Not very quickly, at least for me. Their one gallon jujubes take forever to get going. For example, I planted Black Sea in October 2015 (17" tall, 3/16" caliper, per my notes). It was 2020 before it was 6’ tall and ready to produce a few fruit. The other 2 from the same order (Coco and Massandra) also reached roughly that size at about the same point.
As noted by others, the price difference is from the size/type, not the variety (I see other varieties for $60 bare root there). I’ve never gotten a bare root from them, so I don’t know how big it would be. But if you have store credit it is worth a shot.
I would pay more to get something new, but Honey Jar isn’t new, so you should be able to get wood from most jujube growers. In fact, Getting a good sized tree of whatever type and then grafting the variety you want onto it is what I did this past spring.
The last 2 jujubes I got from OGW (Empress Gee and Confetti) was basically me paying $40 each for scionwood. I bet the grafts of each will fruit far before the original trees. But, I was willing to open the wallet for interesting varieties…
I would say that the Black Sea fruit is as good as Honey Jar (high praise). But it has been far less precocious/productive for me, at least so far. After the half dozen fruit last year, it actually took a step back this year and only made 1-2.
Thanks- I’ve been pretty surprised by how well jujubes do at that location. They get almost complete sun, other than a tall thin pine tree in the neighbors yard which blocks a few minutes near dusk. And the street is angled so that water runs down it onto the front lawn and even makes a bit of a river along the side property line during heavy storms. I think jujubes may be different than some other fruit trees. @fruitnut likes to grow his on water deficit to increase brix. And you can have a droopy/stressed looking tree with some incredible fruit. But for jujubes, the best fruit seems to be on strong healthy trees.
Here’s one more variety- when I was passing a tree next to my driveway today, I noticed a single fruit on a September Late graft. Not very productive for me, as I made the graft in 2017 and this is the first time I’ve been able to sample it. Good brix and OK texture (same ballpark as Xu Zhou). It would have to be incredible for me to want to contend with the lack of productivity…
Today, I picked a few more Xu Zhou and was surprised when one registered 32 brix. The ones I picked the other day were in the low-mid 20’s. Maybe I need to amend my rule from “wait until they are all brown” to “wait until they are brown, then wait some more”.
I know I’ve had several varieties at 32 brix, so some may think that is as high as my refractometer goes. 32 is actually as high as my old one went (30 was labeled with 2 marks above it), and I would sometimes max it out on Jujubes. But I recently got another refractometer when I misplaced my old one (I’ll find it someday…I think). This time, it goes up to 90, so I should be covered. It does make it a bit harder to give a precise reading. Instead of 21.5 I may just say 21 now. But, brix can vary from different pars of the same fruit, so there is some inherent uncertainty anyway.
I don’t recall if Englands got the tree from DWN that year or if it was something he grew. I suspect DWN, as it was an XL.