Jujube fruit set if you don't have hot dry summers

I am putting a few jujubes in the front orchard with good sun and will be able to compare. You are in a better spot though, Las Vegas is hot and dry just like jujubes like. Cliff also was commenting on consistently low fruit set in Kentucky and his trees get sun all day.

good luck and keep us posted! Quite confident youā€™ll have better success with more sun.
not sure how moist your soil is, but i also feel jujus do better when allowed to dry out a bit in between waterings(which is a given where am at)

I too had high hopes for Jujube, but so far have been very disappointed. My 10 year old Li produced a few fruit itā€™s first several seasons, but set fewer and fewer every year, and this year only managed a couple fruit that only grew to about 1" in size. My 8 year old Ga-866 has produced even fewer. The only variety that has been producing fairly well here in Gainesville, Florida has been Silverhill (Tiger Tooth). All have good growth (thanks to Milorganite) and flower profusely, with many pollinating insects. One experiment I plan on trying next season is to stop ants from climbing up the trunks of a couple trees. I generally regard ants as being beneficial but I am wondering if they are somehow affecting fruit set, as the trees become covered with ants during bloom (by the way, I had an Ant Admirer variety that had a huge ant colony at its base that grew twice as fast as two other nearby varieties planted at the same time). Even though our summers here are very wet, our springs (during bloom) are usually dry. All my trees have nearly full sun.
I wish someone could figure this problem out. Please donā€™t give up on this incredible plant: Needs little water, little fertilization, no apparent pests, and few diseases!

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My trees are not large yet but no fruit this year. For our area it has been extremely hot and dry but I have watered the trees, also in full sun.

I did find this on pollination
Jujube pollination

I have picked some jujube fruits each year at a very large tree in Dallas area. The tree is just a single tree, covering the entire backyard of a residence. I believe it is taller than a 2 story house. We do not know the variety, probably planted in 1960s.

I canā€™t tell with my new trees. They are still small.

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i agree!
re: silverhill, your accounts are the exact same accounts by most other folks i see online, about its humidity tolerance, and being just as fruitful there as it is fruitful elsewhere.

i donā€™t know much about the soil and weather conditions in Gainesville other than what you mentioned, but as for your other jujuā€™s, especially your 10 yr old li, is it growing on soil that never gets the chance to somewhat dry out? Jujubeā€™s seem to be like watermelons; which need temporary breaks from having wet feet. I grow jujuā€™s in bone-dry las vegas, and ā€˜drying out in between wateringsā€™ is a fact-of-life here which kills almost all other fruit trees, but is what seems to make our jujube;s very fruitful.

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I feel we are already making progress on this fruiting issue by discussing itā€¦ I have seen almost no discussion of the challenges of fruiting jujubes in some climates, or which varieties fare better on that front (I have seen bits and pieces, just very little overall). My hope is a few good varieties will emerge, thats all we need. I have seen jujubes fruit well, Tsao for me often produced big loads.

@Livinginawe, I saw the same effect as you did of trees producing well in the beginning but stopping production as they matured. My Honey Jar produced well for 3-4 years but has not had a full crop for 3-4 years.

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Has anyones try to hand pollinate them with a small paint brush? I may try to do hand pollinate them in a couple of weeks and to see any improvement on fruits set.

Tony

Iā€™d rather eat cardboard than hand pollinate jujube :stuck_out_tongue: More seriously I think youā€™ll have issues gathering pollen as they are wind pollinated. And those flowers are so small and so many. Also how would you tell which flowers are shedding and which receptive?

flowers are receptive when the central area is moist with what appears to be nectar. It is the strategy of flowers across-the-board in announcing to bees, flies, and ants that it is ā€˜readyā€™.

one will probably need magnifying glasses, btw.

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Thanks for the input. Please add mustard to my cardboard!!!

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lol!. I have had jujubeā€™s bought from asian stores which do taste like cardboard. Definitely the reason people are put off, which is quite sad, considering its nutritive and antioxidant value.
grafted jujuā€™s will try to bear fruit at 6 inches tall, and will do so in the most unfavorable, if not hostile conditions, so yes, there might be some fruits, but the fruits may not be optimal.
when grown in conditions favorable to them(which to me is quite mysterious), many varieties are quite addictive!

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Thank you for your reply. All articles on the Chinese Jujube do seem to point to a dry climate. I should be happy with my producing Silverhill trees and forget the rest. I hear they make good firewood.

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youā€™re welcome, and i hope you donā€™t give up on them yet.
but if at some point youā€™re not happy with your trees, the lumber is awesome if you like woodworking. Easily up there for being the strongest, hardest, and most durable of lumber that one could obtain from a fruit tree.
the wood grain has a striking figure, similar to asian teak.

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Iā€™m tempted to do this- I have a So and Sugar Cane which are both flowering now. They are on opposite sides of the house, so they may not naturally get any pollination. Maybe Iā€™ll just do a couple branches on each and mark them.

Eventually I should be in a pretty good state for pollination due to the multi-grafts. A 20 variety tree should take pollination out of the list of problems. If there is poor set at that point, it could come down to temp, humidity, etc.

Bob
you and I will do this experiment and We will post the results in the fall.

Tony

It has been suggested to me that ants do a lot of pollination for Jujube even though they are supposed to be wind pollinated. I constantly find ants crawling on mine during bloom. The ants donā€™t seem to adversely affect the trees that I can tell.

I see ants on my flowers.

temp is probably the huge factor, as the sugarcane and contorted jujuā€™s i have in this mojave desert are quite heavy with fruits at this time. I could surmise the best thing to do in cooler regions is to plant them out in the open, with no bigger trees or structures shading them, since they seem to really love the heat and arid conditions. And donā€™t irrigate unless the leaves start getting droopy!

the species of bees we have in north america seem not interested in juju flowers. It is the asian honeybee which does most of the pollination in asia and in the middle east(where jujube honey is quite popular). In las vegas, ants, beetles and more strangely, wasps are the most active pollinators. I have >25 trees, and the past 3 years never seen bees doing the job,
hereā€™s my footage of an acrobatic wasp-like critter which visits our jujus quite often
http://forum.vpaaz.org/video/acrobatic-pollenizer