By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer
In fall foliage and fruit, not many trees can compete with persimmons for drama. But left to themselves, they grow tall, and tend to be dirty when you climb them to pick fruit (as I’ve been doing since I was about 8 years old).
I’ve seen two great harvest methods.
Maybe the best is used by Franki Baccellieri in her Portland, Oregon garden. A remarkable cook and fruit grower, she trains two ‘Fuyu’ persimmon trees in a fan (shown above). A vertical wood frame gives her a flat surface to work against, and she doesn’t let the top of the fans grow higher than she can reach. When the harvest is ready, she just reaches into a wall of brilliant leaves and picks the fruit.
The other method, for which I no longer have photos, was used by a Los Angeles family growing ‘Hachiya’ persimmons on a large tree. The tallest member of the family reached into the tree with the hook on the end of a pole pruner and pulled the fruit off. The two boys were waiting below with a Hula Hoop that had fabric stretched across it. They caught the soft fruit in their home-made catcher and it suffered nary a blemish.
