Is Li2 the same as Li? The ones that are easily locally available are Li, Lang, Sugarcane, Honey jar, and GA866. We have established that Chico is fantastic. Are any of the other cultivars that I didn’t list so much better that they really should be my choice for mid and late season? Why did you choose the cultivars you listed over others?
Jujube scionwood is widely traded among jujube growers but also sold by:
England’s Nursery in KY
The Garden Farmacy in MS and
Fruitwood Nursery in CA.
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Li2 is not the same as Li.
I chose the cultivars I listed because they are good and you may be able to get them.
Redlands, Dabailing, and Dae Sol Jo all have large fruit and Dae Sol Jo in particular is very tasty. Porterville would also be on that list except that it’s hard to find.
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Is Dae Sol Jo the same as Empress Gee?
Garden Pharmacy has a lot of different type of jujubes that I never heard of like Sweet Tart, La Fleure, TY Yazzoo Li, are they any good?
From my experience, in zone 6B/7A, Sugar Cane is the first to ripen, then Autumn Beauty follows not that far (but noticeably) behind. Then Black Sea, which is just before mid-season (Honey Jar for example) for me.
Dong was the last to ripen, with Sandia a week or two earlier, along with Tigertooth and Sherwood. Of the 3, Sandia is good, Sherwood is passable, but not great and Tigertooth wasn’t very good at all.
If you are looking for large fruit, those are good candidates. But, I don’t think they will have the most juice. That would be (in order of ripening) Sugar Cane, Black Sea/Russia #2, Honey Jar, and Sandia/Dong (identical fruit, just a week different in ripening). Fuicuimi KFC, and Mei Mi would also be good, but could be harder to find.
I don’t think it is, but am not sure. The OGW site says that Empress Gee is “Wang-dae-choo”. I think “Wang” is Korean for King and “dae chu” is jujube, so I think it translates as King Jujube.
I grafted Sweet Tart and La Fleure this spring. I recall that Raf said that LaFleure is “Spicy”, which sounded interesting. I think him and Castanea like Sweet Tart and I’m also interested in finding some jujubes with “tart”, so it is worth trying. I’ve had Yazoo Li and wasn’t a fan. But, my graft was relatively young, even if the tree it is on is fairly mature. I also had fruit shipped to me a couple years ago- it was OK, but aside from being large, it wasn’t noteworthy. Not bad, but I think Dae Sol Jo and some of the others are as good or better.
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Thanks Bob, I can’t wait to see what Cliffs have available this year. I still have one Lang tree that has zero graft, it’s not easy to see where I could graft new scions too, hence that’s the reason.
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Hey all… this is year 4 for my two jujubes.
Lang on right, GA866 on left.
They budded and produced some small leaves in March … which got frosted and browned… and they are just now starting to come out good again.
My CHE did the same… and it is out nicely now.
Is it too late to graft them this year ?
Or could that still be done over the next week or two ?
Thanks
It isn’t too late to graft, as I’ve had success with jujube into late May and even June sometimes.
But, what would concern me is that they’ve already been frosted and are growing out a second time. Grafting them would put even more pressure on them. A few years ago, Cliff had 2 late frosts, which were separated by a few weeks. He said that everything started to leaf back our after the first frost, but a lot (more than half) of the jujubes did not come back from the 2nd frost and were killed.
Now, that doesn’t mean that grafting will kill your tree, as you aren’t removing all the growth. But, it could stress it a bit and reduce the chances of your graft succeeding.
How close are those trees? They look pretty tight, especially with a big open field in the background and raspberries growing in between them 
But you will definitely want to graft over them at some point. Lang and GA866 are probably the two worst cultivars I could think to plant.
I’d suggest grafting over them next spring. Given the spacing, you may not want to graft much in the middle. Instead, you could put grafts on at the H’s in an Ethane molecule (C being the tree):
With 6, I’d do:
Honey Jar
Sugar Cane
Black Sea
Chico (to get some tart)
Bok Jo (most productive under tough circumstances)
Dae Sol Jo or Autumn Beauty (just to have one big one)
And you could put other varieties on the central leaders (one should be Honey Jar), which would allow you to add a couple more- maybe Fuicuimi and Dong.
You can ping me next Feb/March for wood, as while I may have some of them in the fridge, I’m pretty sure I don’t have all of them cut.
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@BobVance … thanks and yes… i agree grafting after a come back from a frosting… probably not a good idea.
If we still own this place next spring… i will get those grafted over.
They are about 4 ft apart… and yes raspberries have moved down that food forest bed into their area … which I do not mind at all.
At least something that taste good is being harvested there and there is plenty of room and sun under the jujube for raspberries.
Both Dae sol jo and Empress Gee produce large fruit with good flavor.
Dae sol jo is not supposed to be the same as Empress Gee, which is really Wang dae choo.
Everyone seems to agree that Wang daechoo means King jujube. Wang means king and daechoo means jujube.
Dae sol jo might mean “greatest jujube”, but I can’t get a consensus on that. It looks like some Koreans refer to jujubes as daesol. Jo can also mean Cho, which is a common Korean surname so daesol cho could mean jujube of the Cho family. The Cho family was also a well known royal dynasty so daesol cho might mean Jujube of Royalty which has some similarities to King jujube.
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Cliff England says Dae sol jo is probably 대설조 대추 which would be Daesoljo daechu which would translate as Great Snow Jujube.
Sweet Tart is very sweet and very tart at the same time which is very unique. I love that combination. The fruit matures very late. Young grafts have a lot of thorns but they diminish as the tree gets larger. These are Sweet Tart fruit-
Yazoo Li is an odd one. I ate one very fresh fruit that was excellent and had a unique caramel like flavor. The rest has not been that good but since all of the YL fruit I had except one was mail ordered it’s not fair to judge it too harshly. It seems like the fruit may tend to reach its peak quickly and lose it quickly also, but I won’t know until I grow a lot of my own fruit.
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The biggest takeaway from this thread is that I need more land lol.
Have any of you heard of Rydan Gardener in California? Someone else recommended that I get some exotic jujube from him.
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I have all of my jujube trees in container, they spread otherwise.
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@SoCalGardenNut I just planned to mow suckers. What size containers? Do you bring them in during freezes?
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No I’m in California, I don’t move them in or out.
I think mine are 22-gallon containers, I got mine from Costco.
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How would you compare it to Texas Tart? TT has high brix, but the tart is so strong that it is hard to taste the sweet. It’s be nice to find something which is balanced more like a Goldrush apple (around 20 brix)- lots of tart, but also some detectable sweet.
I grafted a couple small scions of Sweet Tart last spring which lived, but didn’t grow much. So, I grafted some more this spring and am looking forward to trying it.
Texas Tart also had a lot of thorns. Strange that tart fruit would feel so much need to protect itself…
ST looks great in that pic. A bit like Dong and probably a bit bigger than my average Texas Tart. How is Sweet Tart’s texture?
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ST is crisp, but not as crisp as many jujubes. But it does not have the styrofoam texture either. It has a hint of the texture of a crisp plum. It has a shorter self life than many other jujubes.
ST tastes very sweet which is what makes it so unlike most other tart jujubes I have tasted. I look forward to seeing how you describe it. I had one fruit last year very late in the season that was good but it didn’t have the sweetness or the tartness I expected. I think that may be because it just wasn’t hot enough here when it was trying to ripen.
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I’m going to take that as “not noteworthingly bad (like Lang or Russia #4), but average at best”.
But it sounds like the flavor could make up for it. I guess that’s another similarity with Texas Tart- iffy texture and short keeping time. Next year I will definitely try drying some of them.
But Texas Tart is so over the top with Tartness, that I feel like I will have something special if I can breed it with a good eating jujube like Honey Jar/SugarCane/Black Sea. I’ve got a couple small seedlings, but it will take a while. Maybe after this year I’ll be convinced to use Sweet Tart instead.
It could also be that it set later in the season and the tree was rushing to finish it. I’ve noticed that the 2nd flush of jujubes is often not as sweet/flavorful or tart (for the few which get tart).
I’m thinking specifically of So with regard to tartness. 5% or less of the So set early, then ripen late (end of Oct instead of late Sept-early Oct) and they are among the best jujube’s I’ve had (crunchy, sweet and tart). The So which set late and squeak in under the deadline are like you describe- a bit boring without too much sweet or sour. And the ones which ripen in September are also a bit boring. Now that I think about it, the slow ripening late ones most closely approximate the Goldrush balance I’d like to get more of. Just hard to get So to do it on command…
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Not bad at all. In a typical year it was often one of my top 5 most desired jujubes. I always looked forward to eating these.
Some people tend to get fixated on crispiness because many jujubes lose crispiness when under watered and the fruit quality suffers, but there are a few very good jujubes that never get very crispy, such as Hunan Eggs, Big Melon, China Yellow, Linyi Pear and a couple more. Sherwood, Sihong are not exceptionally crispy either. Sweet Tart is just another very good jujube that doesn’t get as crispy as most.
I’ll be interested to try these (though not as much as Sweet Tart). I grafted one of them last year and 2 this year, but don’t have China Yellow.
Neither is crisp, but their texture aren’t very similar either. Sherwood is very dense, with crunch, almost hard, while Sihong has a lighter crunch which is very good when well watered. Maybe Sherwood can be good under the right conditions, but I wasn’t thrilled with the ones Roger Meyers grew in CA (long ago) and didn’t think they were that good this year either at 2 different sites. Even ones which had just cracked in the rain, which should have been bursting with water…
While I had mixed experience with Sihong from my house, some from one of the rentals have been great. So it isn’t necessarily easy to grow here, but I can see why people hold it in high regard.
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