Will They Ripen? 

We live a little east of San Antonio. When hurricane Harvey’s winds were just a few hours out, I had a choice: bring in severely under ripe, astringent, Asian persimmons (and super green tomatoes) or risk breaking the brittle branches that were loaded with fruit and have the fruit split from the deluge.

(Mine happen to be the Saijo variety. If you can get past the runny texture: these are the most insanely sweet, most flavorful fruit I can grow here. However the “snot” like texture can be off-putting and I dislike them cooked. They end up like cooked pumpkin, but not as good as real pumpkin. These are all things to consider when planting astringent Asian persimmons.)

I always pull my persimmon slightly early: just when they start to color, otherwise I lose them to birds and squirrels. The variety I have ripen over a long period of time, so I don’t usually have a glut and can enjoy a long harvest. However. When you are preparing for a hurricane (my husband and I met because of Katrina, so this wasn’t our first rodeo.) you have to consider fruit weight, high winds and the strength of the wood.

My Saijo is a heavy fruiter. It is a reliable tree that I can always expect a good year from. This year was no different. My pear had 1 pear this year. My peach (that was a gift from my non-gardening husband) as usual, had nothing, but my persimmon was loaded down with fruit. Very green. Astringent. Super un-ripe fruit. I really didn’t have a choice. The fruit had to come down.

This is half of what I pulled, plus my large harvest of super green tomatoes. Both of these are fruit that will ripen off the plants, but usually: I only pull these after they start to color. So, it was a “wait and see” type of thing.

As the persimmon sat out on the counter I eventually noticed that they were getting soft and gelatinous (like ripe persimmon would) but the fruit’s skin was still green. I was thinking: I was going to have to throw them out. Before I trashed all of my fruit I decided to cut one of the soft ones open and check if there was any reason to keep them. To my surprise: despite the green skin, they were fully ripe inside and not astringent at all.

I am so happy these did not have to be thrown out! My tomatoes went from solid green (most had no blush at all) to fully ripe also.

We were also extremely lucky that the hurricane did not do as much damage here as weather casters and our city expected. We got enough winds that they blew down three sections of our privacy fence, but no lasting damage.

Because none of my trees had a fruit load: I didn’t lose any branches. Like I said: San Antonio was very, very lucky! Our prayers are with our Houston neighbors, who were not as fortunate.

So if you have a reason you MUST harvest persimmon and tomatoes early: know that for the most part, you will end up with ripe fruit. It’s OK to harvest very early, IF you have no other options. I can say that I wouldn’t do this if I had an option to leave them on the tree (I’ve noticed these persimmons can be slightly harder to digest when they weren’t ripened a bit more on the tree.) but if we have another emergency early harvest, I will be much more relaxed about the outcome!