Mary Cook

I live on a land trust, so we technically don't own the land--we have a lifetime lease. We do own the improvements, like the house we built. We  could afford it because we didn't have to pay for the land, because it's in West Virginia where the cost of living is low--so are wages but we are both frugal people so we were able to save enough to build the house, and then my mother left me an annuity of $23,000--which paid for the off-grid solar system (also cheaper because my husband understand electricity and planned and installed it himself) with excellent timing as we were able to take off 30% of the cost in both federal and state taxes, which I would have had to pay on the annuity--now there's no state tax credit and the federal one is about to expire. My adult kids are self-sufficient so no expense there

Leigh--I question the "ripens before frost, therefore astringent" part. I think frost is irrelevant to the question of ripening and astringency, and that astringency means it isn't ripe. For the wild trees, even the ones in the open that have branches closer to the ground, most persimmons need to be picked up off the ground--and USUALLY their being on the ground means they're ripe. Not all, but you can generally tell because the ripe ones are orange and soft. For me, I have gotten the runs after eating persimmons off the ground, so now I use persimmon only cooked--baked actually, as my three recipes all involve baking. The grafted ones are significantly bigger and have fewer or no seeds. This is one of the things I'm wondering about the Asian ones--do they have similar seeds? I also wonder if there are any hybrids with much larger fruit than American ones but hardy to zone 6.

This is getting a bit off topic, as I question whether you can make a decent jam from persimmons...but my two cents on this question is that current wisdom is that fruit and others that are sufficiently acid may be water bath canned, but less acidic items must be pressure canned. I do both, depending on the item. But I agree that USDA is very conservative--I think the idea is that rather than one case of botulism resulting from someone who thought they followed the guidelines (but shaved a bit), they'd rather millions of housewives and househusbands putting unnecessary time and fuel into canning. When I can tomatoes--which to my tongue are less acid than they used to be, and I've been searching for a tomato that's both sweet and tangy--I do a 15 minute water bath, and also add a tablespoon of lemon juice to each quart. I also do a 15 minute water bath for jams and pickles. But this is partly because my understanding is that it takes 15 minutes of boiling to sterilize the jars--so might as well have them already filled. But 45 years ago, local women here in West Virginia told me they just canned tomatoes and jams "open kettle," meaning you got the contents boiling, the jars in boiling water, filled the jars and sealed them and you were done. And I did it that way for years with no ill effects. But like I say, if you have to boil the jars for 15 minutes to sterilize them, might as well fill and seal them first.
Here's my question for this thread--does anyone have experience with both Asian and American persimmons, who can compare them?

I had the experience as Carla, only trying to can pawpaw pulp. So I've never tried to make persimmon jam, as I figured it would turn out the same. What I do is pick out the seeds, then freeze the pulp till I want it for a recipe--muffins, cake and cookie bars ate my three persimmon recipes.

So, six years ago I said I couldn't see a reason to put anything under the leaf bins. Now I do. I moved my leaf bins to a place under a big maple, and put plastic mats under them so the tree doesn't filch out all the good leaf mold. The reason I moved them was that I finally realized that they were harboring the roots of bindweed, which I now realize I will never get rid of. I wish I'd realized this sooner, when it might have been possible to eradicate the bindweed without poison.
And, in response to the "Why be in a hurry?" question--I want my leaf mold in one year because I never have enough compost and manure--I NEED that leaf mold every fall! And when I clean out the bins, they're ready to receive the next fall's leaves.
Also. In response to the one who said that if leafmold were gold he'd be rich, and the one who said she or he had 100 cubic yards of the stuff, and the one who has a contraption to just drive down the road and it sucks up the leaves and deposits them in the trailer...and elsewhere, someone getting multiple dumptrucks of wood chips--sorry to say it but I read these things and I burn with envy.

Now I'm going to have to learn how to bookmark permies posts--especially since I got a good harvest this year. I've said potatoes are the number one crop to grow because they're fairly easy to grow and store, nutritious and maybe more versatile than any other vegetable...and here we have a massive load of new recipes. Barbara Manning alone contributed so much information, including details and correct spelling, that I hope she got bushels of apples for her posts.
I have a couple tips, maybe off topic slightly--the first one is what I did yesterday and this morning. I store most of my potatoes in a root cellar. They're harvested as early as early July, when it's 70 degrees F in there...far above ideal temperature. They seem to mostly keep well despite this, but nonetheless I want to get the temperature down as soon as I can. It was supposed to go down to 43 last night (actually 45) so I hauled all my potatoes a short distance to the greenhouse overnight and left the rootcellar door open (have to remove all contents so I'm not inviting mice into the rootcellar). I stopped on the way to spill each vessel onto the ground to  check for rot, which was due anyway.
On recipes, I don't have much to offer other than half baking whole potatoes, than scooping out a lot of the insides to mix with say fried burger and onions, garlic, maybe peppers, then briefly bake again.
But I will mention one of my two vegan recipes: make mashed potatoes the usual way, and meanwhile fry a whole pound of crumbled tofu, onions and garlic, and mushrooms if you've got them, the whole time the potatoes are boiling. In a small cast iron frying pan (that's what I use anyway) put in a mixture of 1/4 cup flour and 1/2 cup of nutritional yeast into a hot pan. After a minute of so, when you smell nuttiness, add a small splash of oil and 1 1/2 cups of water, and whisk to remove lumps. When it begins to bubble, add 2 or 3 tablespoons of tamari (you could probably use soy sauce or salt). Whisk most of the time until it has thickened adequately, then grate a little pepper on top, turn off the heat, and cover. Meanwhile steam some vegetable--green beans and greens both work well. Serve the mashed potatoes topped with the fried tofu mixture, topped with the gravy, and the veg on the side or mixed in.
Another one is potato chowder--I boil chopped potatoes with grated carrots (if you just chop the carrots they won't be done when the potatoes are.) Meanwhile I saute onions, garlic, a little sausage and maybe bok choy or chard stems. When the potatoes are mashable, I do that, possibly using an immersion blender if the potatoes are peeled, stir in the fried stuff, then if the texture is right (if it isn't necessary to boil off excess water) I add some milk and a bunch of grated cheese, usually cheddar. Serve with thick slices of buttered bread.

A few thoughts. I'm jealous of people who get dumptrucks of leaves delivered. And, if you put your leaf piles in the shade to turn into leafmold, there is a hazard you may not have thought of...I tried that experimentally, to  compare it with bins in the sun. Which composted faster I dunno but when I went to use the leafmold from the woods bin, I found the greedy trees has infiltrated it with a network of roots--it was very difficult to gather any leafmold. I didn't want to just rip through their roots...I recently moved my leaf bins because I realized they were harboring the totalitarian menace, bindweed roots. They went under a maple tree--but sat on thick plastic mats, so the tree can't reach any thieving roots up into the leafmold. Conversely, I question the idea of raking up leaves from the woods--or even from yards-- whether to sell or use the leafmold, because don't those trees need the compost of theirt own leaves? What I use I rake out of the mile-long gravel lane--we don't want friable soil there.

Deedee, one of my gardening goals is to avoid relying on outside inputs--which is partly pushed by my favorite gardening book, Cindy Connor's Grow a Sustainable Diet. But I think when you're establishing a new place, that's impractical, and you should feel free to import manure or compost or whatever good organic matter you can get. Then you can use cover crops and your own compost, leafmold, manure, to maintain the fertility and tilth. I also use sand, which is controversial--there is a thread here about that--but it has worked for me. You want coarse sand. And you don't want to rob your own woods of leaves, too much, but I rake up most of our mile-long gravel lane--we don't want good tilth in the road--and chop it, usually with the lawnmower, and keep it in wire bins--a year later I have lovely leafmold, which is especially good, they say, for carrots and cole crops (brassicas).

Some asked about topping a tree. Here we have only American persimmons, it's zone 6B, just a little too cold for the Asian ones I think.  But most of the trees we collect from have been grafted. You can cut a sizable tree at three or four feet from the ground, then do two grafts in a cleft and have a good chance of at least one taking. I think we have several varieties but have not been good about keeping track. However, they are mostly twice the size of the wild ones, and have few or no seeds--whereas the wild ones--well I have not found a better way to remove seeds (and that little tail at the blossom end) than to go through them with my hands, a messy process. And then I have equal quantities usable pulp and seeds/ caps. (Which I have learned not put in the compost as these seedlings are a pain to dig out of my garden). And often you miss one--so then you have to eat the results carefully. I read that the reason (some of) the grafted ones are seedless is that they result from a cross between out native Diospyros virginiana and a D texensis, and that these have--surprisingly--different numbers of chromosomes. But it seems my trees will drop some fruits that do have at least one seed. I wish I new the role of male trees--should I get rid of most of them, or do the females need males around to fruit well? Persimmons are one of those trees that come in male and female individuals.  Incidentally, if you are disappointed that your growing tree has turned out to be male, you can graft it to accomplish a sex change operation. My main two wild trees are relatively tall and slender compared to the grafted ones, and while I'd call the fruit inferior because it's smaller and seedier (same taste), one of them has often had hundreds and hundreds of fruits--the whole fifty foot tree turns orange in a good year.
My three main recipes are for a muffin, a cookie bar with lemon icing and a cake. Since I do have gastric issues and have identified persimmons as a factor, I don't often eat any raw, but I save the pulp in the freezer so I can make one of these whenever I want.

I just use ordinary cheapo scrunchies. If I double it, it holds all day; but I discovered this year that it gets less tangles if I don't double it, tho then I have to keep redoing it as it loosens and starts falling out on one side.  The tangles might have something to do with showering (but not washing my hair) with the scrunchy still in place, which I have to do after a gardening shift from late May to early September because of chiggers.