Planting Persimmons

Yesterday I did something I've wanted to do for decades:  plant persimmon seeds.

For those of you who don't know, properly ripened native persimmons taste like brown sugar.  They can be made into the most delicious quick bread - served warm with butter - mmmm!  Incorporate some homegrown hazelnuts or native Illinois pecans and even better!  Or make persimmon chiffon pie with hickory nuts and you have a real delicacy.  Persimmons are worth the work involved.

But most people think of persimmons as those awful puckery fall fruits because of someone teasing them with a firm unripe fruit, or because of their ignorance.  A ripe persimmon is so soft and squishy it is about one click this side of fermented.

My grandmother made persimmon pudding as one of her annual Thanksgiving desserts after serving us fried quail shot by Grandad and the other men in the family.  Wow!  Nowadays wild quail are very rare.  Little did we realize what a treat we'd taken for granted.  My mother took on the persimmon tradition and I have followed.  I've been pulping persimmons and cooking with them for 30 years now.  I planted a few persimmon seeds in our yard around 8 years ago and one tree bore its first persimmon this year.

See the following link for more info:  http://www.dnr.illinois.gov/OI/Documents/Oct06Persimmons.pdf

But I digress.

Yesterday I planted seeds of the very best early pre-frost (rare and much sweeter than the normal post-frost-ripening) persimmons I've had.  I placed them "nearby" and hope if we are still around eight or so years from now to see some of the surviving trees bearing fruit.  It was so much fun choosing planting sites. The trees need full sun.  The seeds were placed near woods' edges so that their branches would overhang mowed areas, making fruit collection easy.  I chose open areas or areas that would soon be open, such as areas with dead trees, etc.  Persimmons are choice wildlife food and are especial favorites of deer, opposums, and raccoons.  I planted around 20 or 30 seeds, finishing at dusk.  I walked home viewing one of God's gorgeous sunsets.  Life is good.