really amazing that many jujus are precocious(fruiting on the same year grafted, even with the tiniest budwood), and considering they have the longest productive lifespans among deciduous fruit trees . And hj seems to be the most precocious of the bunch.
another thing about hj’s is that their fruits on the first year often represent the taste of fruits harvested from a mature tree, even though fruit size may be tinier than those from mature trees. Here’s one of our tiny but productive hj “tree” from years ago. The weeds are taller
am sure Bob will have a more accurate verdict, but i should have some ideas within a ~couple of weeks. The budwood Bob gave me last June ‘rushed’ themselves to produce a few clumps of fruit, but evidently a bit late in the season due to the recent grafting, so trying to have them ripen as long as they can on the tree before fall gets nippy. And hoping the prolonged warm spell here in the southwest extends further into at least mid-nov.
it actually seems early, or at the most a mid-season, considerating that grafted them very late, and the budwood used had yet to produce fruiting laterals. And it was already sizzling with almost zero humidity when grafted them, which may have hindered growth/fruit maturity.
btw, not sure if you’ve seen my other post about autumn beauty being offered by rollingriver, and they only have 7 in stock as i type this…
and if you’re interested in obtaining older seedlings, this nursery is actually selling them too, for 15$ a pop. May well be the first nursery to offer this!
Sometimes I think Autumn is the best tasting one. Crisp. Similar to Winter Delight & Sherwood. Not as sweet as Honey Jar but still very sweet.Its only drawback is it took a long time to start bearing & then only modestly, like Sherwood
a dozen in year 6, a modest crop year 7. Which is a year faster than Sherwood. GA866 has been a complete dud.
The Autumn Beauty was in a pretty good location, perhaps it needed more water as its at my office with drip irrigation under the grass; but it had plenty of sun. I planted another one last April, maybe it’ll do better.
Several Texas posters have commented how slow Sherwood is here. But in CA & FL, it seems to bear quickly.
I’ve had Contorted, Honey Jar, Sugar Cane, Li, Winter Delight, Redland 4 have at least a few fruit year 2.
Could be Li- that seems to be the most common commercial variety from CA. The one you have is much riper than the ones my wife got in Chinatown. Those were very large and spongy, but fairly inexpensive at $1-2 per pound. They also sold more expensive “sweet” jujubes at $4-5 per pound which weren’t spongy (firm, not crisp like mine) and sweeter, though more normal sized.
Here’s a pic of 2 from Chinatown next to a few from my tree. The largest of them was roughly 2 inches long and wide, almost apple sized.
A sucker came up from a small 12 inch high LI in a pot in July. The sucker flowered in August. I had two ripe fruit the beginning of November. I don’t know the rootstock. The fruit was small, had a slight apple taste and was not sour. The plant got about 7 hrs of sun a day initially and about 5 hrs by October.
seems like you hit the jackpot with that desirable rootstoc. Possibly grown from seed(of chance parentage) initially just intended for mass-production of rootstock by the nursery. And possible that the nursery may not be aware of your winning the ‘dna lottery’.
as it translates to your sole ownership of the jackpot if your rootstock was the original seedling and was then too young to produce suckers and fruits-- during its time in the nursery.
If the source has many juju varieties, and propagates their rootstoc from seeds obtained from randomly pollinated fruits in their farm(and not from dug-up suckers from a known spinosa), each rootstoc seedling may be a new cultivar .
