I have 2 and they seem pretty bulletproof. No disease issues, takes full sun. They do get chewed up to about 5' by the deer, but once bigger than that, not an issue. I have had large numbers of fruit, but so far they all seem to abort mid-season. Perhaps the tree needs to be a bit bigger. The larger of the 2 is about 4 years old from a planting, and is 10' and loaded with fruit. Crossing fingers they will mature.

I planted a Fuyu in spring of 2015. My notes say it is grafted onto native rootstock. It did not flower until spring of 2020 and, I did not get any fruit until spring of 2021. Much like Corkball’s experiance, there were a lot of flowers but only a few fruit. They were delicious!! This year I have lots of flowers. I am hoping suplimental watering untill summer rains start will improve my fruit set. One thing i did not expect, and i do not know if it is typical, is that the tree is leafless for about 6 months of the year and is still only 5 feet tall.

Thanks Corkball and Meg for your response. I hope you both get lots of fruits this fall.

How often do you guys fertilize your trees, I was thinking maybe only once in Spring and maybe late summer? I've read they are not heavy feeders so I would go light on the fertilizer since it is a small tree. I'm hoping the summer rains will get the tree growing.

Meg, you are right, these trees do go dormant shortly after harvest I assume and lose all their leaves and don't leaf out till spring. Not an attractive tree completely leafless for 6 months! But if I get fruits it will be worth it. We are not use to seeing leafless trees here in Florida in the winter. One of the great things about this tree is I won't have to worry about protecting it from frost/freeze. I lost all my Mango blooms this year due to a freeze we had back in February, it got to (27°) here for several hours, fried all the outer leaves and blooms. It is so sad, had so many mangoes last year and zero this year :o(

When I bought the tree it had flowers already but of course due to the shock of planting in the ground the flowers have turned brown and fell off which is to be expected and it's fine because the tree is too small, but it was nice to see blooms on such a small tree at least.

I'm glad to hear the tree seems to be an easy care and not too many issues with bugs,. Corkball, exactly why I put the fence up to keep Deer away, they ate all the leaves and blooms on my Meyer Lemon tree so I doubt I'll have any lemons this year either **sigh**. Between Deer and squirrels I'm shocked I have any fruits to pick Lol...

Thanks again for sharing your input and experiences.

I give each tree a handful of 10-10-10 in the spring. That is all, and to be honest, even that is probably not necessary. One tree is smaller, growing in mostly pure sand and grows about 6-8" a year. The other is much bigger, and in a mix of sand, clay marl, and what appears to be darker, more organic soil. It probably grows in excess of 2' a year.

lots of good info above, I would add that small trees appreciate a good push several times a year to induce additional growth and expand root system for the first 2 or 3 years. You will not get much if any fruit during this period. After wards I would add just a good dose of 10/10/10 in spring and then a very low nitrogen (2-10-10 bloom special) feeding works well feeding midsummer. I wait for tree caliper to be above 1 inch thick before I switch to low nitrogen summer feeding.

Get used to the fact that persimmon trees usually will drop some fruit as they tend to over bloom. Excess nitrogen will force more growth and less fruit. You will have to adjust to the balance that works in your growing area eventually and they will produce a ton of fruit. As stated above fuyu is a bullet proof variety.

A word of caution, persimmon trees will sprout root suckers away from mother tree and if your spray herbicide to control what you think is a weed but is in fact part of the tree and it will kill it.

I have done this and lost a nice Hachiya tree.

Root sprouts have the foliage type of the rootstock and are substantially different from grafted variety. These sprouts have come up as far as 15 feet away from mother tree.

top pic is a fuyu , all pics from 2021 crop

second pic a a saijo loaded with fruit and most of it hidden under foliage

third is a small hachiya loaded with hundreds of buds and it did loose about two thirds of the buds