Yes Chico is a good one. Li , lang, honeyjar are all good. @39thparallel has all these and more. Ate 5 or 6 types today and did not try them all.
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@clarkinks
You are the first person on this thread who ranked HJ, Li and Lang at the same level. HJ often ranks first and Lang is last by a good distance. There must be some magic in Kansas soil.
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Maybe but they are all very good with high sugar levels. Chico was sweeter than honeyjar. Li and lang were similar to honeyjar but it might shade them a little. Have gallons of chances to see if i change my mind. Jujubes have a somewhat similar flavor to me but at times one is set apart from the rest for good or bad reasons. We could not have picked 20% of the bountiful crop there if we focused on only jujube. @39thparallel does really like honeyjar but they are very similar. Some of the others are signifigantly different. Very easy to distinguish varieties.
Lang
Li
Seedlings
Keep in mind how ripe they are and how much sun they have makes a huge difference.
As an example here is li in different stages of ripening up. If someone eats li before its ripe then its more like an apple than jujube. Honeyjar ripens before li so i could see why someone might rate it much higher. They are both good but different in their own way.
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I think the key is how do you define ripe and what your goal is. If you are looking for a dried fruit, you can let it get brownish red all over and start to shrivel. I consider that overripe, with āripeā being 80-100% brown, but without losing any crispness or crunch. It it isnāt shiny, then it has probably started to lose texture.
So, if you are eating Lang shriveled (and importantly comparing them to shriveled Li and Honey Jar), I can see why they may not be too different. I did get a 30+ brix Lang last week, so it does get plenty sweet. But it kind of skips over the crisp/crunchy/juicy phase, so it is pretty inferior for my purposes.
I didnāt get out to any of the rentals this weekend and had a couple friends over to pick at my house. Between them, and my own picking, I finally have my trees in a state where the ripe fruit has been picked, though some of the trees will need another picking in a few days- So, Xu Zhou, and Shanxi Li and mid harvest, with Honey Jar, Dae Sol Jo, and a few others getting close to done.
Today, I picked mostly So (a lot from a ladder). Over 15 pounds total.
When picking, I like to put a small box inside a big box. The small one gets the 2nds- fruit with cracks or damage that need to be used soon. The pristine fruit gets put in the outer box.
When I get done for the day, I put the good fruit into gallon zip lock bags and put it in a garage refrigerator (one is almost full). The seconds box gets brought up to be snacked on by the family, including myself. If there is a lot of damage, I sometimes separate out thirds- ones too soft/damaged to be nice to eat fresh (softening can be due to cracks or just handing too long). Iāve dried some of these and am thinking about making jujube jam/jelly with others. I think some of the shrivel fruit in Clarkās pics would count as thirds for me. Itās still usable, but is a very different type of fruit.
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@BobVance
You use a convection oven at 180 F to dry jujubes, right? How long do you keep them in the oven? I have more than I need and want to dry them.
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Yes shriveled is what i like when they taste very much like a date. The green ones are not for me. The brown ones are fine once they get rid of most of the green on them. Your description makes me understand why @mamuang said that. Did not realize many people ate them prior to them shriveling up. It is the same as when i see people eat green bananas i like mine with spots.
Bob,
Can you try to eat the Sandia jujube at different stages of ripeness and let me know how you like it. I have high hope for this variety.
Tony
I did it for about 6 hours. It wasnāt completely dried, but Iām not sure exactly how dry they should be. Either way, hopefully it was enough to ensure they donāt go bad for a while. Iād suggest a bit of trial and error. Especially if you know what you are shooting for, in terms of moisture levelā¦
Once most of the fruit is brown, they are like apples, but better (twice as sweet). At least, the good jujubes (not including Lang 
) are. This would be āFresh eatingā, while the shriveled ones are āDrying jujubeā, which Iāve mostly stayed away from, given that most Fresh Eating jujubes can be used as dried jujubes.
This site categorizes them as Fresh Eating, Drying, Ornamental (mostly zig-zag and weird shapes), and multipurpose.
https://jujube.nmsu.edu/varieties/eating.html
Iāll check it out on Tuesday when I pass by the rental with the graft. My original tree still hasnāt fruited, but I put a graft near the top of a So at the site where everything grows well and it already has a decent amount of fruit.
Last week, it looked about the same as Dong (same site, as the original at my house also only had 1-2 fruit, which may have dropped). Both had a blush which seemed to attract bird pecks. I guess it isnāt too strange that they resemble each other, as NMSU describes Sandia as āsimilarities with Dongzao (Winter jujube, very late in season, most popular fresh eating cultivar in China)ā.
I tried one (I think it was a Dong) and it had good texture and was mildly sweet. Iām sure it will be better once it starts to turn brown.
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Is Sandia going to mature for you?
Usually i use jujube in a hot tea as a tonic in the winter. They are a superfood in my opinion. Love to eat them as well fresh.
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I just ordered some grafting knife and tape from Amazon. I tried to look at our local place but I think they are expensive, not cheaper. Once it arrives I will try grafting something for experience.
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The knife isnāt that critical. I have a floristās knife which I like grafting with, but when I canāt find it (fairly often, as Iāve been known to misplace tools, trees, kids, etc) I donāt mind using a utility knife (razor). And not even a particularly sharp one. I happened to have it in my pocket when working on something with a contractor and he said it was so dull that he couldnāt cut himself with it. Even so, I thought he was taking a chance pressing it into his thumbā¦Still, it worked OK on wood, though maybe a sharper one would have made cleaner cuts.
I picked another 14 pounds of jujubes at a rental last night:
Sihong has been growing on me. I only picked a bit over a pound (not including some cracked ones), and had planned to just put them away after sampling one this morning. But, I ended up eating about half of them. They had good flavor, and a reasonable crunch and some juice. Not the same crispy juice as Sugar Cane or Honey Jar, but not bad. Of large jujubes (which Iām generally not too fond of) Sihong and Dae Sol Jo seem to be the best. And for earlier season, Autumn Beauty isnāt bad.
I picked almost 4 pounds of Li from this same site (the Sihong is just 2 grafted branches, while Li is most of a tree). Itās OK, but is slightly worse in texture and a bigger drop in flavor from Sihong.
So were pretty good. Crunchy, dense, and with some acid bite (missing from the ones on my big tree at home).
The 2 TVA trees are younger, so I only got one each:
R1T4 Is in a bit more shade and hasnāt grown as much, but has a much heavier fruit set.
R4T3 has been growing quite a bit, but only has a few fruit.
Too early to draw any solid conclusions, but Iām not impressed so far. I may end up grafting over most of both and just leaving a few low branches. After all, this site is very good for jujubes, so I donāt want to waste any space on under-performers. The Li already has a bunch of grafts, including Dong, Redlands, Sweet Tart, etc, but I could add a few more. Or at least cut back the Li branches and let the others grow into the space.
Bok Jo isnāt bad- crunchy, dense, and sweet, but it does crack and when massively over-fruiting the size can suffer:
There are only a few Honey Jar left on the tree, but they are still very good. A few of them are losing a bit of crunch, but they still had a lighter and juicier texture than all the above fruit. Though the So at their best are just as good (but quite different- acid instead of super-sweet and hard crunch instead of juicy crisp). Thinking about it, they complement each other well.
And then there were 2 anxiously awaited additions.
Neither Dong, nor Sandia is really quite ripe yet. But, they are still very good. Even if the season ended tonight with a frost, they would be entirely usable fruit.
Both had top-tier textures. I would compare Dong to Sugar Cane (very juicy) and Sandia to something between Fuicuimi and Honey Jar (light crunch, crisp, juicy, though maybe slightly less than HJ). And that is from mostly green fruitā¦Given that Sandia was 26-28 brix already, once ripe, their brix should be through the roof.
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Thank You @BobVance, I saved your post about grafting but I have a newbie question.
Here is my Lang tree, the blue marks are where Iām going to cut and graft.
And here is a GA-866 that I plant to cut around the black marks
Are they appropriate areas to take cut.
Also somebody here asked me for a scion of HJ, here is my HJ, itās still pretty small, I marked out where I would cut, is that appropriate, or my tree is too small to give somebody a scion. I donāt want to send something that will not survive.
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Itās hard to say where to graft based on a picture. Part of it will be based on the wood you get and what type of graft you want to do. But, in general, Iād say things that you donāt want much of, like Lang, can be grafted lower, possibly even the main trunk. While something you like may only get grafts on side branches.
Honey Jar is so common, I wouldnāt suggest cutting back your potted specimen to send wood. If it was something rare that you wanted to spread around, a better case could be made.
One more pic of fruit from yesterday- these were from my yard and none were as good as those from the above post. Yazoo Li is very large, but wasnāt that impressive in texture. Iāve never been that impressed with Xu Zhou, though these werenāt bad, at least compared to the Yazoo Li. The Honey Jar wasnāt entirely ripe, so it didnāt really distinguish itself. On the other hand, a Dae Sol Jo I had today was pretty good.
Animals have been swiping jujube in my yard, particularly Xu Zhou and Honey Jar. I suspect Raccoon, based on a few broken branches. Iāve seen this happen before with later jujubes, both in my yard and at some rentals. Iāve put out traps recently, but whatever is doing this is good enough to steal the bait, without setting off the trap. Iāll need to setup a camera to see how it is getting done.
Edit: Hereās another sampling. Interestingly there is quite a variation in the Honey Jar brix. 23, 29, and 32 for 3 different fruit. I did pick from 3 HJ trees, so they could have been from different trees (though all in the same yard). I need to figure out what caused some fruit to be much sweeter. All 3 trees had heavy crop loads. The 29 & 32 brix HJ were both good, while the 23 brix one tasted bland in comparison, though the texture was still fine.
Li and Xu Zhou are about the same- OK eating, but not impressive at all. If I didnāt have better jujubes Iād be much happier eating them.
Iāve got 2 different trees with Churchpoint at home. These were from the tree where they donāt have any tart (grafted on a Honey Jar). The fruit from the other tree is also sweet, but has a tart flavor (grafted on a So). Iāll need to keep an eye on them in future years to see if the trend continues or was just based on conditions this year.
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@jujubemulberry
This year, all three Vegas series set fruit. I am surprised by the size of Vegas Booty. It is about the size of a Sugar Cane.
Baby, once overripe, tastes sweet/tart with very soft texture, reminding me a small Indian jujubes.
Spicy is quite dry but somewhat bland with a hint of tartness.
Booty - looks similar to Orange Beauty minus the pointed bottom. Have not tasted it yet. I found only one of it.
.
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@BobVance
Finally got to try Sihong. It was dense and dry with some sweetness. I can see it could be good when dried.
Orange Beauty is juicier with some tartness in it.
I would take OB over Sihong for now.
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Are you letting them get wrinkly on the tree as a precursor to drying them, or was it not intentional? I get a few fruit like that, which I toss into the āsecondsā box, along with the badly cracked and softening fruit.
Many of my trees are wrapping up as well. I noticed that my big So has started to drop itās leaves. About half so far.
So, I just picked the rest (minus maybe ~5 fruit) from the tree. It was just over 4 pounds, including a Dae Sol Jo and a few Bok Jo (bottom right of the pic) from grafts. This tree produced at least 52 pounds of fruit, not including any that dropped or was snatched by animals.
Iāve noticed that Contorted/So is pretty variable in quality. This tree is generally good, not great. The later fruit are maybe a bit better (āgood+ā?). While the So from the rental are āgreatā and some of the other So in my yard are āgreat-ā (better than the big tree, but not quite as good as the one at the rental). I donāt think that they are different varieties, as sometimes Iāll get a āgoodā ones on the āgreatā tree. It isnāt just a matter of brix- the best fruit is crunchier and has more acid kick, as well as brix.
I ended up picking only 7lbs of jujubes today and had time left to pick another 12+ pounds of hardy kiwi(10lbs Rossana and 2lbs Cordifolia)
I had a few Sihongās from my yard. They werenāt as good as the ones from the rental- dryer, with a generally poorer texture. Basically, similar to the other big jujube such as Li. Maybe the better conditions and bigger root system from the tree at the rental made the fruit crisper/juicier (though still not anywhere close to Honey Jar or Sugar Cane).
Still none for me. Vegas Booty is a pretty big graft, but no fruit yet. The graft for Vegas Glitzy is still pretty small.
I havenāt been able to catch anything for a while- I guess it is hard for my traps to compete with fresh jujubes. Maybe you can ID it based on the presents it left for me. The fact that it keeps going back to the stairs to my deck could also help narrow it downā¦
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