North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Scott Smith <scott@cs.jhu.edu>]

Jerry, the male limbs are pretty obvious on the tree, the flowers are on very 
small branchlets.   I was thinking the female limbs turned male, but those 
limbs were much fatter so I think you are right, the female limbs are the 
ones that died back.  This year there is going to be almost no fruit, it 
looks like less than a dozen on the whole tree.  I am going to prune out most 
of these small branchlet limbs and hope that rebalances it.

Scott

On May 30, 2012, at 11:31 PM, Jwlehman@aol.com wrote:

> Hi Scott,
> 
> I keep forgetting ibiblio doesn't do color. I'll convert to bold to make it 
> easier to follow.
>>> Jerry, I did put some compost, fertilizer, and bark mulch on the tree 
>>> this spring (and every previous spring) so I the soil should be good.  
>> Good, 
>>> OK. The flower types do seem to cluster by branchlet.  I wonder if older 
>>> branches are more likely to turn to male flowers and I need to let the 
>> tree 
>>> send up some new shoots which will start female?  You bring up an 
>> interesting 
>>> thought and you may be on to something.  Persimmon naturally prune off 
>>> limbs that are heavily shaded. My thought on this has always been, less >
>> sun lower sugars being made and maybe stored in the branch making it >
>> weaker. So if a branch has many fruits it could have less nutrients stored 
>> >
>> because it fed the fruits. Then that weaker branch could drop off same as >
>> heavily shaded branches. This could cause the tree to have more male 
>> >flowering > 
>> branches. 
>>> If that is a possibility how to cure it? I don't think pruning limbs 
>> alone 
>>> would be the answer. Maybe thinning fruits on heavily bearing limbs       
>>> would be better. When the flowering is done 
>> this year I will give parts of the 
>>> tree with no fruits a strong pruning and see what that does for next 
>> year. 
>>> Maybe remove some of the male flowering branches and thin fruits, both. >
>> I'd select male branches to prune that shade fruiting branches to give >
>> them more sun.  Keep in mind, I'm guessing. I really don't know. 
>> 
>> Good Luck. Bad news is it will take a few years to see if this works, but 
>> you don't have much to loose.  
>> 
>> Jerry
>> __________________
>> 
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