They have to be in pretty bad shape before they drop their crop. The more common problem with inadequate watering is that the fruit does not get crisp and does not sweeten up properly if the trees don’t get enough water.
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Jack,
Can you describe the Tigertooth taste? My four feet tall tree is setting well this year.
Tony
I’m not a connoisseur and not great at describing taste. They are certainly sweet and taste something that has been candied to me…
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Thanks for the response Jack. Btw, what month did the fruits ripened? I have heard Tigertooth was a late ripener?
Tony
I took my tigertooth out this year after 7 years. Very productive, precocious, Hugh amounts of bland fruit here in Dallas. I hear it’s good in Florida though.
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Yes, they are late. I think some started turning red in September but there was still fruit on the tree well into Nov.
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No…Tigertooth is still pretty bland here in Florida also…But beggars can’t be choosers.
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Anyone have problems with their Li fruit shriveling up before maturity? It does this every year while the sugarcane next to it never has any issues.
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I do have the same problem with my Shaanxi Li. Even with good pollination you may lose two thirds of the potential crop on a tree. One reason I am not very fond of these very large fruited varieties. I reckon the optimum fruit weight for me is 10 to 12 gram.
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Yes, I have the same problem with Li. But there’s another Li tree in the same city as me that is always loaded with fruit. So I’m thinking either it’s a different type of Li (the fruits and trees look identical, though) or it gets more consistent moisture during the summer. I’ve been trying to water my Li during dry weeks while the fruit are developing just to see if that helps at all. My So jujube never has that problem.
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The top half of my Li is Shanxi Li and it has the same problem, at this point I may have 3 good fruit on a 12’ tree.
In my opinion a good Li or Shanxi Li off my tree is not in the same ballpark as Sugar Cane as far as taste.
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Premature shriveling is usually a sign of not enough water. Jujubes are tricky because like date palms they can survive on very little water but for the fruit to develop properly they need lots of water.
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Is it possible that insufficient moisture might also be the cause of poor fruit set in some jujube cultivars?
As @c5tiger has written his Sugar Cane has no problem with fruit shrivelling and I can only second that. Lack of water is not an issue. It is a serious drawback of this variety.
Yes.
Since I realized 2-3 years ago that lack of water is the primary cause of premature fruit shriveling in jujubes, my Li no longer has shriveled fruit, so shriveling absolutely is not a drawback of this variety. I have always had years when the fruit on Li matured just fine and other years when it did not and I didn’t know why. I have been growing jujubes for about 25 years and never knew why some trees had shriveled fruit in some years and not in others. I’ve had the problem at one time or another in probably every single variety of the 40-50 varieties I grow. I no longer have it in any of them.
Growers typically think that because their jujube tree shows no signs of needing water that it doesn’t need more water. They see that the leaves are not drooping or that there are no sunburned leaves and think that it doesn’t need more water. This is where it’s important to understand date palms. Date palms can stay alive in very hot temperatures with a certain amount of water, but to properly mature fruit, they need a lot more water. Jujubes are exactly the same in that respect. Jujubes are tough trees that will prioritize staying alive over setting or maturing fruit. Jujubes set massive loads of fruit and every single fruit increases the water needs of the tree. If they don’t have enough water they will not mature fruit correctly.
The fact that @c5tiger’s Sugar Cane does not have shriveling means that his Sugar Cane has enough water. Two completely different trees can have differing needs for water. Li typically sets larger fruit than Sugar Cane and it needs a lot of water when that fruit is in the latter stages of ripening. My Li typically also sets more fruit than Sugar Cane. Sugar Cane typically matures fruit earlier in the season than Li when it may be warmer or drier. The bottom line is that they are two different trees. Saying that both trees need exactly the same amount of water is like saying that two different teenagers need exactly the same amount of food.
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I agree. While they always live here in Dallas no mater what help they get, more water has solved all my Jujubee’s ills. Sometimes I think they’d like a straw.
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FWIW, in Miryang S Korea, their jujubee capital, their weather pattern is the opposite of Dallas; they have dry springs, wet summers. I can’t do much to get dry springs but I can compensate for the summer. As long as my jujubees get as much water as my grass, they’re fine.
The dry springs are consistent with Ashton’s observations Scott noted in the first post of this thread.
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This year my Li has its worst fruit set ever and my Sugar Cane has its best ever. My Sugar Cane breaks dormancy before my Li and all the new growth got kill by a late freeze this year and it still has a nice crop. Although we are dry this week we have had plenty of rain this year almost too much.
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Not sure if someone post this info about jujube polination before, so I decide to share it here:
http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/50/6/839.full.pdf+html
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