100 fruits shouldn’t be disappointing, considering your zone. Your trees should bear more densely as the laterals thicken. First year laterals usually only have two fruiting stems per node, while older laterals will have thicker and longer nodes( spurs) and will produce more fruiting stems per node.
i’d predict massandra will have better quality fruits there than here. My massandra already ripened and were ok, considering our several consecutive >110F days.
we recently posted photo links of massandra and other soviet bloc jujus at our webpage
also just added photo links of Korean juju cultivars
Thanks for the advice. I look forward to my trees being more mature and more productive. I wish I had more sunny spots.
@BobVance, the only thing I could recall doing differently from you is fertilization. You and I planted them in sunny spots and have watered them this year. I don’t recall if you fertilized them. I took a page from @tonyOmahaz5’s book ( thanks, Tony) and used urea at early spring. Then, I followed up with either Plant Tone or Osmocote Plus a couple of weeks later.
I don’t even know if it’s the fertilizer that made the difference. So far, it seems to be working.
actually obtained bok jo from @BobVance , and was tempted to acknowledge him on our webpage but probably should ask him first. People deserve to be acknowledged, but it could be a privacy issue, or a proprietary issue, since that webpage is admittedly an advertisement for our publication.* And the same ‘courtesy call’ of course applies to @castanea if appropriating pictures of his seed-grown “orange beauty” on our website.
the tae seoul jo i bought from england’s. I don’t remember having done any brix testing on korean cultivars(couldn’t find the darned brix tester), but can bet bok jo is the sweetest of them all. The others being tae seoul jo, kuk jae , and korean #1. Tae seoul jo ripened relatively early this year, but the quality was not as good as last year(when fruit ripened later in the year–cooler weather). Tae seoul fruits seemingly sensitive to heat waves.
*if you remember the band Heart asking Palin not to use the song ‘barracuda’ to help further her VP aspirations.
The original source of the Bok Jo wood was England’s. Someone sent me their extra and I just passed on a tiny bit of my extra to you.
In terms of name, I grafted “Dae Sol Jo Dae Chu” this year and “Tae Sol Jo” a few years ago, but I think they may be “Tae Seoul Jo”, just based on what they may sound like phonetically. You can probably set me straight.
I also grafted “Tae Sang Wang” last year, but I’m guessing that is something else.
I didn’t get any takes from the small Orange Beauty this spring. If you or Castanea has any wood this winter, I’d like to give it another try next spring.
I’ll probably order more wood from Englands next year as well. The wood he sent me this spring grew very well (somewhat overcomes my fumbling grafts…) and he keeps getting such interesting new varieties.
I gave some of the jujubes (mostly 2nd and 3rd year ones, not newly planted) nitrogen (urea) this spring, but I didn’t do any balanced, time delay fertilizers. I remedied that today for a decent number of them (not all). I’ll do the same at those at other locations over the next few days-I’m planning to do some lawns, so that will be a good time for the fert.
that tiny bit produced just one juju last year, but it was more than enough for me to conclude it is off-the-charts in brix. A big chunk of its upright growth sadly got lopped off (at its green stage) due to our windy spring’s, but the few undamaged laterals seem to indicate it will be as productive as hj or contorted.
Dae seoul jo and Tae seoul jo are likely one cultivar, since dae chu is korean for jujube, and dae-won( a male name) is also spelled as tae-won.
tae sang wang is definitely different phonetically, and is a cultivar we’ve never tried. I shared some orange beauty budwood earlier this year, but confident what remained already have grown vegetatively this summer, will check on them tomorrow and pm you.
That my 2nd year graft is covered in fruit is another good sign for it. That type of productivity is very rare here (HJ, sometimes…). I’m also optimistic about Tae Sang Wang, given the amount of fruit on last year’s graft.
it truly is a promising variety, and looking forward to trying some on their second year here, but for some reason it is behaving like a mid this year(just like our li’s), but was relatively quick to ripen on the year grafted. Our sihong’s on the other hand were earlier than li’s and sc’s. Jujus can be unpredictable!
Thanks, as always! And speaking of which, @BobVance, below is @castanea 's orange beauty which bounced back in full glory from severe pruning and now with some fruits. Will send you a couple or so twiggies in spring, but pls remind me lest i get sidetracked.
also, @BobVance , have to further acknowledge i posted a pic of your contorted(was that from jfae?) at our webpage. I am now 90% confident it is a distinct cultivar of contorted.
No problem- you can use any of the jujube pics I post.
Yes, it is from JFaE. I’ll be interested to see how So/Contorted from other suppliers (Bay Laurel, Sanhedrin, and Englands) compare, both in productivity and quality (crispness). The one from Sanhedrin is in year #3, so it should start producing soon. Nothing yet, but it has put on a lot of growth this year.
Maybe that was me? I got those guys from Cliff since I was thinking they may be more northern and need less heat for me. No fruit yet on either here though…
@mamuang I got fruits in that quantity for a few years but then they stopped producing more than a couple. i hope you don’t have that problem! I do fertilize but not a lot, maybe more nitrogen would help.
I’ve been growing Roger Meyer’s “Yu” jujube for at least 20 years and it has never set a single fruit. It never set fruit for Roger either. Now, finally, for the first time, it has set a few fruit -
It was from you, but as Raf said earlier, one should be cautious about naming sources
Cliff sent you a lot of Bok Jo wood that time- enough for you to graft, then for me to make 6 grafts, and still send some on to Raf. Thanks for sending so much on to me! It’s too bad that you haven’t gotten any of them to fruit. I always feel like my results are lagging behind others (even Mamung is getting them to fruit earlier and she is a few hours North of me!) , but I guess I’ve done OK. It’s worth noting that only one of my Bok Jo is fruiting. 3 were on recently transplanted suckers and didn’t put on much growth and the 2 on top of a Shanxi Li haven’t fruited yet.
Self shading is my guess too. Watching my So produce almost nothing on the North side of the tree for several (3?) years in a row drills home how important sun exposure is. This year I’ve been doing a bit of summer pruning to open up the middle of the tree. I also stuck the prunings in some pots with moist mix (out of direct sun), so we’ll see if I can root some So (not too likely, but might as well try as JFaE has gotten it to work).
thanks for the gracious offer, but it would be disingenuous for me to be posting photos that i didn’t shoot. It is too much already that am posting photos(linked to our publication) of budwood that didn’t pay for or merely traded.
i’d say it is at least as good as hj. I can’t safely assign a rank since only had the cultivar for two years, and our brutal summers keep roasting our jujus. Orange beauty seems to be a mid here in vegas, and will try to get it to fruit in late summer or early fall when fruits are not thermally compromised.
The upper parts of my trees are in the sun whenever its sunny yet they don’t fruit. A few years ago when I got all that wood from Cliff I topworked all but a couple varieties so for several years there has been light on the lower parts even. I also removed many branches so they are basically spindle shapes. Overall its pretty well-exposed I would say. They also flower like crazy, its not like the flowering is weak. I still think its the lack of afternoon sun doing them in, its shady by about 1PM where they are. They may also like more horizontal wood, my trees don’t have much of that due to the spindle pruning. I bent some limbs in the past but they didn’t fruit any more though.
