I bought it a few years ago for my muscadines but it’s been good for any fruit.
You could probably get about the same effect as boiling them for a while and straining the juice.
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Update- jujube season has finally started here. I picked ~15 pounds on Thursday (home and one rental) and another 8 pounds today from two other rentals (one of the sites only had 1 lb, as the trees are still small).
We’ve had a lot of wet weather recently. In addition to rain last weekend, we had another 5-6 inches of rain Thursday night into Saturday morning.
Right now, most of what I am picking is the following varieties:
Sugar Cane- bad cracking, more than 1/2 cracked (of the ripe fruit)
Honey Jar- some cracking, maybe 1/3
Black Sea/Russia #2- some cracking, maybe 1/3
Maya/Massandra- not too bad, maybe 5%
Fuicuimi- some cracking (less than 1/2, but hard to say because this variety seems slightly behind the others in ripening)
Bing Tang- bad cracking, over 80% cracked
I didn’t actually measure/count, but this is the rough impression I had when picking the fruit, In some cases backed up by the % seconds I get…I think that I will try to quantify a lot of the metrics into 1-10 ratings in my year wrap-up. That would be for qualities such as productivity, quality, cracking, etc.
Based on the recent experience, it would be
Maya/Massandra- 9
Fuicuimi- 7
Honey Jar- 5
Black Sea/Russia #2- 5
Sugar Cane- 3
Bing Tang- 2
With 10 being no cracking
For the 2nd rain event, I tried putting a few tarps out, but to see if it would have an impact. It was a pretty low-effort, last-minute thing, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the impact is minimal.
I will say that even though there were a few more Massandra which split today, their texture was improved. They now had good crispness, not just medium-density crunch.
This pic is from Thursday, before the 5-6" of rain, which improved Maya/Massandra.
I’ve only gotten a few ripe Elkgrove, but the fruit is pretty interesting. They are very dense, maybe even denser & harder than Sherwood. I do like them better than Sherwood, but need a bit more sample before I really make up my mind on them.
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Glad you have size comparison. Is Fuicuimi usually larger than Honey Jar?
My Massandra is getting up in size. The first year it was tiny and it has been getting larger each year. This year, it looks to be the same size as yours comparing to Honey Jar.
Love to hear more about Elk Grove once you have more to sample.
It’s hard to tell in the pic, but Fuicuimi is pretty large. It feels about the same as the larger Sugar Cane. In fact, it feels bigger when trying to eat it, since it is round, it stretches your cheek out further, while the oblong Sugar Cane just goes a bit deeper in the mouth.
Last year, too many of the cracked ones went bad because they weren’t used right away. Now, I’m proactive about making sure the family can access them quickly. The non-cracked ones are packed into sandwich bags for gifting.
In terms of quality, all of these early jujubes are quite good. Sugar Cane has continued to be the most variable. Most of them seem to be getting up to ~20 brix now, though I haven’t been back to check the massively loaded tree- it could still be lagging behind. But even 20 brix Sugar Cane aren’t as good to me as the Honey Jar, Fuicuimi, Black Sea, and Bing Tang. The best Sugar Cane can join that group. To me, Sugar Cane (sometimes low sugar and cracking) and Massandra (most suspect in terms of texture and I just don’t like the pointed pits) are the laggards IMO. But even the last 2 of these 6 are quite good.
I’ve also had a few Autumn Beauty and So, but most aren’t ripe yet. And last week a lot of Chico were ripe at a rental, but none of them had pits. This often happens with Shanxi Li (early ones with just a seed in the middle, no stone pit).
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Can you please compare fuicuimi and honey jar a little more? the photos you show the fuicuimi is a little larger than honey jar. the flavor as you rated the fuicuimi is higher than honey jar. cracking the fuicuimi ripens later than honey jar and cracks 1/2 of crop compared the 1/3 of honey jar. how is the difference in the productivity? any other difference that made the fuicimi rating better than honey jar? thank you!
Those ratings were regarding their propensity to crack, not flavor/quality, which is a lot more subjective. I did put Fuicuimi with Honey Jar (and Black Sea & Bing Tang) in the top tier, with Massandra and Sugar Cane relegated to 2nd tier. Though the best Sugar Cane are top tier…they just don’t happen consistently.
Maybe slightly, but they definitely overlap. As noted in an earlier post, ripening order is pretty strange for me this year. I have some Honey Jar trees which are halfway through their crop and others with 0% ripe. The same for Sugar Cane, so it is getting really hard to compare orders. I only have 3 Fuicuimi (one of which is in a shaded location and the other is young), so I’m really basing this on a couple large branches. With Honey Jar and Sugar Cane I have 10+ trees each, so it is more obvious how variable things are.
That was a typo on my part. I was thinking 20% and somehow the 2 got into the fraction instead. Either way, I should have a better take on this later this afternoon, as I’ll visit the Fuicumi again. Right now, it’s crack rating is based on only the first of the 2 large rain events.
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I love my Ant Admire. I got the tree from @castanea a few years ago. Ant Admire is on the left in the pictures. The large fruit is Autumn Beauty, the tree also came from @castanea . Ant Admire is sweeter, juicier and has more acidity, but it ripens after Autumn Beauty. The trees are growing in Woodland, CA. I have a comparative video at https://youtube.com/shorts/oAkWLjerzs0?si=qIYoIqk7vxE8BDFx
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How big do you let your trees get? I want to keep mine pretty low, but I also want to make sure I get enough fruit each year.
Nice to see the photos.
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These trees are still small, under 5-6 ft as they had difficult life - I had to move them from one orchard to another. I have another tree that is like 8 -9 ft tall, and I plan to top it to about 7 ft
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Sad news to me. Came home from work today. Saw a squirrel running down my Honey Jar tree with a HJ in its mouth. Not sure how many squirrels have found my jujubes.
They were evidence (half eaten jujubes) on the ground, too.
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I try to keep them to about 10’, but often they are more like 12-13’. I do most of the harvesting from either the ground or a 3 stair step. If fruit is higher, I mostly just pull down on the branch to get to it. If it breaks, then that was my pruning…
I got over to the site with the overloaded Sugar Cane, which had the whole top of the tree break off a few years ago from me pulling it down to get at fruit. It’s recovered pretty well and I have a ton of fruit on the tree. I picked 16 pounds of fruit from that tree yesterday and there is still plenty more to go. I was surprised that the crack rate was lower from this past weekend’s storm, than in the past for this tree. There were a surprising number of fruit which had softened slightly for no apparent reason. In fact, there were probably as many of those as there were cracked fruit. Between the two, it was probably 25-30% of what I picked that got classified as “seconds”.
A lot of it is getting gifted to various friends and neighbors. Often in sandwich bags weighing about 0.8 pounds each.
There is still plenty more on the tree that isn’t ripe yet.
Aside from having more Sugar Cane ripening, there are a number of varieties which haven’t even started fruiting. Xu Zhou for instance. As you can see in this pick, even crack-susceptible varieties don’t crack if they aren’t close to ripening.
My Autumn Beauty has started to ripen a few fruit, but none of them have very many on the trees this year.
Uploading: Autumn_Beauty_10-01-2023.jpeg…
It seems to be hit or miss. I’ve had widely different behaviors, even at the same site. Sometimes there is steady, light pressure. Other times, nothing at all gets taken until I hit a point in the season where it all vanishes overnight. And other times it seems like the fruit doesn’t even get noticed. And any given site can change between these behaviors, so it doesn’t seem like the animals have too good of a memory, at least so far. Of course, if you are just growing jujubes in one spot, the inconsistancy could be pretty frustrating.
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So far squirrels have not bothered my potted seedling jujubes, other than digging holes in the soil, but chipmunks have caused some losses on my bigger in-ground tree, Sugarcane plus Honeyjar. The main pest I have found are katydids. They chew holes in the fruit all the way to the pit, then move to the next fruit. It only seems to be a couple of them doing all the damage, as I dispatched them one at a time and the holes ceased for a week or two, until the next one discovered my jujubes. One katydid could damage a dozen fruits in just a few hours. The fruits then rot or shrivel up.
Some squirrels in my yard are determined to get to jujubes. I put a trap at the base of the tree with peanut butter and sunflower seeds (their favorites, usually). These squirrels just ignored the baits and went up the tree. Unbelievable!!!
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@k8tpayaso
I found one Sihong today. The graft is not productive at all. The flesh was dense like you have described previously. Not much flavor. No variety is very sweet this year, not even Honey Jar.
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I think y’all got all my rain! My taste was concentrated and everything was good—except my water bill! I think a lot of it has to do with my trees being 7 years old. SiHong is not as prolific a bearer as honey jar especially early but I have more fruit every year. My tree is about 12 foot tall now.
I think all my fruits are gone for this year. The last I tasted was two persimmon juju fruits that were very similar to Chico.
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autumn beauty i have seen photos of it being large and sweet but how is the texture spongy like li or crunchy?
alcade #1 i heard is similar to autumn beauty if not the same but the photos i seen it has a longer shape fruit not a large round/square shape fruit. How is the texture and flavor on this?
And does anyone have new harvest of Ant Admire? I read the previous comments of it being not productive and dry. But has that change with the tree getting older? or it is just the variety.
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I have Alcalde #1 and I am not impressed. It is dry and spongy to me and very stingy production. I think it is very similar to AB but without the spiky thorns. But then my AB is very stingy fruiting too.
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