Persimmon, Mango, Pomegranate, and Pineapple Guava Taste Test - SoCal

[70Malibu]

I just picked and purchased many different varieties of persimmons so I will do my personal taste test..

Also visited some people who gave me fresh mango fruits picked from their tree this week. Thanks Johnny and Nate, hope to add the taste of Valencia Pride when Mike drops off a fruit to me.

Instead of making multiple post, I figured I will just lump them all in one post here. I will also introduce my Japanese non-astringent persimmon from my dad's tree that I don't think many people have it in the USA. This scion was given to my dad from a bonsai master in the 1960-70s. He grafted it and we have been getting lots of great fruits from this tree. He also made 2 grafted trees for myself and brother so we had 3 these trees, but my tree died from the graft (my fault) so now I will regraft it on the vigorous original rootstock of this tree of mine.

Let me post for now the persimmon fruits I have and will eat when they get ripe. I will try to take the brix and report on my taste test.

I will put place holders below for the mango fruits that I will take photos later. Also will include the photo of a new introduction mango seedling which looks and taste greeat so it needs a name. The tree owner asked me to give it a name so I will try to do that this week.

[70Malibu]

Persimmon photos of the fruits I will be doing the taste tests is below:



I will show the variety ID later this week on these photos.

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I just ordered these fresh persimmons from Marta at Really Gool Plants.

https://reallygoodplants.com/

Looks like now she has the Saijo fruits left so if anyone wants to try it, go buy it online. I already ate ripe Saijo and I know to me it is better than the Hachiya.

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[70Malibu]

Here's the new introduction of my dad's persimmon. I'm sure some of you remember the photos of this fruit from my earlier post, now it has a name.

Kumamoto persimmon.

[70Malibu]

Mango photos for taste testing below:

[70Malibu]

Already tasted these mangos earlier this month.

[JCorte]

Marta’s Saijo tree is young and in your photo they don’t look to be at peak ripeness and they look really small, so not sure they will be representative of the best flavor for this cultivar.  The longer the fruits hang on the tree they will start to fill out and get 4 ridges in the fruit and get these black markings.

I don’t remember if the fruits I sent you a few years ago were at this stage.  I did notice you posted photos of the fruits I sent you before so maybe you still have them to compare. I remember you messaged me commenting how beautiful they were.

It’s such a beautiful tree to grow.  The leaves on my tree are huge and turn beautiful fall colors even in our mild climate.  The autumn leaf color is better than Hachiya.









Janet

[70Malibu]

I got another persimmon that will be in my taste test soon.

This is from a friend (Khaled) who lives nearby. He told me it is the first time fruiting. These fruits look very nice, medium size fruits. Looks like an astringent variety.

[70Malibu]

We had a CRFG meeting the other night and for some reason our snack table was full of persimmons from our members trees that they brought to share for our snack.

I found one more persimmon fruit that looks different than the normal Fuyu and our club member says it tastes sweeter than Fuyu. I grabbed a few fruits and brought it home for my taste test. I will post photos later this weekend.

[Coconut Cream]

Would you say Thanksgiving time is the most abundant time for fruit in Southern California with the mangoes and persimmons ripening now?

That's a beautiful haul of fresh fruit.

[MasOlas]

I love those acorn shaped fruits when they get soft and gooey!

[Greater Good]

Just received this box in the mail today. From a fellow Tropical Fruit Forum member!
❤️

[70Malibu]

Those fruits look good. Just make sure you know if they are non-astringent or not. When I got my fruits I ordered from Marta, I bought the Saijo and Grape Base fruit boxes. I read how Marta like this Grape Base fruit so I placed the order. After I had all these other persimmons, I open the box from Marta and thought Saijo was astringent so wait until it softens up and changes to a darker/glassy translucent color. But the Grape Base fruit looked similar to a small fuyu so one look bright orange and ready to try. I took a bite and ate the fruit, I thought this fruit is bad, not really sweet, more bitter, makes your mouth pucker.

I emailed Marta and thanked her from the fruits, said the Grape Base was not that good. Then she said, was the fruit already soft when you recieved the box, those are astringent varieties. Oops, now I'm still waiting for it to soften up before I do the taste test.

[70Malibu]

Just got a few more mangos to taste from friends tree.

Johnny gave me the CAC, Sweet Tart, and a huge 2lb Guava mango fruit.

Nate gave me a few of his new seedling Kent variety.

Just this morning Mike (Spira, Roger's PR canistel) gave me 2 nice looking Valencia Pride mangos, also a few more of his Spira Surinam Cherry fruits. I also got some Surinam Cherry fruits from Brad (at CRFG mtg).

Will post photos later tonight.

[70Malibu]

I do notice some of the astringent variety persimmons are starting to change color and some areas of the fruit is getting soft and translucent now. A few of these fruits are showing a little mold so I may just cut it and take a brix reading early.

Eric, yes, Thanksgiving is about the time most persimmons will ripen and finish off from November-December. My Matsumoto persimmon gets ripe early in October, so those fruits are done before November.

I don't grow enough mangos with fruit (none) so I couldn't say when they ripen. We did have the mango tasting in Oct 6 so those mangos on Khaled's post may be the start of mangos ripening. Now there are still some varieties of mangos finishing up like Sweet Tart, Guava, Valencia Pride, CAC, like the ones I show above, and Cotton Candy. Seacrest, Angie, are all done.

[70Malibu]

I added a few more fruits to my taste test in this post. I got to taste so many varieties of Pomegranates and Pineapple Guava fruits this weekend at the CRFG tour we had at Dennis Sharmahd Farms so I wanted to update on my taste of these two fruit tree varieties.

Here's the list of pomegranates:
1. Ganesh
2.L.E. Cooke
3.Kings Ruby
4. Ambrosia
5. Pink Ice
6. Dewey
7. Doroshk
8. Fleshman

The fruits that tasted real good and stood out was Kings Ruby,  Ambrosia, and Pink Ice. This is what most of the people who did the tasting replied when I asked each one.

[70Malibu]

I took a few shots of the many large seedling Pineapple Guava trees he has lined up along the drive up to his house. He only had a few named varieties but most were from his planting seeds of the best fruits he ate and received seeds from the CRFG exchanges.

I only had Dan and his daughter and myself as the evaluators of the best tasting trees he had. We went up and down the row of trees and tried the fruits, then narrowed it down to the best tasting fruits from 3 trees. I only brought home the one fruit I thought was the best tasting (large fruits) so I can show a few photos of it and one other variety Dennis said was good (small fruits).

[70Malibu]

Here's my complete list of pomegranates I will review:

Here's the list of pomegranates:
1. Ganesh
2.L.E. Cooke
3.Kings Ruby
4. Ambrosia
5. Pink Ice
6. Dewey
7. Doroshk
8. Fleshman
9. Parfianka
10. Mediteranian (Diana)
11. I have a large grafted tree of Angel Red, but can't remember how the fruits taste, the rats got to all of them before me.


I finished tasting all of these on the list.

Here's my top 4:
1.Pink Ice
2. King Ruby
3. Ambrosia/Mediteranian
4. Parfianka

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I'll post some photos I took of the varieties above.

Here's the largest fruit, Diana's Mediterranean, not sure why I labeled it Lebanese.

[70Malibu]

I also finished tasting all the mangos I have:
1. Sea Crest
2. Sweet Tart seedling (Khaled)
3. Sweet Tart (Johnny)
4.CAC  (Johnny)
5. Guava (Johnny)
6. Valencia Pride (Miked)
7.Kent Seedling (Nate)
8. M_K (unk) Seedling
9. Angie (Johnny)
10. Keo Savoy (Mimosa)
11. Alphonso (Mimosa)

[70Malibu]

Here's my results on the mango tasting: From best tasting first

1. Sweet Tart seedling (Khaled)
2. Sweet Tart (Johnny)
3. Sea Crest
4. Angie (Johnny)
5. CAC (Johnny)
6. Guava (Johnny)
7. M_K (unk) Seedling
8. Valencia Pride (Miked)
9. Alphonso (Mimosa)
10.Kent Seedling (Nate)
11. Keo Savoy (Mimosa)

[70Malibu]

I did get to taste a tree ripe Saijo at the Escondido farm of Dennis, it was excellent. Of course most o his tree ripe persimmons we tasted were all excellent so it was hard to pick just one.Saijo is one of my favorite of the soft astringent varieties that I don't eat.

I prefer the non-astringent type, so I recruited an assistant to do the taste test for me of the astringent persimmons I had. I asked Lucus to taste each fruit and report his taste test results here.

[70Malibu]

I will post my non-astringent persimmon taste test results by the end of the weekend. I need to eat them all before they get softer.

I have about 5 different non-astringent varieties I got from my trees, neighbors trees, and our CRFG mtg. I will list them below later.

[ScottR]

Kaz, nice taste tests that's a lot of work man we all appreciate your posts. My favorite persimmon is Saijo very rich taste but also love hachiya!

[sbtropic]

I am curious how a common Wonderful pomegranate would rank on your list? Do you have a rough idea?

[70Malibu]

Yes, I have the 2 common varieties (old tree) Wonderful and Everweet. I do like the fruits that are not really sweet also like these two mentioned. But once you taste the real good tasting varieties like all of those mentioned in Simon's post below, you will want to grow these better ones. So, I top worked both my trees and now I have these better varieties that I am growing.

The varieties of pomegranate that I just don't want to ever grow are the ones with very long thorns at the end of each branch tip. My son had a very large tree that would get 50-75 large fruits that tasted average (hard seed, sweet & tart) but the thorns were about 2" long so I cut that tree down to the ground.

To answer your question, Wonderful would be near the bottom, maybe rank 8 or below since there are so many other better ones than the common Wonderful and Eversweet. I was basing my taste test for best tasting. If it had soft seed, then it was a plus.

You should read this post that Simon started about the taste of the top pomegranate:

https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=21533.50

You should also read this post below about Wonderful.

https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=59428.msg562850#msg562850

[sbtropic]

Thank you,

I have Wonderful, A Sicilian one from Exotica, Ariana, Parfianka, and Kashmir. The last three have not produced due to transplantion shock and neglect. I will try to revive them this year. I like the tartness of wonderful. Do any of your top 5 have more tartness?