Thanks for the replies. This is the second year, although I only had 2 last year. I will give it another year to see if the size improves, especially since I can’t find any LI right now online. These are about a third the size of grapes. I am wondering if the rootstock somehow took over.
That sounds like rootstock, I had that on one of my jujubes. They are particularly prone to sprout below graft or from roots so its very easy to have that happen.
Jujus and Bob. V.,
I decided to crack open the Honey Jar seed that was crossed by the wild Jujube and the seeds looked viable. I plan to grow them out and see if I can come up with another variety.
Tony
1 Like
keep us posted! We will be cracking hundreds of pits next spring, and hoping to get at least one cultivar(other than spinosa) to germinate.
I’ve since found larger ones, both from my tree (2.5 x 2.7 x 3.0) and Chinatown Li’s (4.7 x 4.7 x 5.0). Here’s a pic with 2 average sized and one small So vs 2 large (though not the largest) Li:
In another thread, I mentioned that So has ripened around 9/9 for me in the past. I checked my notes again and both years were 9/19, not 9/9. This year, I have a bigger crop, so I’ve been able to snack on 1-4 per day for the last week. The large majority are yet to ripen though.
The two ripe ones at the top are in the above pic.
3 Likes
I was looking over the tree and found the ZHD graft. It had a single fruit on it, which has just reached 70% brown (normally, just what I shoot for).
Here is a pic of it, with some So for comparison.
This year, Honey Jar has been a level above the So for fresh eating. So is at least 1, maybe 2 levels above the ZHD. It was very dense and dry, with only mild sweetness. Maybe next time I’ll see if I can get it to dry.
One other note- my So weren’t as good this year as last. Then, we had a day of rain last week. The fruit I picked in the day or two after the rain were much crisper and juicier- very tasty. I think I need to irrigate when they get close to ripe if we go a while without rain.
4 Likes
I really enjoy seeing these pictures. Lets me know what to look for!
Katy
Thanks for the report on ZHD. I just looked at mine and one was getting ripe (not quite half brown) and I tried it. It was no Honey Jar but I did eat the whole thing. One other new jujube had a fruit on it and it was like sawdust (Huping?), it was a spitter.
Here is a picture of my old stand with too little light. I am just using it to park varieties on now. You can see a few green ZHD if you look closely.
2 Likes
Scott,
Just curious, how old are those trees? They look quite large.
And what is the spacing? Hard to say from this angle, but it looks like a zig-zag row was used to get tighter spacing.
It was definitely edible and didn’t taste bad- just pretty dry. I guess that most of the varieties which have fruited for me have been pretty good, given that I haven’t run into any spitters yet- or I don’t have a problem with eating sweet sawdust…
your trees look healthy, but seem to be starved of sunlight in your region, considering your long winters and early autumns
btw, although many of our trees are spaced quite tightly too, it is probably crucial that we have longer summers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Bq6bLwU8E
Those trees are in a tight zig-zag row, its something like 2’ from trunk to trunk in a zig-zag. A few years after doing these zig-zags I concluded they were a bad idea unless they were really far apart - I have some zig-zags with 5’ between trunks and thats about the minimum you want to do this way. The furthest to the right tree is Honey Jar, I cleared out several trees from around it but it is still not fruiting and I think light is the main problem. This picture I shot around 5PM and you can see how there is little sun - from 2PM or so it is shaded.
@mamuang, these trees were planted in 2004 or so. Most of them have been topworked.
There are parts of my So which get shade from 2 or 3pm on at this time of year, yet still have a partial load of fruit. I think the key may be that they get much more sun during the summer when the fruit is setting. It is a low roof (1 story addition) which shades them in the afternoon, so the sun is high enough in June/July to hit until 5pm or a bit later.
Where you are standing for the pic, or to your right a bit must have some pretty big trees- it looks like several trunks angle away.
Longer summers probably don’t hurt, but I bet that a steady stream of days without many clouds and a stronger sun (lower latitude by a bit) makes a bigger difference. It isn’t like Scott has a ton of jujubes that don’t ripen- they don’t set in the first place.
I’ve been planting mine in rows of pretty close distances too, about 5’. But, I’ve been picking the sunniest spots I can find, most close to full sun, give or take an hour at the beginning/end.
we get 300+ days of sunny weather/yr, and many of those during summer. No doubt it helps with photosynthesis, considering that some of our trees are just 3’ apart.
Scott,
My honey Jar, a tiny stick from Burnt Ridge, planted in May this year had a few fruit. I picked all off but one. This tree gets sun from 9 am -5 pm.
I am amazed your tree has not produced in all these years. It is hard for me to believe sun light is that crucial to jujube’s fruit production!!!
It produced for several years but in the last few years has produced almost nothing. This is not uncommon with jujubes, I think there are a few posts about this in the pile of 400 or so above. I have a new graft I made this spring and it has three fruits on it.
I just found out last week that the house across the street blocks the evening sun from this tree. I am wondering how I could remove the house 
1 Like
much, much too dark for jujubee’s!
My guess would be that when they are young, there is almost no self-shading. Then, as they get bigger, parts of the tree shade other parts of the tree at various points in the day and then none of it gets enough sun to set fruit.
That is the problem with living in a populated area. I have the same issue- you can pay to cut down a neighbors trees (preferably with permission), but they will rarely agree to let you take down their house 
I’m starting to get more than the few initial fruit ripening now. Here was this morning’s haul. Until today, I was getting ~6 per day for the last 3-4 days.
It is supposed to be pretty cloudy and rainy for the next few days (8 of the next 9) and I’m interested in how the trees will handle it. I’m hoping that there is already plenty of sugar (24 vs 28 wouldn’t be all that noticeable…) and this will just add juice and crispness (and maybe a bit of cracking).
2 Likes