Just wanted to throw this idea out to anyone trying to grow american persimmon from seed. I hate waiting 3 months of fridge time and then another month of pot-time, and hoping to speed things up I did some investigating.

I found, after searching a few forum listings, a few individuals that said to sand the persimmon seed around the entire edge before cold stratification. Using this info and the following protocol I have 2 seeds out of 10 sprouting right now after 17 days and I will follow up with the rest in the following weeks:

1- Using fine sand paper, sand around edge of seed. I avoided the little nub where the root pops out, but people can try what they want...The slightly felt-like brown outer coat comes off easy, then there is a HARD black layer. Once you get a bit of the black off, feel free to stop. This should only take a few seconds or a minute for a single seed. If you go through the black coating, then there is a white to gray layer, which I assume is the actual endosperm of the seedling, so I stopped if I even got a hint of this.

2- Heat up some distilled water till hot to touch, but since I took off so much of the edge, I didn't boil it, probably stayed around 120-140 degrees. I soak the seeds overnight, then rinsed them and repeated a few times over the next 2 days, hoping some germination inhibitors would wash away.

3-Then I wrapped em in moist paper towel and stuck them in the fridge in a baggie with holes punched in it.

Much to my surprise, I have two sprouting, and the rest look fat and plump. With the edge sanded, they really pop up like a hinge was broken off. I will report how the rest do, as I think I sanded a bit too much on a few and not enough on some. We shall see! Hope any of this helps.

Happy germinating!
Nathan

Disclaimer- I did buy these seeds offline, so there is a chance they were cold stored and so a bit more prepped and ready to germinate. I did not see any info saying this though, and the instructions said to cold stratify for 3 or more months before planting without any other info.

Dave