I am eating my sugar cane right now and my large tree has the same number of fruit as one or two of your limbs.
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your hjās look so promising!
and i agree, it would be best to topwork ones trees with the proven performers, especially if you only have a few trees, and have waited for and tested several varieties long enough.
Harvested 36 lb off of 4 trees tonight. Lots more to go on those 4 trees. Used a rake for upper branches. Was hit many times in the head by jujubees.
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Bob,
What are the varieties?
Tony
Nice haul- and you have a bunch of other trees too, right?. What are you doing with that many? If you decide to sell them through the mail, let me know. My wife has been asking about them, but I donāt have a source due to Rogerās passing. My own are at least a month away from being ripe and will probably be finished in a few days.
Could be worse- at least you arenāt growing coconuts.
Yesterday morning, I bent down (almost horizontal) a couple of the largest branches on my two largest new trees (Li and Shanxi Li). It only took about a day for the 2-4ā of new growth at the tips to curve upwards.
Weather here has been non-stop hot, very little rain.
My jujubes are blooming, but Iām seeing very few fruit forming. My So has been pretty bulletproof the last couple years, but I havenāt noticed a single one on it this yearā¦
I did add compost and mulch around it this past spring and its growth has been good this year, so Iām thinking maybe the little bit of food contained in the compost might have over stimulated its growth at the expense of fruit.
Iām not sure on the hot dry hypothesis, at least not here in Michigan.
Scott
would your wife care for liās and controtedās? Those are the only two varieties we have leftovers from and havenāt consigned.
5-6 lbs altogether i think. Just pay for postage
your trees are the productive jujube outliers, no doubt. You, @tonyOmahaz5, @BobVance, and @Livinginawe are the four posters here many folks could refer to, taking into account your substantial successes in locations considered extreme for jujus.
have to add @c5tiger, and @forestandfarm, and am sure there are more i have missed.
That sounds great, thank you! Iāve sent you a PM with my info.
About 15 trees total. My wife, whoās Korean, dries them, uses them for jujube tea, and gets a lot of requests from her church. Itās my best year for jujubees, even Sugar Cane is loaded. Many Li branches are breaking off due to the weight. Maybe itās due to a mikd winter thus year, or maybe jujubees have to be 4-6 years old to really be productive.
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Re āhot dryā, we have to have irrigation in Dallas during July-August. I have a couple trees that get no irrigation, 8-9 years old; theyāre more productive every year, but they usually taste like cardboard. Irrigation here increases yield and dramatically improves flavor.
I totally agree with you, David, and maybe between the many of us on this forum that feel this way (Scott, Jujubemulberry, and many others) we can help make this a reality. Preserving our natural resources (water, and land and water quality) should be everyoneās highest priority on this planet, but instead, has sadly become a political statement. I am in the process of trying to get my university connected agricultural extension office on board; I encourage others across the country to do the same. They have a responsibility to inform and educate the public. Most of the public has never heard of or tasted a jujube, and if they have it usually is of inferior quality (a fellow at a farmerās market in my area sells a seedling fruit that resembles Silverhill in size and shape but taste much worseā¦if you can believe that).
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there seems to be more than one cultivar that is āofficiallyā named silverhill. The RT series of TVA is also quite dubious. Too many with ambiguous similarities and differences. Also have received couples of the same labels, but are grossly different in fruit shape and taste. Seriously doubt if anyone, including reputable nurseries or even academes, could claim absolute expertise regarding this matter.
of course it isnāt really worth calling the better business bureau for, since-- at this point, the more varieties we have, it increases the chances of getting a decent-quality cultivar which may also do well in oneās growing region. Does not matter what name and what provenance.
could also depend on variety and area with longer growing seasons/plenty of sunshine.
in the desert, li, sugarcane, hj, texas tart, chico, and many others bear prodigiously on the same year they are planted/grafted.
Thatās really funnyā¦considering the reputation of both Silverhil and the BBB.
But I agree totally with expanding the search for ādecent-quality cultivar which may also do well in oneās growing regionā. And you are even more totally right about lack of expertise in this country regarding jujube cultivars or just jujube information in general. I hope our efforts can change all that. I encourage those that have an abundance of fruit or access to an abundance of fruit take desirable varieties to local produce markets (āfarmerās marketsā and such). How is the market scene in your area? Are high quality jujubes showing up? I saw the Youtube video of the grower in California that has 800 jujube treesā¦so the demand sounds like it is increasing (I know Asians figure prominently into this equation).
lol! Yeah, iāve heard unsavory comments and dubious accounts about bbb too.
on a less accusatory note, i just try to give purveyors and experts the benefit of the doubt, and see their potential errors being primarily due to honest mistakes, and not outright deception. Sellers of faux morus nigras, for example.
at this point, we just want more people to be able to grow and enjoy what could prove to be performers. We already know jujus are quite cosmopolitan in hardiness, low-maintenance, and need no pesticides, so all we need to know now are finding ways to get them a bit more productive in frigid michigan or in wet and humid florida.
and more productive in states falling in-between those climate extremes.
or simply find a cultivar that isnāt just cosmopolitan in hardiness, but innately prolific wherever it may be grown.
so far, li and lang are still the only varieties i see being sold in asian stores here. This may have been due to that notion that li must have lang and vice-versa to be productive(li is self-fertile, but lang does seem to need pollen from other cultivarsābut not that this matters, since lang is one of the worst ways of vouching for jujus anyway). And being the only two which have been around the longest time in usa, it follows that those two will be the most readily available stock for whoever might want to start a farm.
i could surmise those 800 trees in cali may just be li and lang.
to complicate things, li, when grown in hot and dry regions, bear not-so-good fruits on its first crops, so the first crops of jujus any newcomer would get to taste would be a sub-prime li, and/or a lang that is way below mediocrity even when at its best.
Couldnāt agree more!
I think we are slowly but surely making progress here, I for one feel like I might soon see some light at the end of the jujube fruit set tunnel.
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Iāve planted 30 or so jujubees in the last 10 years, and not once have I gotten a fruit the first year. I planted a dozen this spring, 8-9 have flowered profusely, I saw 3-4 tiny fruit which fell off.
Sounds like the desert is jujube heaven!
was going to post pics of our extremely productive jujus but now afraid it will not carry much weight since didnāt do much other than abuse or abandonā¦ Quite sure many people here(myself included) would rather see pics of productive trees outside of so cal/phx/las.
incidentally, some of your xu zhou and autumn beauty budwood amazingly survived being grafted right in the middle of our endless >110F days, and now see some flowers!
so just when i thought was done jotting down each and every juju superlative, that additional finding came along. Am sooo running out of space in my logbook 
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