As you can tell, my yard has many plants in it!
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Who says jujube need sun to fruit. 
This one gets very little sun and still produced a good sized fruit…one fruit on the whole tree. Though given how much shade it is in, even that surprises me.
After the neighbors removed a large tree, I put several jujube along the border. Then, they planted some tall arborvitaes, which are directly to the South of the jujubes. The combination of the nieghbor’s property being higher, to the South, and having tall evergreens makes this a bad spot for jujus.
It is leaning toward the sun and I was thinking about staking it. Instead, I think I’ll just transplant it.
This part of the yard is so shaded that it stays moist enough to grow big fungus flowers (I’m not sure what they are really called), which I removed before mowing.
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Those mushrooms kind of look like hen of the woods!
Bob,
Imagine how much more productive that tree would be had it have enogh sun light?
Now I feel bad about chucking so many of them over the last few years. It is growing around the stump of the tree the neighbors removed. I read some online descriptions and it certainly sounds like Hen-of-the-woods. I’m not all that adventurous (even for store-bought mushrooms), but maybe my wife will want them. Anyone know of a good test to make absolutely sure of its identity?
Probably none. It could actually be the first Li to ripen for me, even though I’ve planted several Li’s over the years. All the others had more sun and produced nothing.
I noticed another interesting thing today. I was looking at my Shanxi Li and thinking- wow there is a lot of fruit on that one branch, high up in the tree. When I looked a bit closer, I found an old graft union and a tag. It turns out that one of the old Bok Jo grafts survived after all. This branch isn’t as productive as the Bok Jo on the next tree over that I’ve posted a number of pics of. But it is still much more productive than the Shanxi Li that it is on. The fruit on the Shanxi is generally spaced apart by 1-2’, instead of a few inches in the Bok Jo graft. But, the other Bok Jo graft is lower in the neighboring tree and probably has 2X as much fruit per area.
So, it seems like Bok Jo is naturally very productive, but there may be another component to the over-the-top production I am getting on the other tree. Maybe it is helped by pollination from the rootstock (which also sets a ton of fruit, even in a branch along the ground). I’ll have to try grafting both Bok Jo and the rootstock to some other trees, both alone and together.
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Maybe post your pictures over to this thread?
I’ve never found them in the wild before, and my experience comes from buying them at the farmers market. It would be nice for you if they were truly hen of the woods (never seen any other mushroom quite like them). I have to pay a premium of about $20/lb when I want to buy them.
Thanks- I’m interested e to see what the experts say.
Ouch! That means I just chucked at least $400 worth of mushrooms in the brush pile!
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I have two colorful books on mushrooms, but I still only eat 3 or 4 that I find. Have on in fridge past week I’ve not studied enough to be sure I want to eat it.
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Wow, what an amazing jujube! Where did you acquire this variety? I googled the name and it took me back to growingfruit.
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I’ve grafted it twice and not gotten it to grow. It looks beautiful!!
Yup- this one has produced each year since grafting. It was productive last year (not as much as this year), even when most of my other jujubes had almost nothing. But, as the post I made yesterday shows, it doesn’t seem to be as massively productive on all stocks (though it had a lot more than the host tree). @cousinfloyd has quite a few hanging on his this year, though I think it is his first time with it fruiting.
It is a Korean variety from Cliff England.
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Bob,
Your Bok Jo is amazingly productive.
Regarding fruit drop, I have had a lot of drops, too. More so than previous years. Not sure whether or not our very dry summer (an unusual environment that our trees may not be used to) was a factor.
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My Honey Jar Jujubes are loaded as usual. A must have jujube for starters.
Btw, Sugarcane is a tad bit bigger but I liked HJ much more.
Bonus photo of potted TamKam non astringent kaki
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Here’s a pic showing the relative productivity of the other varieties nearby. The closest is the rootstock, which is quite productive of mediocre fruit, which is growing along the ground. The Sugar Cane has some, but is spotty (some parts have almost none). And the Shanxi Li has even fewer, though some are quite large for the first time.
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I am surprised that your previous Shanxi Li weren’t large. I planted Shanxi Li because of its large size.
I look forward to trying them this year. We have had lot of rain recently and more rain in the future. I’d like to find out if all this rain will help improve its texutre.
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Yes, in the past, they were long and thin. This year, the few that remained on the tree (lots of early drop) are large and fat. Maybe the long thin ones were just what the tree does when it isn’t properly developed, but has to finish ripening it quick due to fall setting in?
Here’s one from a few weeks ago, with the wider shape.
In comparison, here is one from a month earlier, with the thinner shape:
I’m also very interested to see if it will be higher quality.
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One thing you might want to consider about Topeka for your zone is its very late ripening. Would that be a problem for you? Here’s something I copied down, must have been from NMSU: “Very late fresh eating cultivar. Too late for northern New Mexico.”
What would be the notable differences between seedlings and suckers?
Suckers come from seedlings.