hello! I would bet the persimmon is one of the natives to your area. They do not ripen until the first frost. You will regret sampling the fruit prior to that as they contain substances that are quite astringent and you will really feel it in your mouth! Most of the fruits of mine actually fall from the trees as they ripen. It is a major race around here to get the newly fallen fruit and I seldom win against the sheep and llamas!! I would suggest that you contact your agricultural extension service and ask them to help you identify the trees and for some recipes for using the fruit. They are good for jams and such at least. The fruit is very sweet when ripe. Enjoy!
spiderwoman

Pick them up after they fall like she said. I just found out that you can dry them on a screen or food dehydrator and they are SO good! They taste like dates, which really surprized me. Try them and see what you think. Mine in Indiana have been frosted two times and are starting to fall off the trees now. I have lived here for 14 years and just now figured out a good way to use the persimmons, I could have been doing this all along, what a waste!

Heya,

If the fruit is acorn shaped it is most likely the japanese variety Hachiya. They must be soft before eating or it will be just horribly astringent. You can pick them when they are all orangey red but still hard but make sure to sit them on the counter until fully ripened. We have a nieghbor behind out house that have these persimmons and my Mom is hoping they a) do not like eating them b) will let her and dad pick all of the persimmons, LOL

I also ahve one of these trees...an Israeli woman told me her father soaked his in water for one week before eating them...could not get more info
cheers
Peter

Can persimmons grow in NE PA? If so where could I get one?
Thanks in advance,

tak

I usually eat the persimmons as they ripen, so never have thought of making a preserve. I did try to make persimmon wine, but how do you get any liquid from a fermented pulp that is thick as library paste?
we have three kinds of persimmons in South Texas: the Mexican persimmon with marble size black, very sweet fruit which ripens in July and August; the American persimmon which has slightly larger brown fruit and ripens for sure after first frost; and the Japanese persimmon which is apple size, very good, but sticky and sweet when ripe. I too would like to see a recipe for preserves.

Substitute pureed persimmon for applesauce in applesauce cake or bread--tastes great!

tak, yes. Edible Landscaping nursery (in Central Virginia) carries 3 American, 13 oriental, and 1 hybrid variety.

Here is a link that might be useful: Edible Landscaping

One of the tricks to riping a persimmon is to take the fruit and put it in the freezer. When ready to eat pull it out and she is ready with no lip puckering. This has never failed be before and I picked fruit that has been fairly hard. Certainly not really ripe enough to eat off the tree. Keep in mind this is a soft custard type fruit not a hard fruit like an apple.
Mike

The softness of the fruit depends on the variety. The Fuji persimmon has a firm flesh. Although it is best tree ripened it ripens as it sits.

I Live in South Carolina. We have this persimmon tree and the fruit barely starts to come out and then turns black, and the leaves have holes in them. Whats up?

I like persimmons raw but other people like to cook them. Google persimmon recipes and I bet you will get lots of hits. I'm still waiting on some American persimmon seedling trees several years old and still 3-4' tall. They are hardy but very slow growing. They are also a gamble as the sexes are on separate trees and there's no way to tell what they are until they bloom in the distant future.

As a child growing up in a small rural town located on sandy loam soils about 30 miles west of the Mississippi river and just north of Missouri's southeastren boothill country, my mother and I used to pick a few persimmons from a single scrubby looking speciman tree growing wild along the edge of a farmer's field.

After the first freeze of the fall, the tree had some persimmons that appeared orange and well formed. The feel of those were hard, and they were not sweet enough to eat. The ones we picked off the tree had taken on a puckered and more dark-skinned appearance. The darker and more puckered the fruit the better the persimmon tasted.

From a child's point of view, I could not understand why the fruit we ate could taste so good, when it almost appeared spoiled on the outside, and the tree's pretty fruit that had not puckered enough yet remained too sour to eat.

There must have been a male persimmon tree fairly close by, but I never noticed it, due to my experience with encountering such a scrubby formed female tree. Instead, it was only the female tree's amazing fruit which caught all my attention.

I used to have a recipe for persimmon drop cookies that used persimmon and black walnuts, similar to the recipe below. They were really good. There are some other recipes on the page as well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Persimmon Oatmeal Cookies

Persimmons are the American ebony. The best are the ones you have to fight the ants for on the ground. That said, the persimmon is very useful. The skins can be used to make fruit leather, the plup is can be used any way a banana can, the seeds can be dried to be roasted ground into a coffee extender, the leaves make a drinkable tea high in vitamin C. The best thing to do is spread a cloth under the tree to catch the ripe ones.