I picked another 15 pounds at my house on Friday, in advance of the rain this weekend. As I was picking, I realized that I’ve neglected to pick some of my trees, actually staying on top of the ones at the rentals better. Normally, it would just mean some very ripe, good fruit, but a lot of the Sugar Cane was cracked in the last (or one before) rain storm, That cracked fruit was softening/shriveling and would have been much better if I had picked it right away. Overall, there were 7-8 pounds of Sugar Cane and I split it into ~3lbs of good fruit which could be stored for a bit (if needed), 4+ pounds of cracked fruit which should be used quickly (some of it softening).
There was a lot of cracking in the Mei Mi as well, but all of the fruit was still good. I’m pretty impressed with this one. High brix and a bit of sharp kick give it a very good flavor. Much better than Sugar Cane IMO, though SC has more explosive crispness. Main issue for Mei Mi is lower productivity. It isn’t among the worst producers, but it average or a bit less.
Most of the Ant Admire ripened over the last week. This one is less productive than Mei Mi and has much lower quality. The brix is fine (28 and even more for an extra-ripe one without a pit which got to 32), but the texture isn’t crisp or crunch- somewhat soft, or at best firm.
I picked the last fruit from the small seedling. Fruit size was pretty good and the brix (27) wasn’t bad either. It was crunchy and had some juice to it. It is bigger than Moonlight (there is a Moonlight graft on it), has similar brix, and better texture (Moonlight is a bit too dense/hard).
While I don’t generally have trouble using a ladder to get to the tops of the trees, I did have some issues with a few tall trees along the fence, where the neighbors yard is much lower (5-10+ feet). A few large branches are growing over the fence, not leaving any easy way to get to them. For the Dae Sol Jo, I was able to pull the branch back to the fence line (without knocking off the fruit!), but I don’t see a good way to do that for this Bok Jo (see pic below). Most of it isn’t ripe yet anyway, but when it is, I’ll, have to decide what to do. Maybe I should get a pole picker. The other choice would be to just cut off the branch when it is ripe, then pick the fruit while on the ground…But, ideally it would be good to cut it back during the winter, so I could use it for more scionwood…
Honey Jar has started to ripen on at least some of the trees and I got a few pounds. Shanxi Li is just getting there, with only a few fruit ready. I’ve started filling out a spreadsheet to summarize the different varieties. Looks like there should be about 50 different ones I can report on this year.
If it is just cracked and only softening in the immediate vicinity of the crack, then I just eat it (those Mei Mi were excellent). If it is overall softening, I put those aside for my wife. She is less picky, so she gets the iffier fruit. Not really a good deal for her, but the kids and I pass on it. If she wasn’t around, I would probably just put it aside to dry. Then, you’ve got plenty of time to figure out what to use it for. Dried, I think they are like raisins (though some people have compared them to dates). My wife has also used them in soups, along with beans and rice.
I thought I only had to worry about yellow jackets. I was wrong.
A Shanxi Li had a hole on it. When I cut it open, there was tunneling and damage inside. The hole on the outside was on the brown piece.
The damage inside was quite extensive. Not sure which worm was this one.
Forgot to take pictures, but i finally got to taste Empress Gee that i had bought from OGW last year. It was incredibly sweet (for a Jujube). Has to be my new favorite of what i have. Nice and large too, much bigger than so contorted, sugar cane or honey jar. I will be trying to propagate a few cuttings of it as i want more of this fruit!
I had my first Empress Gee fruit this year. Very sweet, very crisp fruit. Definitely a top 20% jujube. But it’s still a very small plant in a 2 gallon pot, so flavor and sweetness may get better as it grows.
I saw a hole in a fruit which had some ants. But when I cut it open I couldn’t see any trails. So I’m not sure what would have caused your pic…
I think the problem is to catch them right after they crack.
This recent rain made a decent number (maybe half) of my Black Sea crack. None seem too bad though and I’ve picked all that were either badly cracked or fully ripe.
Interestingly, this is one more clue that Massandra/Maya and Moonlight could be the same or at least related. I found a Chinese site which described Moonlight as “strong resistance to cracking fruit”. I read through a few other variety descriptions that site had and several said to grow them in a greenhouse, which “solves the problem of rain and cracking fruit during the ripening period”, so it isn’t like they boast about a lack of cracking for all the fruit- like some nursery say “great sweet taste!” for every fruit…
The site also mentions that Moonlight “matured in about 40 days before the winter jujube”. That means that since Moonlight started ripening with about a week left in September, that Dong (Winter) should start around November 1st. Pretty iffy, as we normally get our first frost sometime between Oct 30 and Nov 5th.
Of course, I’m seeing a lot of variability in the ripening date. Here are 3 Honey Jars, all within about 80’ of each other (2 are only ~25’ apart).
I think the main difference is that the earliest ripening tree has the fewest fruit. Both the mid and latest ripening trees have a ton of fruit, but the mid (with some ripened) is more mature by a couple years, so it may be better able to handle it. So, I suspect that the closer a fruit load is to a tree’s max capacity, the later the fruit will ripen. The fruit size was also a bit larger on the tree with the light load of fruit, so I guess jujubes could potentially benefit from thinning. I didn’t notice any big difference in the quality though, so I’m not sure it would be worth it. Unlike with Asian pears, where golf ball sized ones aren’t much use…
In this pic, one of the smaller ones had 35 brix and was perfectly good to eat.
I’ll post when I sample mine, but it isn’t ripe yet. And there are only a few fruit on a small potted tree. I put one in the ground and left the other in a pot (where the fruit is).
While all jujube varieties have some variability in size, Contorted/So seems to have more small ones mixed in with normal sized fruit.
Keep in mind that while jujubes can be propagated from green wood (with great difficulty and low success rates), I have never heard of them growing from dormant wood. If you want more, I’d suggest grafting it to an established rootstock next spring.
I’m beginning to think that there must be something in some people’s (like @castanea) tastes which makes them rank Autumn Beauty so highly. I’ve been getting some large well watered fruit, but still don’t find it all that great. It is perfectly acceptable, but not rising to the level of Honey Jar, Black Sea, Sugar Cane, Mei Mi, or even Massandra. My mom tried a bunch of those tonight and she liked them all (Honey Jar was best, but only by a bit). Autumn Beauty was last on her list by a wide margin. Dae Sol Jo was in between, better than Autumn Beauty, but not in the top tier.
But, I brought some fruit to softball last week and one of the guys came up to me and told me that it was the best jujube he’d ever had. Now, for most people, this would be the first or 2nd time they’d had jujubes, but I’ve worked with him for 20+ years and brought jujubes to the office in the past, so he is a more experienced consumer. I was shocked that he was referring to the Autumn Beauty and prompted him to try a Sugar Cane before passing judgement. He did and while he said SC was good, the AB was still better…wow…Maybe it just happened to be an especially good AB and a dud of a SC, but it’s interesting to hear how individual the evaluations can be.
The Dae Sol Jo were pretty good (still not top-tier), even though I picked them on Friday and forgot the box (about 1.5 pounds) in the garage…hard to keep track of all the jujubes. I actually forgot a bag of Maya in the yard on the deck railing and only noticed it today, 2 days later. Good thing it was a sealed bag and it was raining/cloudy most of the time, so they didn’t cook in the bag. Between what I found and what I picked this afternoon, it adds up to 21+ pounds of jujubes this weekend. My wife knows a lot of Chinese people, so she’s already given away 8 sandwich bags full (each to different people) and I’ve been giving them to friends at sports (softball/volleyball/badminton) and the farmer’s market.
My favorite list seems to change by the day, Right now, if I was to rank them, it would be:
Honey Jar,
Mei Mi
Black Sea
I know Sugar Cane should be in the list, but right now I find I’m not as fond of them. I’m not sure if that is from all the cracking, getting too many of just them, or if it has to do with the flavor (sometimes a slight off taste- they don’t taste as sweet as the refractometer says they should…).
I had my first Orange Beauty of the year today (I also had 1-3 OB in 2020, I think). I liked the flavor, but the texture was too soft- not crisp/crunchy. The ones which were ripe also seemed to crack quite a bit, so maybe that is impacting the texture. There are a bunch of green ones still on it, so hopefully I’ll be able to give it another try in a few days/weeks.
please keep us posted of your comparison of moonlight comparing to maya/ massandra. if they are the same then no need to get moonlight. moonlight is harder to find.
i was wondering what differences of the honey jar and so and you pointed out the inconsistency of the fruit size is very interesting! because i had a hard time indentifying them if they were mixed in a bowl.
i had one or two fruits from my small potted tree last year. the fruits were large like lang size but it didnt get sweet like smaller varieties. keep us posted on your tree results if mature will improve sweetness
I picked another 5 pounds yesterday at one rental and 8+ pounds today at another. The Sugar Cane at Monday’s property are still going strong- maybe 70% done.
Though cracked in the 1+ inches of rain we’ve had in the last 36 hours, these Sugar Cane are top notch. They are cracking, but since I picked them when it was still raining a bit, they haven’t had a chance to dehydrate any and are great quality. I only had 1.2 pounds of them when I got home…probably ate a pound in the car, justifying it as I was eating the cracked ones.
Once home, I checked the brix on one and was initially surprised that it was only 25. Thinking about it, a lot of added water from rain is likely to drop the brix, but make it exposively crunchy. My oldest sampled Sugar Cane, Honey Jar, and Fuicuimi and greatly approved of all 3, but insisted that Sugar Cane was best.
Fuicuimi are still very good (“fluffy”) and maybe 1/3 have ripened, though I picked a bunch before they got all the way brown. Still 26 brix though…
I wonder if Tsao is also related to Massandra…The flavor/texture is similar. The size was a bit smaller, but it was a small graft on a massively overloaded So tree, so that could be holding it back a bit, though the tip looks slightly more pronounced than Massandra and Moonlight. I’m going to ask Prof Yao how close their genetics are…
Bob,
How is your Shanxi Li taste-wise this year? Mine has not improved. Texture is still somewhat spongy and it tastes less sweet than other varieties.
The original Orange Beauty graft with the scion from @castanea took a few years to fruit but the fruits are smaller in size than the green wood cutting that I rooted on its own root in the 5 gallons Home Depot pot. Maybe it got water everyday and the fruits are twice as big and very tasty with a crunch.
They are very good for fresh eating.
It’s always a top 10 fresh eating jujube for me and in many years it’s a top 3 jujube. At its best it’s crispy and sweet with a tiny amount of sourness and just a little more flavor than most jujubes have.
And I love the color they develop -
