So I decided to look at some recipes and this one sounds wild. I have an abundance of fig and apples each fall and hopefully soon lots of jujube, so this kind of chutney would be a good way to use some of my surplus.
https://thepineapplechef.com/en/recipe-en/apple-fig-jujube-chutney/
No, I think it would cost me too much in energy, at least the way I have been drying them using a dehydrator. It’s a different story in dry sunny places like CA, where they can just leave them out to dry.
As it is, the only ones I dry are when they crack in the rain. And even then, if I pick them right away and I or the family can eat them in a day or so, we do that, since they are completely fine initially. Any extra cracked ones get dried, as they won’t keep.
Also, to an average person, the dried ones will be much less appealing than the fresh, crisp ones. Maybe there is a demand in the Asian community for dried as well as fresh, but it would be a much lower level of demand. But most people can be sold on a fruit that can be described as “tastes like an apple, but twice as sweet and with a pit like a cherry instead of a core.”
I haven’t really done any processing with jujubes, other than drying some.
I’m hoping the jujube improve for me the way honey berries have. The first year crop of honey berries was bland, and I thought growing them would turn out as a bust. Well this year the honey berry crop has come in and they are quite good. I’m hoping my jujube taste better this year too. I was underwhelmed with them last fall. Which is a bummer, because the reason I got a couple jujube trees was after having a dried one from the Asian grocery. I thought it tasted like brown sugar. We have the climate to dry them outside here, yet the ones from my tree last year didn’t measure up to that first one I had a few years ago. Even the hard ones tasted plain. Maybe I just have the wrong cultivars. I will definitely be grating some of the cultivars you and an other person suggested to see if those taste better for me.
Plant a few Honey Jar and Sugarcane then you will get instant gratification when the fruited.
Tony
Make sure they are at least half brown when you pick them. Picked green/yellow they can be pretty bland/iffy, depending on variety. Some like Honey Jar and Dong are pretty good even with only a hint of brown, but a lot of them need a good amount of it.
It can help to quantify things by measuring the brix. Then you can tell if there is really a problem with the fruit, or if it is just a personal taste thing. Refractometers are pretty cheap on amazon.
Here’s one for $17:
https://www.amazon.com/Refractometer-V-Resourcing-Portable-Measurement-Beverages/dp/B0722K7D8W/
It measures 0-90 brix. There are a lot which measure up to 30-35 brix which would be fine for most fruit enthusiasts. The reason I suggest 0-90 is that jujubes can max out the other refractometers. While most are in the 20’s, I’ve have jujubes top 40 brix before.
Of course, if yours are bland, there’s a decent chance they are only in the teens…
And yes, I agree with Tony- those are clearly the two best (crisp, sweet, etc) commonly available jujube varieties, at least for my area.
I’ll make those the two cultivars I gray onto one of the rootstocks next spring.
I’ve been wanting to get a birx meter for a while. I should just go ahead and do it finally.
I doubt it’s a taste aversion. I’ll eat nearly anything and like it. So I’ll make sure to carefully monitor the fruit this summer to ensure I pick at optimal time. Both trees have put on phenomenal growth this spring so far. I really enjoyed the dried jujube I had from the Asian market.
I have a question for you about pruning. If you don’t mind sharing, what is your pruning schedule and how much do you remove in an average year?
When they are young, I don’t do much. When they are as tall as I want them, I let them grow in the spring, then cut off most of the new growth (at least at the top) once they start flowering. I found, completely by accident, that when I didn’t prune them, they would often keep growing and not set much fruit. But when you cut them off at a side-branch, they basically stop growing at that spot for at least a year or more. That lets the tree put the energy into setting fruit.
So, I go around in mid-late June (here) and prune. During the winter, I may remove an occasional damaged branch or a big one which is causing self-shading.
This is a good article on jujube pruning from Prof Yao. In particular, pay attention to then “one cut stops, two cuts sprouts” part, which makes jujubes a bit different than other fruit trees.
When I did the search to post the link I noticed some digital ones. I haven’t used them before, but may give one a try at some point. One annoying thing about the kind you look through is that you need to get enough juice on it, and then when looking through it I’ve noticed some lights work better than others. Daylight works pretty well, as does florescent lights. But LED is hit or miss. But overall, it is a great thing to be able to quantify your fruit.
I have a couple here in New Mexico, but I have no clue what the varieties are. The fruit shape/size is different and the trees themselves are different. One of them grew some odd fruit last year. They were huge, almost round, and bumpy. The same tree grew a sucker that is about 4 ft tall in less than a year and is already flowering and trying to set fruit. The only pests I’ve ever noticed were ants, and I love watching the gray fox climb the trees for the fruit.
if you post pictures of the juju fruits many members here can chime in and help identify.
porterville and redlands are the 2 cultivars i could recall as bumpy. Chico gets bumpy too but it is typically pumpkin shaped.
btw, not sure where in new mexico you are orcharding, and maybe you are aware of it already, but if not, you might want to check out NMSU, which specializes on jujubes with at least 2 field programs at different locations
Do jujube sucker abundantly? I seem to remember reading that somewhere. So it should be fairly simple to get many rootstocks.
Does anyone on this thread have experience air layering jujube?
jujus being generally pest-free and disease-free, nurseries don’t need to be particular with what rootstock to use, and often just use suckers or random seedlings from wild-type jujus since many wild-types are prodigious seed producers and have a tendency to sucker.
while this is the most efficient and cost-effective way of propagating grafted specimens, we are hoping that this practice will be soon be replaced with selling self-rooted desirable cultivars, or replaced with desirable cultivars grafted to self-rooted desirable cultivars. This way any sucker would produce desirable fruit-- and won’t be as thorny(as wild-types),and all need do is dig them up and propagate by root cuttings/suckers.
below is our over-engineered take on airlyering, propagation via cuttings etc
Thanks for sharing your insights. I’m new to jujubes and really looking forward to them.
I’m hopeful that they will do well here in the Oklahoma heat, clay soil, and bugs!
it will be fine there am sure! Just needs be planted at the part of yard which gets longest hours of direct sun.
not sure if you’ve seen our thread below re: jujubes. It has been dormant for some time but will be posting updates once have something new to share 