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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 16, 2022 20:54:03 GMT -6
I posted a picture of some of our Texas Persimmons on a different thread a while back, but I thought it might be worthwhile having a dedicated topic. Our Texas Persimmons are wild native ones that grow particularly in central and southern Texas down into Mexico, I understand. I don’t think they extend into other states or even the whole state of Texas. Texas Persimmons tend to spring up under oak trees around here. I’m sure it’s because of birds spreading the seeds. We have some beside our driveway that matured their fruit earlier because they get more sun. The other day my kids and I noticed persimmon fruit on a walkway in our backyard, and so we harvested what we could from that tree. I didn’t take pictures at that time but went out this afternoon and got a few shots of the tree or trees. There’s often a little cluster together.  The trees and the persimmons themselves are quite small. They have a tough skin and pretty numerous seeds, so there’s not a lot of flesh to be had on each. A previous owner of a neighbor’s house up the hill used to hit golf balls of his back deck, I’m told. A few of them show up in odd places on our land even all these years later (we have one embedded in the base of an oak tree), so I had one right to hand in our backyard to show the size of the fruit.  What my kids and I harvested the other day together with some persimmons in the freezer gave us enough to run through the food mill to make a jar of jam. I helped with the milling and some recipe suggestions, but my ten year old daughter did the cooking. We had about a cup and a half of puree. We added two tablespoons of lemon juice and a quarter cup of sugar and cooked it down a bit. My daughter then added a touch of vanilla and a sprinkling of cinnamon. We had just enough cooked down for a jar of delicious jam. (We did not can this, and we’re not trying to preserve it. We’re just eating it now. It is really tasty.)  After our jamming adventure, my daughter cleaned off a bunch of seeds and set them on a paper towel to dry. Last night we put twelve of them in seed starting sponges to see if we can get them to germinate. My daughter wants to plant lots of persimmons, and I’d be happy for her to. I even think I know a great spot for a grove where I just cleared out weeds last weekend. We’ll see if anything germinates. We also still have a bunch of seeds, and I may just take them outside and toss them around near our fencelines. My daughter also went out this evening and collected about a cup of persimmons that had mostly ripened since our last picking session. If we can get some more, we may just make some more jam. 
Do any of you all grow persimmons, either wild or cultivated? |
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Post by hmoosek on Sept 16, 2022 21:19:02 GMT -6
We have one. My uncle planted it. It produces quite a few.
There used to be a persimmon tree on highway 31 going to Corsicana. Growing up Mom would stop and pick them. Like always, they widened the highway and bye bye tree. That’s progress I guess.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 16, 2022 22:34:52 GMT -6
I've got wild persimmon trees. Some are fair sized trees, but most are small. The bark and the persimmon fruits look much different than yours, chrysanthemum . The bark and growth habit of your persimmon trees looks like my crepe myrtles do. I guess the first time I saw a picture of your persimmon tree, it was an optical illusion of sorts, because I thought they were bigger fruits than that. But around here, they don't produce every year for some reason. And yes indeed, I bet that persimmon jam is tasty stuff. Oh, that crooked persimmon in the first picture looks like a good selection for a walking stick. 
I used to saw the seed in half on my bandsaw to see if it was a fork or spoon or knife inside. I think that's the 3 choices, it has been so long ago that I may be thinking of too many utensils. But anyway, the inside of the seed is supposed to predict how the coming winter weather, snow and such will be. I remember that a spoon shape means that you will have to shovel lots of snow, but I can't remember offhand what the others mean. I'll try to find the picture of the seeds I sawed in half...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 17, 2022 17:00:43 GMT -6
We have quite a few wild persimmons around here. They are loaded this year, almost to the point of breaking branches. There are literally thousands of them. They won't be ripe for about another month though.
When I was a kid, all of us boys would sharpen persimmon sticks with our pocket knives and shoot green persimmons at one another every Autumn. You can easily throw a green persimmon so far that it disappears out of sight, just by using a stick about 30" inches long. Man, I have come home with whelps on me that felt like getting hit by a paintball gun at point-blank range!
We'd start a fight by choosing sides, then sharpening sticks and picking persimmons to stockpile at various strategic points along a long, winding, cow trail on my grandma's 40-acre farm. We'd start off at a good distance from one another, maybe 200' feet or more. Then, as the battle progressed, we'd get braver by degrees, and nearly every time it would end in hand-to-hand combat. I've had my cousin Terry shoot me in the chest from just a little more than arm's length away. There's probably no greater fun for kids in the country than a good persimmon fight. Granted, cow pile fights are great fun, but nothing beats green persimmons!
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. When you forecast the winter weather by the insides of persimmon seeds; a spoon means a wet winter, some call it a snow shovel, but it means heavy, wet snow. In a warm year, it could mean heavy rain. A knife means cold winds that will cut you like a knife, and a fork means a cold, dry, winter with little snow or powdery snow.
Example images from left to right:
Spoon, Knife, Fork
Wet, Windy, Dry.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 18, 2022 21:37:18 GMT -6
I am clearly deficient in my Persimmon folklore as I have never before heard of the spoon, knife, or fork. My persimmon seeds are small, and I can’t really imagine cutting one open, especially not with a saw, but I might just have to give it a try (very carefully with a thin kitchen knife). You fellows have me intrigued. I wonder if Texas Persimmons have anything inside.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 19, 2022 4:04:41 GMT -6
I am clearly deficient in my Persimmon folklore as I have never before heard of the spoon, knife, or fork. My persimmon seeds are small, and I can’t really imagine cutting one open, especially not with a saw, but I might just have to give it a try (very carefully with a thin kitchen knife). You fellows have me intrigued. I wonder if Texas Persimmons have anything inside. 
I don't know if Texas persimmons can predict the winter weather or not. If they are smaller seeds than the persimmon seeds I have here, I could use the scroll saw to saw them in half. It's not dangerous if they are in between some pieces of wood as you saw them. |
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 19, 2022 10:45:23 GMT -6
I've never even thought of using a saw to split the seeds before, we were never that highly advanced in our thinking. We just cracked them open with our teeth. Of course, as I get older, teeth are more valuable than they used to be, so now, I just crack them open with a hammer. I hold the seeds upright with tweezers and whap them on the pointy end.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 19, 2022 13:22:41 GMT -6
I'll try the hammer method. If I tried it with my teeth nowadays, I'd probably get halves of teeth back instead.
By the way, I dug in a little further into the striking force of a whap. I did not want to have mistakenly whopped the seed, when I should have whapped the seed.
In my research I have discovered that whap and whop are synonymous, meaning that I would not have erred had I whopped the seed, it would have been the same as if I had whapped the seed...
Interesting...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 19, 2022 21:27:14 GMT -6
Before I read about the hammer method, I tried the steak knife method. I have a little wooden spatula that used to be a part of salad tongs, I believe, with a piece that hinged in between another. The tongs broke, but I kept the “spatula” part. Instead of having a single handle, it has a double handle since the other side of the tongs used to fit in between. I could pinch the ends together today to sandwich a persimmon seed in between to keep my fingers away from the knife. The first seeds I tried were the ones we cleaned last week after making the jam. I sawed with the knife and pushed with the knife. I made a scratch but otherwise just managed to shoot the seed across the kitchen. We made a second batch of persimmon jam today, though, and a fresh seed was easier. Sawing didn’t work as well as pushing, but I actually did succeed with a couple. Here’s a photo of what I found.  The kids and I believe that it is a spoon. Heavy, wet snow, you say? |
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Post by woodeye on Sept 19, 2022 22:37:24 GMT -6
Definitely a spoon. You've done it, chrysanthemum, you have conquered the mighty persimmon seed. Good Job!
Yes, keep that snow shovel & umbrella handy this winter...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 25, 2022 20:34:48 GMT -6
We do own a snow shovel and put it to good use in February of 2021. I even shoveled for a couple of neighbors because having a snow shovel, snow suits, and sleds is not common down here. (They all came with us when my husband’s company moved us down here in a hurry, and I never gave them away because who would want them? We used the sled as a pool float, the snow suits as stuffing in a bean bag, and the snow shovel to move mulch on occasion.)
My mother told me that she cut open a persimmon seed (holding it with a pair of pliers) to see what she could find. She says she didn’t find anything. I wonder what that means. No winter at all? The wrong kind of persimmon? Just a bad cut? I told her to look for pictures on the internet to see what she was supposed to be looking for and try again.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 25, 2022 23:17:45 GMT -6
I've never heard of a persimmon seed that didn't have a spoon, knife, or fork, but if all are absent, and it means winter has been cancelled, I want some of those persimmons!
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Post by woodeye on Sept 26, 2022 9:33:15 GMT -6
We do own a snow shovel and put it to good use in February of 2021. I even shoveled for a couple of neighbors because having a snow shovel, snow suits, and sleds is not common down here. (They all came with us when my husband’s company moved us down here in a hurry, and I never gave them away because who would want them? We used the sled as a pool float, the snow suits as stuffing in a bean bag, and the snow shovel to move mulch on occasion.) My mother told me that she cut open a persimmon seed (holding it with a pair of pliers) to see what she could find. She says she didn’t find anything. I wonder what that means. No winter at all? The wrong kind of persimmon? Just a bad cut? I told her to look for pictures on the internet to see what she was supposed to be looking for and try again.
So there went my question of how many beans it took to fill a snow suit? I'll probably never know, but life must go on...  |
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