Persimmon Harvest

It's Saturday and it's harvest season - so yes we are working!  Since the phones were quiet this Saturday morning, I took a trip over to see the digging of the 3 year Persimmon trees.  Why?  This is the first year where the 3 year persimmons were coming off the new Drip System.  In fact everything in this digging season (and from now on out) is coming off the drip system.  I wanted to see how good the roots were developed.

Before looking at the roots, I wanted you to see the crop of persimmon fruit on the ground.  Yes, these trees are already bearing fruit!  These happen to be Fuyu (Jiro).  Actually it creates extra labor cost for us because we needed to send workers in to strip the fruit by hand so as not to break the young limbs of these trees.

The 3 year field produces the majority of the 3/4" and larger caliper sizes with a few being 5/8" and smaller.  A lot of what you see in these photos are 1" to 1 1/4"

3 Year Persimmon Roots - Drip Tape Dug With Trees

View From Cab of Digger.  Driver sits over right side tracks.  Trees go between the tracks to blade at rear.

One person follows the digger to make sure the trees all fall to one side.  This allows the digger to make a pass down the next row without running over trees that fell the wrong way.

This is the neighbor's overly friendly dog just before he tried to give me a wet kiss and slobbered over my camera lens.

The Persimmon tree crop looks great.  There are some sizes that would look really nice in a 24" box for your high end customers.

Ron Ludekens 12-11-2010