Drought tolerance refers only to their ability to survive. They can indeed survive for very long periods of time with very little water.
But if you want the trees to grow and produce quality fruit, they need regular water.
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Texas A&M is our Bible but they need a bit of a revelation in the jujube department! 
. They are sorely behind in cultivars but I do agree with them on the drought and moisture hardiness of jujus. Although they are drought tolerant they are nowhere like succulents and other “arid region” (and I disagree with that statement by the article) fruit trees. These trees love the water and can tolerate wet feet more than you would think. However, as bad as my summer got this year—and it was bad—my larger trees looked great without watering. I had to work with the young trees to keep them going but those with deep roots didn’t suffer. My persimmons did look bad and they are very drought tolerant.
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Thanks. That rules out jujube for my orchard where trees are on their own after watering the first year.
They don’t ever need water in the Mid-Atlantic. I think castanea is referring to his climate. All they need is pruning once a year.
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Hambone,
If you have a sunny spot, you should plant a Honey Jar. Like Scott said, there should be enough rain without extra watering where you are.
I don’t even prune my trees. I topped them off at about 12’, if you call that pruning. If you don’t prune, you still can pick the fruit just by shaking the tree. Plant a tree and graft other varieties to it. Jujube is really a very carefree tree. Easier than persimmons and pawpaws. I enjoy eating jujubes. The good ones are addictive.
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Thanks to both of you! That fits my goal of phasing out some apple trees and phasing in something precocious with fewer pests. Are there a couple varieties known to be precocious?
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I really like SiHong. I know it’s not one of @BobVance favorites because it is a dense texture and he really likes crisp. I like it for the flavor and consistency. The tree is hardy and grows fast and fruits precociously compared to some of the other varieties. It’s sweet and larger than a lot of varieties. It dries well and is one of the few dried jujus that I like. It also stores longer in the fridge than others. All this is just my opinion but if I had to choose only two jujubes SiHong would be one of them.
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In general, many jujube varieties are quite precocious and can set fruit by year 3. This is based on you getting a large bare root tree (4-5 ft tall. Do not go for a 1-2 feet tall tree. It will take a ling time. That could be why jujube trees are expensive.
The most productive variety is Bok Jo. However, you may want to choose the tastiest with crunchy texture for our east coast. For that, I hope @BobVance will give his opinion. Bob grows more varieties than most jujube nurseries.
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And that would be a big consideration because of all the difference weather and locale make.
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Beware of Jujubes…
This is what OGW says about Lang.
Prized for its attractive form and striking, large, pear-shaped, golden brown fruit, Lang Jujube is one of our most popular varieties. Lang’s crisp and flavorful fruit is delicious eaten fresh, dried, or candied.
But my experience here in southern TN was not at all like that.
I ordered a shanx li… but after 3 years when it produced fruit… was told by several here that it was actually Lang.
Delicious eaten fresh ?
Hmmm. If you took an old dried out piece of Styrofoam and soaked it in some diluted sugar water… let it dry completely out… well that is what my Lang fruit tasted like.
I did not irrigate mine… i expect fruittrees to live and thrive here with a good layer of compost and mulch and little to no irrigation… and lots do.
Not jujube… well not survive and produce fruit you would want to eat.
Jujube did not make the cut here.
Good luck… hope you have much better luck than i did.
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You started with double whammy. Got the wrong variety and the worst (by many people’s opinions) one.
If you grow the right varieties for the eat coast, you will change your mind, I bet.
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Yeah….Lang is not one to judge. It is probably because of Lang (one of the first jujubes in America) that the fruit did not become well known.
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Yes… that is something to beware of… nursery descriptions … and you can even find some reports here of how good Lang fruit is.
Mine looked great…
But at all stages of ripeness… were very dry, tuf, difficult to chew, and had no real flavor other than a mild sweetness.
Based on my experience with Jujube… i would advise anyone considering them to seek out varieties known to be juicy… and have some component of flavor other than just a mild sweetness… and crisp crunchy texture rather than tuf Styrofoam type texture.
Mine were not juicy, no flavor other than mild sweetness, and it was just like trying to chew up a old dried out piece if Styrofoam.
If you cant get juicy fruit without lots of irrigation… you need to know and expext that and be ok with it.
That does not pass the test for what i am willing to grow here.
I have figs and raspberries and persimmons and will soon have pears and apples that ripen when Jujubes do… and they all pass the test… produce good fruit without irrigation here.
Can anyone list the Jujube varieties that consistently produce crops of juicy, crisp crunchy, flavorful (not just sweet), for example tartness or honey or berry or melon flavor ? fruit without irrigation ?
That is what I might just try again…
.
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Another thing you need to realize about Jujube is… if you plant it in ground as i did… in a couple years root suckers will start poping up… 3, 4 ,5 ft away from your tree… and in another year or two… they will be poping up 15-20 feet down the bed all over the place.
That was the final nail in the coffin for me… i dug up and tossed my two jujubes in the woods… and 3 months later was still snipping off and digging up jujube root shoots.
I think they finally gave up near season end… but would not be suprised if they show up again in the spring.
I would not plant a jujube in a bed with other things… instead… to keep the root shoots managable in a inground planting… plant one or two jujubes in a bed by themselves (alone) that you can and do mow around regular.
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It’s pretty much like you compare cooking apple or cider apple to desert apple - Lang is most likely a cooking jujube. In China where the jujubes came from, jujube is not mostly consumed fresh but dried and then as a food additive for cooking due to its health benefits.
Lang was obviously cultivated and selected for cooking and also use as a Chinese traditional medicine.
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As much as I think I will be watering them during fruit set, if my other fruit is any indication, at best they will get every other weekly watering with a water soluble fertilizer, and at worst maybe some emergency water if I notice them wilting. I’ll try and document my cadence for watering and report back on my results.
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this thread was intended to help me narrow down my options for jujubes in my local area. I made my decisions and planted my trees. the thread died 2 years ago and was resurrected by someone 5 days ago. best place for info on the best jujubes would be one of @BobVance 's threads. notably this one
While maybe not a favorite, it is still a highly rated cultivar. I made a “version” of @BobVance 's table where I changed the text in each column from a word to a number where the lowest number equals his best attribute. I then weighted each one, in order of importance to me, 1-fruit quality, 2 - productivity, 3 - season, 4 - size. top 3 came out to be sugar cane, black sea, and honey jar (no surprise there) with SiHong coming in at 13th of 46 cultivars. not bad at all.
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I agree than annual pruning is the minimum, but I think a few summer waterings would go a long way to improving productivity. It doesn’t absolutely need it, but I’ve seen fruit shrivel and drop (especially large fruited varieties) after a few weeks to a month of sunny weather and no rain. Maybe that wouldn’t happen on more mature trees with deeper roots, but some watering is helpful.
Sounds like pruning to me 
I like to do that in late June as it mostly stops growth for the year and encourages fruit-set.
I don’t dislike Sihong- it is just difficult to get it to produce here. I had one tree where is made some very good fruit last year. I wouldn’t say that it is super dense, like Sherwood (which I don’t care for). Sihong is more intermediate dense, with good flavor. Good for drying too. But, as I said, it doesn’t produce well here, at least early on. I planted 2 Sihong trees in 2018 and neither has made more than a few fruit so far. Only a graft from 2019 at an ideal site has been somewhat productive.
Sihong is decidedly not precocious here. Any large fruited ones seem to take their time. Honey Jar, Bok Jo, Xu Zhou, and Texas Tart are all very precocious, but there are fruit-quality issues with XZ and TT, so I’d suggest Honey Jar and Bok Jo for quick results.
If you get a good tree, it can sometimes make a few fruit in the very first year. I planted a few trees this past spring from ChineseRedDate nursery and 3 of the 6 had a bit of fruit (2 KFC and a Da Bai Ling). I completely agree with Katy- get the biggest tree you can find. A small tree adds at least 2-3 years to the timeline.
I also mix well composted leaf mold into the planting hole. Generally 2-3 buckets, which seems to get them going well. I started doing this after watching the video of the guy whose son planted a bunch in manure and surprisingly had them do well.
Bok Jo is an above average cultivar. Not the best, but there is something to be said for quick and bountiful production.
It’s a bit of a borning answer, but Honey Jar and Sugar Cane are the best easy to get cultivars. If you are ordering from CRD, you may be able to get Dong/Sandia (very late), Maya, Black Sea/Russia #2, or KFC which are also good.
That’s no accomplishment- most nurseries don’t have more than half a dozen varieties. Anyone on here should be able to say that I’m pushing 100, though a decent amount are new grafts.
I completely agree on Lang- the description from OGW is way off. Lang and GA866 are the two varieties to steer clear of, at least on the East coast.
I grafted over most of my Lang, but there are still a few branches left. I sampled a few fruit to confirm that they are still crappy, before tossing them in the dehydrator. I found one this year which was almost edible. So, the best lang is like a bad Xu Zhou. And a good Xu Zhou is like a bad Bok Jo. And the best Bok Jo still aren’t in the top tier. Comparing a Lang to a Honey Jar/Sugar Cane is like comparing a potato to a sweet cherry.
That;s a reasonable comparison.
Others on my naughty list:
Russia #4 (#2 is good), Tiger Tooth, Huping- bad quality
Ant Admire- non-productive
And I consider most of the large fruited ones iffy, taking longer to come into production and not being as crisp. I’d also lump a few mediums like Chico and Sherwood into that tier as well.
Thanks- I just finished picking jujubes yesterday and am working on a 2023 version. Hopefully sometime in the next week or so.
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Such helpful info Bob. Many thanks.
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