posted 11 years ago
The happiest Asian persimmons I ever grew were grafted onto in-place seedlings or sprouts of wild American persimmon. By planting the seed direct, the taproot remains undisturbed. When I used seeds, I would plant four or five in each spot, let them all grow for a year or two, and then graft them all. I was (and am) a novice grafter so I wasn't confident of a high percentage of success, so I relied on redundancy and then clipped out any weak or unsuccessful grafts. The succesful ones grew vigorously (3 feet or more per year, in GA) and began producing after 2-3 years. When I relocated to a second site, I tried grafting onto young wild persimmons already growing around, and only had good luck with one out of ten or twelve. Later research told me that there is a lot of genetic diversity within the American persimmon and some are more compatible with Asian scions than others.....apparently the seed tree I had collected from at the first site was a good pick. I also lost some grafts mysteriously after several years of good growth and production, and discovered from more research that there is also a virus, invisible and asymptomatic in the Asian, which is fatal to the American rootstock, and it can translocate down through the graft union. Seems to me the long-term answer is to grow Asians on Asian rootstocks on compatible soils....