li, contorted, and wild rootstoc are three jujus that are tried and tested in our area as ‘self-fertile’.
contorted will bear abundant quality fruits, but will not produce seeds when flowers are bagged. .
li will also bear abundantly good fruits, but in our area, seems unable to produce seeds when bagged, and not able to produce seeds even when open pollinated by 50+ cultivars around.
jujus are still prohibitively expensive, so understand your qualms, but there are plenty folks in this forum/gardenweb/ etc who’d be more than happy to share with you!
if you are handy with grafting, you could buy rootstock seed and just ask for budwood from members here next year. You could also buy bareroot rootstock from rolling rivernursery being sold for 15$ if you want a bit of a head start.
most bare-root jujus are 2-in-1, being grafted on wild cultivars, so if worried about pollen, you could just let the roostock grow a tiny amount, just enough to produce a few flowers.
if you’re worried about graft failure(by letting the rootstoc grow), you could just let your tree be lonely for a year. If it produces fruit on its first year(jujus are generally precocious, bearing fruits on first year), then you’ve independently proved it being self-fertile, and if not, you’d already have let it grown big enough to receive a few grafts for its next season.
apart from university of new mexico, england’s probably has the widest selection of jujus in north america, and they sell budwood too at reasonable prices.
burntridgenursery does not offer bud wood, but their trees are relatively affordable considering the caliper sizes. I agree with @BobVance though that 45$ is still a good price for edible landscaping’s and jfae’s trees, taking into account their trees’ sizes!
Have you ever eaten a Sugarcane jujube? The ones I’ve grown have seriously reminded me of eating sugarcane. Doesn’t everyone prefer fruit that tastes like more than just plain sugar? I like Sugarcane jujubes (although I think I prefer a good Li – I’ve only tasted 4 jujube varieties total), but I don’t necessarily prefer them to other fruits that have half the brix. Other fruits (and even one of my other jujube varieties, at least early in its ripening season) would almost always benefit from at least a little more sweetness, but my Sugarcane jujubes have all had over-the-top sweetness that just doesn’t hardly compare to other fruits.
I like JFaE, but I think ToA and DWN trees are even better/bigger.
For my area, I would amend that to “jujus are generally precocious, flowering the first year and occasionally bearing fruits”. I planted 16 trees last year and exactly 1 produced exactly 1 fruit. I think it was year 3 before So started producing a bit.
Most of the ~20 grafts on the So didn’t produce anything in year 1 or 2. The Honey Jar graft producing right away in the grafting year was exceptional. Two others (Shanxi Li and a Chinese variety) produced 1-3 in the 2nd year. But there are plenty on there that haven’t grown much or produced. Maybe it was bad graft placement or bad grafts, though I usually feel that any graft that lives was a good one
I think that compared to most fruit trees, jujubes are pretty precocious. But saying they fruit immediately will lead to disappointment. Maybe in situations where they get more heat/sun they can turn the blossoms into fruit more quickly.
Burnt Ridge is a decent trade-off in price vs size. All the places I’ve seen which are as cheap as they are (and some places more expensive) send much smaller trees.
It’s made even worse in that you need to dedicate a full sun location, something which is in short supply in many backyards. If you give it less, it will produce almost no fruit, even when it is older and it will really be wasted space. But, I can say that when I bring the fruit (So/Contorted) into work, everyone seemed to like it. Some people even remembered and periodically asked me the next year about when I would bring more in.
I got lucky that my HC, SC and Shanxi li produced the same year they were planted. They do get the sunniest place in the whole yard from 9 am until sunset.
I think people will like sweet, crunchy, juicy jujubes. They may not like some varieties that are more spongy in texture and on a drier side. For new jujube growers, starting with HJ and SC would be the best bet. There definitely are other tastier varieties but those are so hard to get a hold of.
No, I’ve never tasted a sugarcane jujube or any other but I’m glad to hear it’s so sweet since that’s my main goal. I agree that everyone prefers a fruit that tastes like more than just plain sugar, but I haven’t ever had a fruit that tasted like plain sugar, that’s why I said I don’t quite understand people who say they don’t want that (a fruit with no other taste than sweetness). I’ve never encountered one- though perhaps sugarcane jujube is it. So that’s why I say my goal is focused almost solely on sweetness- because in my limited experience some other flavor will also be present in all cased. Certainly some of those secondary flavors are much more pronounced. Anyway, tastes are so subjective its hard to communicate about all this. I only know that for me-and I feel like I differ from many in this regard- it is a very simple formula: The sweeter a fruit, the higher it ranks on my favorite fruit list. All that being said, I’m not sure brix always equals the TASTE of sweetness, but thats a whole other story that would be even harder to describe/explain.
was admittedly biased since we grow ours in the desert
understandably the longer ‘gestation period’ in CT is due to a latitude issue. Hopefully WV gets longer overall daylight hrs for a quicker turnover
here, our rootstock are well-stocked from the previous long growing seasons, and the early leafing out of spring grafts and late loss of foliage due to late winters.
Roger Meyers(of sunny southern cali)were generally more precocious than those jujus we got from WA/OR, even though those jujus from WA/OR were bigger.[quote=“mamuang, post:65, topic:9740”]
my HC, SC and Shanxi li produced the same year they were planted. They do get the sunniest place in the whole yard from 9 am until sunset.
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that sunny spot surely made your trees feel a ‘sense of surplus’, and really encouraging that one could get them to fruit on the same year of planting in massachusetts’ conditions.
if it is sugar you’re looking for, then sugarcane and hj would be it! While i agree with many who say that sc and hj are super sweet but not flavorful, i think it is mainly because they are referring to them when eaten as fresh fruits. Once they turn fully tan/red, and close to getting wrinkly, the flavor intensifies, much like plums incredibly get richly flavored when transformed into prunes. And when wrinkly, sc and hj dates are as sweet as molasses, with apple overtones!
I like them as fresh fruit- dried, or partially dried are better than nothing, but I’d prefer fresh and crunchy. While they may not be over-the-top flavorful, they have plenty of flavor to me.
I agree with you- I don’t think I’ve found anything that didn’t have some flavor to it. Except maybe if it wasn’t ripe, in which case I’ve seen fruits which are bland. But those also have low brix. I don’t think I’ve ever found a high-brix bland fruit. The most you might find is a low-acid nectarine, which is still plenty good at high brix (and boring at low brix).
There was probably some luck in it, but I think you helped yourself with placement. I’m guessing you also mulched well and made sure they never dried out during the hot part of the summer. The amount of water mine got depended on how far they were planted from the hose…
I think I missed this question on my first pass…That is another reason I really like jujubes. I lost a lot of fruit last summer to the critters. Except jujubes. I didn’t notice any loss there, when pears (especially Asian ones), apples, and peaches were stripped from the trees.
I’ve been careful to not leave any fruit on the ground or drop the pits after eating them. At some point, I’m sure the animals will figure out what they are missing, but I don’t want to do anything to speed the process along.
and that is a most welcome consideration especially for folks with similar growing conditions.
the quality of fruits definitely vary from region to region.
As a slightly OT aside, if you haven’t picked up Jujubemulberry’s book on jujubes and you grow a number of them, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. At one point, I grew 6 different varieties at my home in Phoenix and I thought I knew everything about them – boy was I wrong. Rafael’s book is a great complement to Roger Meyer’s book, especially if you live in the West.
Nothing eats my jujubes except an occasional bird. I don’t know why everything else ignores them (except occasionally ants and a few other insects), but perhaps it’s because they are brown when ripe.
Hey Raf- You have never, ever in any way tried to use this site to promote or peddle your book, and even seem reluctant to push it even when ask about it. In this day and age where many people troll related forums just to push some product or company they have, I find your Laissez-faire approach to be both respectful and admirable, so thanks for that.
But in this case I am asking you and trying to help, so I can’t fathom anyone would mind you answering. I think I’m going to buy a copy of your book. What I am wondering is if there is way that I can buy the book that would benefit you more. For example, do you have your own website, for example, where you sell it and get a bigger percentage or where it will help ratings more or whatever? Just trying to help out a little if it matters.
thanks for the kind words @at120 ! [quote=“thecityman, post:72, topic:9740”]
I think I’m going to buy a copy of your book.
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there’s really no need to buy it since anyone could just start a thread with one’s queries and just tag me and other juju enthusiasts to answer. Or just pm me. we will respond as soon as we can. We currently have plenty of downtime
also, that book was written for people with extra funds( i admit–the price makes me cringe!), my intent was to publish it with my daughter just so could get her into writing books, and so happens that the for-profit approach is a very effective way to encourage people, haha
moreover, just because somebody wrote a book does not make him/her an expert. We have been growing all manner of fruits for decades, but our experience may differ from others’, so categorically indicated there that those are our observations and analyses, and that we are not claiming expertise
We do claim obsession
at any rate, we are currently working on the electronic kindle version to drastically lower the price. Splitting the book would also help reduce the cost. so planning to cut the book into two-- a grafting edition, and a cultivar edition to cater to folks who might be interested in one but not the other. ‘Print-on-demand’ is quite expensive, especially if with hundreds of color photographs.
the brownish color does help. Jujus also have ‘chitinase’, an enzyme which digests chitin, which perhaps also explains why fruits and leaves are not prone to fungal and insect attack.
WOW! My Honey Jar and Sugar Cane Jujubes already arrived, and I’m pretty happy. They are 100% dormant. The Honey Jar is one of the largest caliper trees I have EVER bought bare root. It seems to have a very large ball of roots but I won’t know until I get them hope and unwrapped. The sugarcane is a lot smaller in both calipar and height, but seems quite healthy. Also, even though they told me these would both be bare root, it is actually a potted plant.
Anyway, I’m very happy with the size and health of both these guys. They were delivered LAST FRIDAY the first time but not until my office was closed for the day. So EL had them to me within just a few days of my order.
Anyway, I’m very happy to finally be getting into the world of jujubes. Thanks for everyone’s help.
Congrats. They look so good. If I were to have sunny space, I’d order from them. I’ve found that it leafed out quite late, like persimmon. Maybe, it was their first year in the ground.
How do Jujubes tolerate wetness. I have a spot that catches driveway runoff during rains and stays fairly damp up through spring. It gets full sun all day long.
Looks like I got lucky getting those when I did. BTW…the Honey Jar was grown by L.E. Cook. I thought that was interesting. I thought EL grew their own trees.
