Everything I've ever seen written on the topic recommended against high-nitrogen fertilizers for persimmons. Some have even suggested that nitrogen fertilizer may result in premature fruit drop.

ruas:

Too much nitrogen fertilization is known to cause persimmon fruit drop.

I don't know what caused your persimmon fruit drop last winter. But two or three years is a bit young for a persimmon tree to hold its fruit to maturity. It may be that in this coming fourth year it will be old enough to hold its fruit to maturity. If you put any nitrogenous fertilizer on it in those first three years, I would suspect that MAYBE there was too much nitrogen also.

A certain amount of fruit drop is natural in persimmons. My Hachiya will drop quite a bit of fruit on its own, but I still have to manually thin the remaining fruitlets even more to prevent branches from breaking when the fruit mature. It started bearing in its third year.

Persimmons do well without too much fussing over fertilization and irrigation given that the soil is half-way decent. If it gets roughly 6 hours of sunlight and enough water that the soil doesn't dry out four inches down, you should get persimmons this coming winter. I would go very easy on the TLC. It's possible to kill fruit trees with too much TLC -- especially with too much water and especially for "newbies."

Hang-in there this fourth year. I sometimes think that the reason I'm so interested in home orcharding is that Somebody wants to teach me patience -- on which I am thin.

Your 12-5-8 formulation is "hot" in nitrogen which citrus and avocado can use. But I wouldn't put any on my persimmon tree without a soil test beforehand to know whether my soil was nitrogen deficient or not.

Tony

Tony and Lucky,
Thanks a lot for your advice. I guess I stay away from the fertilizer then.
ruas

I'm going with a 4-6-8 citrus fertilizer as mine dropped fruit last year as well (but that may have been due to overwatering). I ordered my fertilizer from Edible Landscaping.

Had a persimmon for 3 year now. It is growing well, about 6 ft ,lots of green foliage, but not flowers, no fruit. There was fruit when I bought the tree at 3 feet tall. What is causing the no flowering problem? Another tree I have 30 feet away is producing, but not growing. Stunted growth. Any help someone can offer would be appreciated. Thanks