They definitely flower for a while. Mine started a bit over a month ago in mid June and it is still going strong. Just in the last week have I started to see some set. I’m also seeing flowers open up on some of my grafts from this spring. Maybe that is helping with pollination.
I wonder if you could get them to set earlier with a high tunnel. I’ll wait a few years to see what “normal” looks like before I start experimenting with things like that though.
That sounds like a good idea.
Tony
Thanks for the knowledge and experience being shared. Great pictures too. I’ll make some adjustments to my list.
re New Mexico, i have actually corresponded with Shengrui Yao, not sure if you’ve heard of her, but she’s a professor at NMSU and they have tried growing fruit trees in a location named ‘alcalde’ where late frosts threaten the blossoms of the usual drupes and pomes on a yearly basis. Her team obviously got lucky with her on board, when they decided to try juju’s, since professor Yao is from china.
posted this little video snippet to somehow illustrate why jujus will ultimately manage to give you some fruits, should the first blooms of spring get damaged by late frosts.
peaches and apples will only flower on old wood, and only once in spring, so one will need to protect them with heat lamps, or grow them in greenhouses, which are not exactly sustainable or cost-effective at any scale.
That looks a lot like your Li. The contorted jujube’s grown in hot inland areas here (e.g., Ramona CA) are far more twisted.
incidentally, have been sifting through our old laptops to organize all the jpegs of jujus we got to fruit the past five years, . This was labeled as don polenski, and basing on the date the picture was shot and maturity of the fruit at the time, it seems to be a mid-season variety. We probably still have it growing on our trees, but never really bothered propagating/replacing the tags with durable labels as there have been better cultivars
I tracked first ripening times of many of my jujubes this year. Here’s what I wrote down:
8-9 Black Sea
8-11 Sugar Cane
8-13 Autumn Beauty
8-15 Massandra
8-18 Coco
8-21 Lang
8-22 Shui Men
8-23 SiHong
8-23 Honey Jar
8-23 Ant Admire
8-23 Orange Beauty
8-28 Jin
8-29 Porterville
9-1 Li
9-4 Park
9-6 Sherwood
9-16 Kumme
I had more after that but got tired of writing them down.
that’s a strong list!
Second!
Wish you’d kept it up- then I would know what won’t ripen for me… 
Actually, it looks like you are about a month ahead of me- do you happen to know when the last cultivars started ripening? If any started in it was in October for you, they may be a bit late for me. I was still picking some through most of October, but November could be iffy. I’m not sure how well the trees would hold the fruit, as they drop their leaves pretty quickly after a hard frost.
Glad to see Black Sea as a very early and that you liked the fruit (from the other thread). I added one this spring, though it is still very small. One Green World sent out 3 small trees to me (Black Sea, Massandra, and Coco).
onegreenworld and rollingriver are the two nurseries which ship tiny specimens. Burntridge always has thicker caliper trees and often 3-5 ft tall, for about the same price and shipping cost.
of course, in the end, cultivar availability rules, as black sea, autumn beauty etc are not always available as grafted stock
Wow, thanks for the list. Do you recall what some of your favorites are? I’ve been finding it difficult to find rootstocks. Several attempts to produce my own have failed. It looks like I’ll finally be successful growing rootstocks from seed. Keeping my fingers crossed.
I can tell you that the last one to ripen was Winter Delight in early to mid-October and it’s almost always the last. When I give all of these dates, that was the date when the first fruit ripened. Fruits were still ripening in late November for WD. Next to last was Topeka which is hard to believe because it’s from Topeka Kansas. I still have Topeka fruits on the tree. There’s always some variation in these dates from year to year though.
My favorites differ from year to year in part because my tastes sometimes change but also because flavors in jujubes seem to change based on different weather conditions. This year my favorites were Black Sea, Autumn Beauty, Chico, Honey Jar, China Yellow, Orange Beauty and Li. Most years Li would not make the list but for some reason they were really tasty this year. Shanxi Li and GA866 are usually on the list but this year they were not at their peak.
That’s an impressive collection! Where did you get the Orange Beauty, China Yellow, & Park varieties? Those are new to me. Thanks,
Orange Beauty is an open pollinated seedling I grew out and named. It has very pretty fruit and very nice flavor. I got China Yellow (also China Orange) and Park from Roger Meyer.I have about 10 jujube trees in the ground and about 50 in pots.
sent you a pm regarding che suckers, and also interested in buying budwood/suckers from your home-bred seedlings. Preferably suckers. You probably already noticed, this poster has a bad case of “jujube hoard-itis”
I have two seedlings you might want wood from - Orange Beauty has very nice fruit although I don’t yet know how productive the tree is going to be. Sweet-Tart on the other hand is possibly the most productive jujube tree I have ever seen. The fruit is very tart and very sweet at the same time compared to Chico which is mildly sweet and mildly tart. Sweet-Tart is very late, my latest tree other than Winter Delight. I don’t have all of Roger Meyer’s trees but I have most of them. Between me and Clifford England I think we have all of them except the Russian trees. Oddly enough I used to have one of the Russians but got rid of it after one season because I didn’t like the fruit. I should have waited and seen how the fruit tasted in other years but I was still pretty new to jujubes back then.
we’re seriously into any bud wood you have which you think are novel, especially your home-bred ones.
there are three have come across who’ve been happy with their seedlings-- Cliff England, this gentleman from texas(who i’ve lost contact with), and you.
you could insinuate even just a few of those into the che’s package and will be more than happy to renumerate
I’ll include their wood too
