Jujubes- Our New Adventure

[BobVance]

I think it will depend on what part of the country you are in. In CA or the sunny SW, the answers will be very different.

For me, I would rank productivity as follows:

Great:
Xu Zhou
Bok Jo

OK:
So
Dong*
Dae Sol Jo **

Poor:
Autumn Beauty
Sihong
Chico
Orange Beauty

No idea:
Porterville
Winter Delight

This year’s weather has lead to poor production for many jujubes. The “poor” group breaks down as follows:
Autumn Beauty- 3 trees. One with none, the other 2 with 3-5 fruit
Sihong- 2 trees and a graft. Handful of fruit on the trees and a lot on the graft (maybe it isn’t precocious, but can eventually get productive)
Chico- 2 trees and a graft. 1 tree has none, the other has <5. The graft has a light crop of fruit, other than the part which was girdled, which has a decent set.
Orange Beauty- 4-5 grafts, some pretty big. I don’t think there is any fruit this year.

*- When I graft Dong/Sandia onto a mature tree it does reasonably well. But when I plant a Dong tree, it takes forever to fruit. In fact I don’t know if I’ve gotten any from them, while the grafts (taken from those trees) have been productive for a number of years.

**- Recent genetic tests have shown that Dae Sol Jo is either identical or virtually identical to Li. I have a graft of Dae Sol Jo and while I found it a bit better than Li, it could be mostly dependent on the situation the tree was in, rather than being inherently different from Li.

I don’t have any zone hardiness info, as I’m growing them in zone 6b/7a which should be enough for all Chinese jujubes (not for Indian ones).

If you want more in-depth, I have a big comparison here:

Jujube 2022

My jujube are just about done and I’ve been going around clearing the last fruit from them…To (mostly) quote game of thrones: I’ve declared this great summer done at last… the (best jujube) summer in living memory. Looking at my notes, I ended up picking just over 300 pounds. That doesn’t include the massive amount I ate while picking, nor a few times where I forgot to keep track and didn’t start until a few weeks into the season, around Oct 1st. In terms of per-tree production: Most produ…

@Chunky

are you referring to Dong Zao or Shan Dong or another?

Dong Zao. “Zao” means jujube in Chinese, so it can be tacked onto most cultivars. “Dong” actually means “Winter” in Chinese.

@Chunky

England’s list both of the first two but not Sandia

Sandia is a variant of Dong which is supposed to be slightly (maybe a week) earlier to ripen.

@pedroeastexas

Tried my first Li of a tree and it was very styrofoam like.

Could be underwatered or it could just be that the young tree doesn’t have enough roots to make use of the water in the ground.

Of course, even on an older, well-watered tree, Li is only an average cultivar for fresh eating. Honey Jar, Sugar Cane, Black Sea, Dong, etc are all much better.