That is a generous offer! I will practice grafting on the fig tree which I finally able to grow. I may be able to graft jujube next spring.
From reading from this site, I am starting to realize why people started out with few trees and end up with an obsession!
thanks for that scion @BobVance. It did bear fruit(just one) on same year of grafting which was excellent. Like a prime r4t3 but has a more delicate crisp like hj. It was sweeter than hj-- that one little fruit. That first fruit was borne in cooler weather, and not in intense heat as they have ever since, and unfortunately gets compromised by producing mealy jujus when borne mid-summer. I mean literally mealy, and the only cultivar out of 70+ cultivars that gets mealy, with an off-flavor despite being sweet. I predict it is better suited in regions having less oppressive summers.
bok jo is quite a curio due to the broad and relatively matte foliage. Also has this atypical hue of green. Makes me think might be one of those colchicine-induced polyploids. GA 866 and Li are the other two that can approximate its leaf size. And all three can get loaded with sugar, btw.
anyway when get the chance will post pic of that scraggly graftāas leaf-cutter bees unfortunately favor its foliage more than other juju cultivars. Still quite productive though despite severe leaf-loss.
guerilla-grafters, you and i both 
juju propagation and broadcasting are truly worth the time and the resources expended, as the pro bono payoff is so fulfilling-- being an amazingly durable and perpetuating investment that hardly needs maintenance.
Wow- I guess it is unique, between the large, thin leaves and the fruit set. It isnāt too surprising that there isnāt a single superman-cultivar for all situations, but this drives home that some jujubes arenāt ideal even in hot-sunny areas that you would think they would excel in.
I donāt want to oversell this one- it was good, but I still put Honey Jar slightly above it (though smaller). The Bok Jo was just as sweet, if not more so, but a bit more dense, rather than lightly crisp (like HJ and SC). At least, the ones Iāve got so far.
I would be a jujube guerrilla-grafter, except there arenāt any jujube out there for me to graft over. The best I can do is start planting them. Here is one I put in a traffic circle, across the (half the) street from one rental. The yard at that property is dry enough that even grass/weeds doesnāt grow well and it has some large trees on the city land by the street (I thought about guerilla lumberjacking, but it was kind of pricey). The 3 jujubes I planted in the yard have mostly died (I think one is coming back from the roots). So this time I planted in the traffic circle- South of the big trees and much better soil. One Sugar Cane and one Honey Jar (each property has to have one 
)
bok jo seems to excel in hot weather(production-wise) but fruits get affected. Silverhill is probably the second most mealy juju have come across.
anyway, below is your unique and productive bok jo graft that shot straight up on a sugarcane interstem. Hoping it will have a second crop to ripen in cooler weatherāoct or nov
hopefully sooner rather than later, that we also will be guerilla-planters of jujus on their own roots.
spinosa-type rootstock can be a scourge of thorny suckering brambles when left to their own devices, whereas each and every sucker of a self-rooted desirable cultivar is pure gold. Just dig them up and give away, and if youāre growing them on otherwise idle land, establishing a grove of self-rooted and suckering sihongs and hjās equates to an indestructible food forest
Iām getting a little bit optimistic on Xu Zhou, I got a couple fruits this year and it was excellent. It tasted like a bigger Honey Jar. Hopefully as the tree matures it will fruit more. It is one of the newer trees that I put in a sunnier spot. None of my 15-year-old stand produced any fruits at all this year. I will probably plant something else there as it is just wasted space.
How many years has it been in-ground? I planted one from Englands in spring 2018, so this was its 3rd year in ground and the first time it produced. It set a ton of fruit and ripened most of it, even without any GA3.
I though that the quality was good, but not on the same level as Honey Jar and Sugar Cane. More like Autumn Beauty, and So. Good and definitely worth eating, but not exquisite.
It also seems predisposed to crack. It wasnāt a big issue to me, but Katy in TX had them rot.
A few days after I picked the above fruit, the squirrels hit and ate 90%+ of the Xu Zhou. This was the first year I noticed any animal losses of jujube. And I didnāt just see the losses at my house, I also saw the later jujube hit badly at 2+ other properties where Iāve planted them.
Regrettably, they also got Bok Jo and Tae Sang Wang as well, two other productive cultivars which I wanted to compare. From the Bok Jo I had in past years, I think they were somewhere in between the So tier and the HJ tier.
How many trees are packed into how much space? Maybe just remove half of them and thin the growth in the rest by half? That should ensure some good light exposure. And/Or apply some GA3. I hate to waste established stocks
And the ones to remove (IMO) would be, in order of first to remove:
Sherwood may show up on that list soon as well. It fruited for the first time for me this year and the few I had werenāt great quality. But, the animals ate most, so I didnāt get a thorough evaluation and the ones that I had were only partially brown.
In fact, I like one of the rootstocks better than some of the above (at least better than Tigertooth and Lang). Iāll probably put a few grafts of it around, as both the rootstock and the scions grafted to it have been very productive. Maybe I can help pollination by grafting it low (so as not to take up much of the fruiting areas) on a few more trees.
Bob,
Sorry to hear but your fruit losses. It is maddening to see your hard work got wiped out by these pests.
I think I am pretty good at measuring brix of other fruit. I tried with jujubes but usually ended up squishing them pretty badly so I stopped trying to measure jujujbeās brix.
What brix canāt measure is tartness in fruit. After eating sweet HJ, Black Sea, Sugar Cane, I found Massandra and Dong Zao with some tartness in them refreshing and interesting.
It is from 2016, but it was munched by deer a couple times so I lost a year or two. It is now finally above the deer.
The old stand is all in too-low light, not worth trying to save.
Just out of curiosity, what are you planning for it? Iāve got areas like that at some properties and have been thinking about what to put at them. So far, Iāve tentatively planned black currants.
At a couple where it is only half day sun, I put figs and non-astringent persimmons, as the reason it is half day is due to the building (tradeoff between sun and winter protection).
I havenāt thought too far but apples are probably the winner as I have apples right by which fruit very well. Or maybe asian pears. It is about six hours of sunlight which is good for most things. I would not put Euro pears or Euro plums there as they also have not been good in lower light for me. Most other things would work.
BTW curious what you think is worth saving of what I have there and not elsewhere:
Bok Jo
Mei Mi
Bu Luo Shu
Tae Sang Wang
Kuk Jae
Sihong Li
Da Bai
Tae Seoul Jo
September Late
I was hoping that some of these Korean varieties would fruit in the lower sun but it was not to be. I was definitely going to save the Bok Jo given good comments here recently.
Make copy:
Bok Jo- As you noted, definitely save. Iām going to be cutting mine back a bit to get wood to send both to people online and to make more Bok Jo. It is the #1 variety I want to have more of.
Mei Mi- This is the first year I got any fruit from my graft (in 5 years). It was very high quality (>Honey Jar) though, so Iām planning to put a graft of it in a better location. The place it is now is in the middle of the side-yard, and gets shaded by the neighbors house in the morning and my house in the afternoon (3-4pm on, depending on the spot in the tree and the time of year). It is enough sun for Honey Jar and So to bear well and the Bok Jo graft from this spring also had fruit. But, most of the other varieties on it had either 1-2 fruit or nothing at all. But the high quality makes me want to try this in an area where there is more sun.
Tae Sang Wang-The one is a good sun spot had a very heavy fruit set- almost the same level as Bok Jo, but larger fruit size. The varmints ate every one of them though, so I donāt know about quality. I should mention that I also have a graft on a shaded tree (a bit worse than the So) and it didnāt produce at all (both it and Shanxi had a few fruit that dropped early). The only fruit on that tree was Russia #4, which is productive, but has poor texture (decent flavor).
Maybe:
Bu Luo Shu & Kuk Jae- I grafted both of these years ago, but I donāt donāt think I have either any longer. If you have enough wood, could you please send some to me this winter? In fact, if you have extra of Tae Sang Wang, Iād be interested in that as well, since both my grafts are relatively small and Iād like to make some copies of it.
Da Bai- I remember reading somewhere that it was productive and it did make a couple fruit for me in year #1 (tree from Chinese Red Date). The initial fruit were OK (So tier), but nothing impressive. But, it wouldnāt surprise me for it to improve in the future. Of course, the couple year #1 fruit from Russia #2 were very good (at least HJ tier), so sometimes year one may be as good as it gets.
Tae Seoul Jo- Productive, but snatched. I think I got one or two in past years and they werenāt bad (So tier).
Pass:
Sihong- Can be very tasty, based on fruit sent to me from Vegas. But works best as dried (or partially dried fruit). Pretty non-productive here. Iāve had 2 Sihong for a 3 years (same time I planted Xu Zhou) and theyāve made exactly 1 fruit (which was OK). Iāve heard that it does better in hot sunny areas. One of my trees is in a good spot (just missing a bit of morning sun) and the other is on a South facing hill with almost complete sun (this one made the 1 fruitā¦). So, this one could be good in the right circumstances, but unless something changes for me, I wouldnāt recommend wasting too much space on it. If I do manage to figure out a way to make it work, Iād be happy to send out wood
Li- Not good productivity and only So-level upside, at best , in terms of quality (in my list of cull/graft over cultivars)
September Late- Even in a good sun position, it never fruited until this year and there was only 1 fruit. (which something other than me ateā¦).
Good thought- I should grow more Asian pears. I like them and my wife really likes them, but Iāve only got half a dozen this year due to the animals. They always attack them very early. But, if I spread some around the rentals, maybe I can sneak a few through. And they donāt need as much spray as some other fruitā¦
Thanks Bob! Send me a pm this winter and I can get you wood of the ones you lost. I will make sure to save wood before removing anything.
I have four jujubes in better spots and will try to graft a few of these ones there to at least see if they fruit.
Little confused about you saying you donāt like crunchy and then rave about Honey Blaze when the videos Iāve seen (e.g., https://youtu.be/gEnsqTPiy18) describe it as crunchy as well. Is it or isnāt it?
I was thinking I should report back on my Bok Jo crop last year. I posted earlier that it had set a super impressive crop, but by the time the fruit ripened most of that crop had aborted to where my final crop was maybe only a little better than average. And the taste didnāt impress me at all, so although I thought Bok Jo was super promising at first, Iām not especially hopeful for it now, but Iāll continue trialing it.
I did have a really big crop from my small Honey Jar tree last year, though, very nearly a Tony-size crop. The size of the fruit itself is smaller than other people seem to be getting. I think I posted a photo somewhere on this forum of one of my Honey Jars, and I think that was about the size of most of my crop last year.
I canāt remember what all I and others have said in this thread, but Iām increasingly inclined to believe that hot, dry summers is the opposite of what leads to good jujube fruit set except insofar as places that always have dry summers correlate with regular irrigation. In other words, Iām inclined to believe that consistent soil moisture may be the biggest factor in producing good jujube fruit set. Iām suspecting the problem for so many of us in the East is that we donāt really need to irrigate to get most fruit trees to grow reasonably well, but our rain definitely isnāt as regular and consistent as irrigation. Does anyone else have reason to confirm or reject that hypothesis?
I think lack of soil moisture can be a big issue, but lack of fruit set usually seems to be one of 3 things:
I think the biggest problem for some growers in the east (and Florida) is #1. There are many growers with very young trees who expect a full crop and arenāt getting it and think there has to be some kind of problem with their trees, when the real problem is simply their impatience.
For me at least it is not #1, Most of my trees are almost 20 years old and never set much (I took out half of the old trees this last winter).
Here the soil is reasonably moist through jujube pollination time so @cousinfloyd I would be very surprised if lack of water was an issue. We usually donāt get any dry conditions until August.
I think rain/humidity and lack of sun are the biggest problems based on my experiences. I have a newer stand of jujubes in a sunnier spot and I am getting more fruit on them than on the old backyard stand.
There is a similar issue with pollination on plums that some varieties just donāt pollinate as well in the east as in the drier west. This is one reason why I am inclined to believe the humidity is a factor, or something else about the east vs west climate.
Itās not Castaneaās #1 for me either. My oldest trees are in their 14th growing season, so well past the 7-8 year old mark.
I just feel like I know of enough jujube trees within a few hours of my location (so with very similar weather/climate) that fruit so much better than my trees (one of which I think Iāve even shared photos of on this forum), that it doesnāt seem like humidity or rain can really make the difference, at least not independent of other variables.
Maybe myweather in North Carolina is more different from your location in Maryland than I was thinking. We can definitely have dry spells about any month of the year. 3-4 weeks without significant rain wouldnāt be especially unusual any time of year and probably happens 2-3 times per year on average. A 6 week spell without hardly any rain once a year isnāt too unusual but probably only happens once or less than once per year on average (at least during the growing season ā I donāt hardly notice if it doesnāt rain for 6 weeks in the winter.)
Iām wondering about pH. I am thinking that jujus may be partial to alkaline soil.
