Graft Sexcess!

Since we know that deer like the persimmon fruit, we have been watchful for any female persimmon trees on our property.  What we have discovered is that, while we have many persimmon trees, most of them are male and so do not produce any fruit.  An article in the QDMA magazine Quality Whitetails from June-July 2011, Grafting Persimmons, by David A. Osborn and Dr. Karl V. Miller, recommended a remedy to this situation.  The article provides detailed instructions on how to graft a small branch with several buds from a producing female persimmon tree on to a male tree or a young persimmon tree that has not produced any fruit yet.  The result would be a hybrid tree producing fruit.  This was definitely worth a try!

We have several prolific female persimmon trees, so we carefully followed the directions on 9 healthy young persimmon trees of unknown sex, using scion wood cut and stored during the winter from one of these prolific females.

Prolific Persimmon Tree

We were hesitant of sexcess; however, months later, we were thrilled to see that the process was sexcessful on 3 of the 9 trees.  After rereading the instructions (always a good idea) we discovered that we should have cut the foliage below the graft in order for the scion to receive most of the energy from the roots.  Possibly the other 6, all of which had a great deal of foliage beneath the graft, would have been sexcessful, too.

Sexcessful Graft