This year was a fruitful year of our persimmon, and we covered the tree with a net last month.
Last weekend, I harvested 46 persimmons. Its average weight was 200 grammes. At the same time I pruned tall straight branches. Only one persimmon was eaten by a crow this time.
This persimmon tastes bitter when it is not ripe, and we tried two methods of making it sweet.
The first method is drying. After peeling their skin, the persimmons were tied with a string and hung outside under the eaves. In a few weeks, dry fruit of persimmon (Hoshigaki) will be ready to eat.
The persimmons used for Hoshigaki are astringent persimmons. There are many cultivars of 'sweet persimmons', however, unlike astringent persimmons, making sweet persimmons into Hoshigaki will not make them sweeter, as the sugar content itself is much higher in astringent persimmons.
Another method is afterripening by alcohol. Persimmons were stored in a bucket with kitchen papers soaked with alcohol (Japanese clear liquor, shochu). Then, we put a lid on the bucket and sealed up with vinyl tape. In a few days, we can eat sweet persimmons.
We harvested a lot of plums, blueberries, prunes and persimmons. What a bumper harvest this year!
We saw lots of persimmons when we lived in France, but no one seemed to pick them very much. We don't see them here.
ReplyDeletePersimmons had been very common in the garden in Japan, especially in rural areas. I ate persimmons so much in the garden when I was a child. These days it is not so popular, maybe because other fruits became easy to buy at a reasonable price.
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