Spinosa seedlings that will hopefully be rootstock one day
4 Likes
Looks like you planted a bunch of those!!! Looking good!
Katy
Curious about the taste/hype of the jujube, seems they have been described as a subpar apple & a subpar date? Doesn’t sound very appealing, iam I missing something?
Honey Jar tasted better than apple to me. I can eat one apple at a setting but 1/2 lb of HJ no problem.
Tony
4 Likes
I agree with Tony. I like jujubes (the better ones like Chico, Honey Jar, Li, SiHong) much better than I like apples. They are also much healthier to eat with vitamins, micronutrients, and antioxidants. Plus they are much easier to grow…at least for my local!
Katy
3 Likes
perhaps yes, but perhaps no. Taste is quite subjective, and depends on the individual’s taste buds. Just as some people are color-blind and can’t appreciate certain colors, it is likely that the same applies to apples and jujubes.
am sure many here will disagree and totally understand if they do, but speaking for myself-- i actually think apples are sub-par jujubes! Crazy right? More crazy is that the only time i will eat apples is winter, spring, and early summer, since our juju trees are not bearing at those times. Of course i could be biased and missing out, since most of the apples(specialty and common ones) have tried were store-bought, and not locally-grown. Have tried the two most-recommended cultivars: anna and dorsett golden as locally-grown, but pale in comparison to sihong, chico,hj, etc. Had to remove the trees as not even worth the sq. footage they were occupying.
and as for dates, i’d say a sihong date is an equal to the best palm dates out there. But i agree that there are more palm dates that are better than jujube dates. HJ and SC are actually two jujus that i like better as dried dates than as fresh fruit, as the complexity of their respective flavors increases drastically. Quite certain though that they’d be better-quality eaten as fresh fruits when grown outside this oven-dry/oven-hot desert(as this thread evidently speaks volumes!).
if you are a fruit-grower, it would be good to try growing jujus, and as many varieties as you can. Just need to identify those that might bear quality fruits and also productive in your locale. Just like apples and pears, certain juju cultivars will bear lower quality fruits or have poor production in certain regions/climates.
and even if you don’t like the fruits, you could always tap it for business purposes. OGW sells grafted HJ’s at 60$ a pop, and sold-out in no time!
3 Likes
I say, it depends on a person. I love the taste and the texture of it.
I can’t get my husband (American) and my daughter (halfsie) to like it. They tried it and that’s the end of it.
3 Likes
forgot to say, a vegas-grown and picked at-its-prime cripps pink apple is superb, but would still rather have jujube if i were asked to pick just one fruit.
1 Like
They’re better than apples.
1 Like
My Honey Jar didn’t make it thru this winter. The rootstock is re-sprouting and I’ll graft HJ again.
While I believe I did the right thing removing the bubble wrap on the inside and the reflective insulation on the outside in March to allow it to get in sync with the weather (and it never got too cold after that) maybe I made a mistake. I highly doubt it though because it was gradual weather all the way till’ spring.
I think I can grow HJ here. Will try again. Had excellent roots from England’s Orchard and Nursery and planted dormant spring 2017.
Dax
3 Likes
Ive been watching this since you mentioned it…it will get supported if it has heavy fruit!!!
Katy
1 Like
Glad I checked around the HJ tree tube a few weeks ago. I had 4-5 large suckers coming up below the graft union. I Cut all those off.
2 Likes
Was mowing today and noticed my Lang leaves were wilted. I looked a little closer and there is a sucker about 15" tall next to it inside the hardware cloth tube. Could that be draining the life out of the Lang or not really?
The tree looked really good last week.
Should i cut the sucker or if the tree is toast let it grow to graft next year?
Dax,
I’ve found it disturbing that your HJ died after a regular winter. I am in zone 6a, formerly 5b. Not much different.
I planted a smakk (1.5 ft tall) HJ in 2016. It fruited the sme year and survived the 2016-2017 winter.
In 2017, I bought a bigger HJ, (3 ft tall) so I dug up the small one and gave it to my friend. She planted it last spring. It has survived this past winter and is still alive and well.
My newer and bigger HJ has survived this past winter well, too. Neither my friend nor I protected our jujubes.
If you look closely at the lower part of the trunk (up to 3 ft from the ground) do you notice any evidence of ambrosia beetles (boreholes and/or “toothpicks” extruding from them)? That’s what made several of my jujubes decline and die suddenly a few years ago. You could remove the sucker, but I doubt that’s what’s causing the tree to wilt. All my jujubes sucker like crazy, and I usually trim them back, but one 15 inch sucker isn’t going to out-compete an established grafted tree.
3 Likes
Unseasonably winter here, Tip. Two straight weeks of minus minus minus peaking twice at -17. Unheard of here. All those days in a row were -8 or -10 or -6 or -12 or -17. It was cold.
Now it’s so dang hot it’s unseasonable. We’re having August weather in May. It’s been in the mid-90’s recently. And weeks ago in the 80’s.
I conclude “I don’t know.”
Dax
2 Likes
It looks like it needs water.
Dax
I’ll check. Thanks for the tip.
Your area was definitely colder.
This past winter, we had a 10 day span of -2, -3, -4, -5 and -9 F. The rest was 0 or above zero temp.
1 Like
My two Jujube never made it. Like yours my rootstock is sprouting.