet, low acid, firm, jelly developed, gritty, good overall.

Moore - Very sweet, very low acid, no jelly, good overall.

Albert's Pride - Low sugar, low acid, no jelly, crunchy, low grit, but just OK now.

Marion (the fruits turned out to be from rootstock under Marion) - Low sugar, low acid, some jelly, no grit, just OK now.

Triumph - Good sugar content, very little acid, smooth, no grit, very good.

Marta 11 - One of my seedlings. Good sugar and acid balance, good jelly development, no grit, maybe good, but I need to try more than 2 fruits.


Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com





Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Four Seasons Mulberry, or Taiwanese Four Seasons Mulberry

Four Seasons mulberry is a unique cultivar that is able to produce fruits from May and into December in Sacramento Valley.  I suspect it is evergreen and producing year around in the tropical conditions. The first wave of fruits is never as sweet as the fruits from July and later in the season. They are sweet and complex when ripening in hot weather. They also have some pleasant acidity. The fruits are large and black.  The tree is small, and it grows like a bush, branching low at the base. The branches are slender and the leaves are small.

Two photos below are from May

The next picture below is from August

September fruits in two pictures below


November fruits on the branch below


And the last picture shows how the fruits of this cultivar compare in the size and shape with othe mulberry cultivars.  This picture is from June.

When I have the propagation material available, I list it at reallygoodplants.com



 



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