Given that some of the Jujube threads have reached thousands of posts, I thought that it might be easier to group 2021 results in one place. I’m going to start with some pics/reports from the last few days, but may come back and add some from earlier in the season.
Shanxi Li has been far better that in past years. The 2 trees were planted in 2016, so maybe it is getting better with age, as Castanea suggested it would.
Bok Jo is not only very productive, it gets quite sweet and has pretty good texture (not as good as Honey Jar, but only a few are even close…).
The Tae Sang Wang is pretty large, with an interesting texture. It stands out as the most tender, though it isn’t extremely crisp or crunchy (moderate on both counts).
Unlike some of the early season So, these recent ones are quite crunchy, with more juice to them than everything on the plate other than Honey Jar.
For the most part, all of the above jujubes were pretty good. The massive Dae Sol Jo was probably the worst, but I remember having better ones this fall. Maybe this one was just a bit under-sweet due to its extreme size (> 1.6 oz).
Xu Zhou:
I really need to remember to let Xu Zhou get completely dark before picking it. Some of the ones in my hand were 27 brix, while the less ripe one was 22 brix. The texture is only middle-of-the-road, so they really need to be high brix to be tasty (at least for me).
While they crack badly in some years, these have only a few minor cosmetic cracks.
While I picked the vast majority of So from my most mature tree a while ago, the ones on a younger tree (right next to my mailbox) are just about to ripen.
I visited a couple of other sites (rental properties) today and there were a lot of 2nd crop Sugar Canes. The first batch was ripe about a month ago and now the 2nd (larger) crop is starting.
This is the same tree which was leaning last month, prompting me to add a 2nd support post. But, the tree was too tall, as I was only able to support it up to about 8’. So, the top 4+ feet acted like a pendant branch. Of course, since I didn’t have a ladder, I would pull down on it to reach the ripe fruit. It went well until I pulled down a bit too hard and snapped it. Rather than having it hang on the rest of the tree, I cut it off. I brought it home, as I didn’t have enough containers with me. It turned out to have another 3+ lbs of fruit.
Even the fully dark Sugar Cane are a bit low-sugar to me this year (in past years they were good), but my wife thought that these less ripe ones were good. Sugar Cane has good texture. Similar juiciness to Honey Jar, with a lighter crisp bite.
Here are Li from 2 different sites. Neither was all that great, but the ones from the first pic were better than the 2nd. The better ones came from the same site as the above Sugar Cane.
I think I’ve discovered a mislabeled tree. One of the 2 Autumn Beauties from JFaE has very small, dry fruit.
The fruit really reminded me of the fruit I’ve gotten from a rootstock sucker. As it happened, I went to a property where I had grown out the sucker (only the top half is grafted to something else), so I was able to get some fruit to compare.
They look pretty similar to me. Taste (moderately sweet with some tart), texture (tough and not crisp), and pit also look similar. Interestingly, this sucker was from a tree I got from JFaE in 2011. I’m wondering if this rootstock has been used for a bunch of their tree and the graft never took on the Autumn Beauty. The other Autumn Beauty tree (from the same order) has large fruit. I’m going to take a look at it and compare the thorns to see if they match.
