I wouldn’t say that it isn’t a symptom of a sickly tree but I can guarantee that trees doing very well sucker like crazy at my place. You can walk out between mowing and count a hundred of them and I really don’t think I have a sickly tree this year. I did lose one large tree that suckered a lot and I dug up a lot of them. I feel the same though right now suckers are a waste of my time. It takes a long while to get them started well and I’ve got plenty of rootstocks.
Your trees look fantastic!
I’ve got fruit ripening. Order of maturity so far
So (jf&e) a surprise to me
Autumn Beauty— Alcalde has not started turning yet two weeks aft AB browning up
Sugar Cane
Honey Jar
Texas Twister…… most have not started ripening. This tree is doing better and better for me here in Texas. I need to send scion out and let everyone evaluate it in other areas. Largest fruit is sugar cane size, nice texture and a bit of tartness but not sour.
We had a lot of rain and then a dryish spell
And now rain. I have fruit with cracks on top of cracks!!
Baby Red is threatening ripeness. I ate a cracked one and it still tastes a little green.
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Yes, those pics are the ones doing well. Some of the ones not producing still look great- just no fruit. Or maybe a fruit every few feet. The one by the mailbox is mostly bare, except a bunch of fruit on a Black Sea graft and a few fruit on Sweet Tart and Pepper grafts.
Sounds like a good one to try. Sounds like you will be cutting it back so much for wood that you might skip a year in production. That happened to my BV1. It got cut from 4-5’ back down to 2’ and spent last year growing back to 6-7’, rather than producing. It has some fruit on it again this year, so I’m looking forward to a 2nd taste.
How as the quality of the early So? For me, the early ones are the worst. Often poor to OK texture. It is the late ones, large and specked which have great crunch, and a bit of tartness to go with 30 brix.
The early ones are like the small ones in this pic, while some of the late ones are like the larger ones.
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Same here. JF&E So has not really impressed me much this year. It has such a size variance in fruit from tiny to large. The large ones have not ripened yet
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I I hope to someday figure out how to make it produce only the large, good fruit. I’m watching to see if I can identify any trends. I do have quite a lot of so trees, at a number of different properties, so hopefully something will emerge. Off the top of my head, it is about 20 so trees in 7 locations. As far as I can tell, they are all the same kind that Jfae sells.
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@k8tpayaso
Glad to hear that Katy’s jujube trees that sucker a lot don’t decline. The suckers from my HJ are mostly from the roots near the trunk of the tree. Some showed up several feet from the mother tree but most just sprout from the main roots a foot or two from the trunk.
I pulled those off because there was no way I could sever such large roots of the mother tree.
I do not think this tree has declined so those suckers have sprouted to produce the next generation trees. It is the opposite. The tree has grown well the first 5 year but suckers have kept showing up more and more sucking the energy out of the mother tree.
I was not vigilant in taking off those suckers until last year whenI noticed how many they were. By then, I have noticed HJ had not many leaves. This year, the donditi9n is worse.
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Where are the Jujubes. I only see landscape photos?
Tony
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Hi. Thats not a photo, its a security thing… you have to dislocate the part on left to complete the image
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@k8tpayaso
Here are how my suckers show up. Next to the trunk of the tree and right from main roots. There are dozens of them every couple of days. The Rootstock for HJ has the worst.
There are other suckers further away that I could dig up. But these next to the tree are nuisances.
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Those you need to get rid of quickly. I have one tree that suckers and they come up underneath a persimmon tree
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yeah, hj is not as fast growing as other cultivars, so the rootballs get impatient and figure that if they have to “do things right”, they have to do it themselves…
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You and other people can see it?
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I only have 3 jujube trees but many suckers are coming up in an area within 10 ft of them. More annoying than that are the large number at the base of the trees. Are there any trees with little suckering that can be used as rootstock?
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I think the tendency to send out suckers will vary by the rootstock. But, since people often propagate trees by digging up suckers, most trees will be on rootstocks that send out lots of suckers. It’s a self-perpetuating pattern.
I guess what you could do is find a tree with a long history of no suckers, then dig it up and graft a bunch of trees to the roots. You could probably start a lot of trees that way, at the cost of an existing tree.
One thing I’ve noticed is that trees on their own roots don’t seem to send out as many suckers. But that could just be a matter of “a watched pot never boils”, as I’ve been waiting for that. Of course, I think there was one last week, but I accidentally mowed it down.
In addition to the Vegas Booty from Raf, I also have Autumn Beauty, Sugar Cane, and Honey Jar on their own roots from JF&E. The VB is in a pot, but the others are in ground and haven’t sent out many suckers.
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I’m raising seedlings in pots. Some of these sucker like crazy in the pots but most of them don’t. I have removed suckers from those that sucker profusely and they send up more. All cultivar varieties have done this but the majority don’t send up suckers in a pot but probably would in the ground. So I would say that some have more of a tendency than others to sucker.
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This year’s rendering of jujube juice for jelly making. I got two of these bags ready for the freezer.
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Do you needto get it done in a steamer or juicer?
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I use a steamer. I cut my larger fruits into about three pieces. It takes a little more than two gallons to fill my steamer and for jujus it takes several hours of steaming.
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My 7 yr old HJ has not done well this year. The tree has lots and lots of suckers. I have to remove them every few days. Since the spring, this tree has noticeably fewer leaves than other jujubes I grow.
However, it has managed to set a good amount of fruit. Unfortunately, these days, many young fruit have dropped. I wonder if it is because the tree does not have enough leaves to feed all the fruit.
I can’t blame soil, water or weather as the other trees are within feets of this trees have a lot of leaves and don’t drop fruit (some but not this badly).
@jujubemulberry , @BobVance , @k8tpayaso , what do you think?
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