FWIW, mine germinate quite late in the spring - like May. I remove the fruit from the trees in January or so - just so they don't get eaten by critters (I had quite a few eaten by deer last year). I keep the fruit on the seeds and keep the fruit/seeds in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator for the rest of the winter.
I was planning to put them in soil trays into a spare refrigerator in November because I was expecting to need 90-120 days.
I used to just let the fruit sit on the trees through the winter until they were very soft - almost rotting - and then you could knock them off the trees and catch them in a bag quite easily. But there are too many hungry critters here who will eat the fruit once it is ripe (particularly how they are so obvious once the trees have dropped their leaves). One year I just left a ziplock bag full of fruit out on my bonsai bench - thinking it would naturally cold stratify - but something chewed into the bag and started eating the fruit so I moved it into the fridge.
Yes... but I have too many. I am getting ready to move all of these into my landscape - and they can survive or not as Mother Nature decides. Perhaps in 10 years I will wander out there and find a nice tree
Because princess persimmon takes several years before they bloom, and then perhaps 1 in 10 are a female... you have to be a little crazy to propagate them. However that is what makes them special!
Oh, and I forgot to mention - that is 32 seedlings out of 100 sown seeds. I sow 100 seeds per flat - just keeping the math easy. 10 x 10 grid of seeds. You won't get 100% germination, and to be honest I have given up trying to wonder why. I just plant them and see what happens. Note - that planting mix is rough cut peat moss and pine bark fines. Very acidic, drains well, and tends to reduce the risk of damping off / fungus / mother-in-law visits
Very nice! How long did it take to fruit?
I'd have to check my charts but the tree was germinated in either 2020 or 2021, so four or five years from seed. These are all in 1 gallon pots, so perhaps you'd get better results in a larger pot or in the ground.
That's pretty quick from what I've heard from others. Did you do anything special or different with them?
Not that I am aware of. This year I noted that heavily fertilizing with MiracleGro water soluble appears to trigger flowering - even in the off-season. Whether that is a good thing or not is still to be determined (for example, if the trees that flower in the fall bear any fruit and/or if they flower again the following spring). FWIW I have some seedlings that have flowered as early as year three from seed - but none that have born fruit so far. My sense is that heavy fertilization helps trigger flowering sooner, and more consistently, than not fertilizing or fertilizing lightly, but that is just a hypothesis.
