34 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
crop in which we can do as well in the 
quantity of fruit produced. 
Mr. Bush—Do you cultivate these 
persimmons before using the mulch, 
or after? 
Mr. Penny—'Absolutely we do not 
cultivate. Sometimes, though, we 
work over the land with a mowing ma¬ 
chine to keep the weeds down. 
Mr. -What kind of land is 
best ? 
Mr. Penny—Low, flat woods that 
has been drained. 
Mr.-What distance apart? 
Mr. Penny—For persimmons, the 
trees grow well when set about 20 feet 
apart; 20 feet in the rows and 25 feet 
apart. They grow to be large trees 
25 to 40 feet high if they are not dam¬ 
aged. Their wood is very brittle and a 
heavy wind will break it down, espe¬ 
cially where it is loaded with fruit. We 
find another difficulty in persimmon.s. 
We Lould get a great deal more money 
for them if they could ripen on the 
trees, but the birds are very bad and 
will ruin a great deal of fruit. Then 
again, if there is a wet weather, the fruit 
begins to crack, and that ends the fruit 
for shipping purposes. 
Mr. -What form of fertilizer 
do you consider the best? 
Mr. Penny—I should say any good 
orange tree fertilizer that you would 
use for bearing groves would be ex¬ 
cellent for persimmons. 
Mr. Painter—Usually the best fer¬ 
tilizer for persimmons is one contain¬ 
ing' Ixit little or no ammonia. One of 
two per cent, of ammonia; eleven to 
twelve per cent, of potash and eight to 
nine per cent, available phosphoric ac¬ 
id, to be made from sulphate ammonia. 
Low grade sulphate potash and high 
grade acid phosphate. 
Mr. -What is the nature of 
your soil and sub-soil? 
Mr. Penny—Our soil is low, flat 
woods. The land was originally well 
timbered. The soil is rather dark and 
has a depth of three or four feet, I sup¬ 
pose. Occasionally we find a little 
“hard pan” as we call it, but it seems 
to be in spots. 
Mr. Gibbs—Did you say you under¬ 
drained that land? 
Mr. Penny—Not with under drains, 
but with open ditches. As I under¬ 
stand “under-drain,” it means pipes 
under the soil. We have to do that 
with our orange groves in places. 
Mr. Hollingsworth—In California, 
there is what is called the “muscat” 
grape and I would like to know if any¬ 
one in the State has made a success of 
raising it in Florida. It is the best 
grape I ever tasted. 
Prof. Rolfs—Lots of people have 
made a failure of it. But to come back 
to the persimmon question; it seems to 
me that it would facilitate our shipping 
and the sale of the persimmon very 
considerably if we can put into general 
practice the process described by Mr. 
Winters. It seems to me that the 
question of keeping this fruit for a 
practicable time is simply excluding 
the air. That is all this process amounts 
to. The alcohol or rather the fumes 
of alcohol, was used to fill up the spaces 
in the jars that otherwise would have 
been occupied by the air. The persim¬ 
mons subjected to this process were 
better than when allowed to ripen nat¬ 
urally because of the absence of the 
too sickish taste that frequently accom¬ 
panies a dead ripe persimmon. 
