My Tigertooth on its own roots is putting on quite a few fruit. At first I thought there were just a couple of fruits but now I am seeing more and more. Below is a photo of just one branch and multiple other branches have fruit on them, too. The only branches without fruit are the three grafts of Sugar Cane that I put on it this spring.
I just planted it last year and it was a spindly little thing. It has grown well and is putting on lots of fruit for its first year in the ground. It seems to be a vigorous variety!
I really hope some of these will ripen in the approximately next 6 weeks before frost. Even if it may not be the best tasting variety, I just want to taste a tree-ripened jujube before I die. If it is not that good for fresh eating, maybe it will be good for dehydrating, which is what I really want to do with a good portion of any jujubes I may eventually get. R4T3 has lots of flowers, but I don’t see any fruit this year. The Si Hong, Xu Zhou, and Sugar Cane grafts to the R4T3 root suckers (which are Tiger tooth) seem to be growing well, so maybe some fruit from some of them next year.
We have not had any decent rain for several weeks now, so I gave both trees several buckets of water this week, hoping it might help the fruits on Tigertooth to grow and mature.
Sandra
Is this your first year fruiting Bok Jo? They look pretty good. Early on in my jujube growing, I had a year where only Bok Jo produced (nothing else with more than 1-2 fruits). Quality isn’t as high as Honey Jar or Sugar Cane, but it is at least average level, beating Li or Sherwood.
The weather is interesting this year. The last month has been great jujube weather (mostly sunny), but I think it was bad initial set from rain early in the season that set them back. I even have a Bok Jo with poor fruit set. I think it is because I let a mulberry block a lot of sun from it. I cut the mulberry way way back once it was done fruiting in late June, but that appears to be too late. It only has 4-5 fruit on the tree. So I guess even Bok Jo can’t fruit in the shade. At least in a year that was challenging to start with.
It’s looking like I could move at some point in the next 1-2 years, so I’ve been going through the yard to figure out what needs to get transplanted. I counted 47 jujube in the yard (53 if you count the decent sized seedlings), though I think the big So may end up staying. It measured ~7.5" diameter, much larger than the next largest (6 trees in the 4-4.5" diameter rage). I will definitely move the <2" trees (about 25 of them, including the seedlings). The remaining 20 being 2-3" diameter, Normally I use a hose to wash the dirt away from the roots, but I’m not sure if I have time to do that 50+ times (not counting all the other kinds of fruit trees). I may look into renting an excavator (and maybe paying someone to run it…). At least the yard I’ll be moving to would be larger
This is the 2nd year of Bok Jo fruiting. Last year it set lightly. I could not recall what it taste like. This year it sets well.
This year’s weather was unusual indeed. It was 94-95 F all of the sudden. I saw many jujubes fried in such a sudden heat.
My first grafted Honey Jar is dying. It has leafed out but not many leaves snd set not one single fruit. My guess is it caused by grafting incompatibility. I cannot think of other reasons as a Sugar Cane and Shanxi Li next to it are growing normally.
Hopefully the new place with lots of yard is nearby so don’t have to haul all those jujube trees to far away. Yes on the excavator due to some of those large jujube trees and that will save you some back ache .
I have a couple of questions that I was hoping I could get help with.
Last spring I planted jujube seeds and now have 7 healthy trees, 2-4’ tall growing in a nursery.
Question one is, should I move the plants this fall and graft in the spring or wait, graft and move next fall. I am leaning toward the first option, seems like it would be best and I need the space where they are currently planted.
I currently have Shanxi Li, two Honey Jar, Coco, Sugar Cane, Black Sea, Li and have grafted a couple of scions of Yahoo Li but they seem to only be growing fruiting leaflets.
Second question, what other varieties would you suggest? I need 4-7, I live in southeast Missouri, zone 7a, and have hot humid summers. The ones currently planted seem to be thriving. But none have set any significant fruits, a couple have set very late fruit and may not have time to ripen this year
Third question, How would you rate the deer pressure on these trees? The ones I have planted are inside a fence but would like to plant the additional ones where deer will have access and I would rate our deer pressure as at least moderate. .
One of the Honey Jar’s and Shanxi Li are completing their second summer, the rest wore either planted in the fall of '24 or spring of '25 so really are not old enough to set fruit.
The deer in my area like to eat jujube leaves and unlignified branches. They don’t like them as well as mulberry leaves, but they’re a close second in my yard. I protect jujubes with cages until they are 6ft trees and can survive deer browsing lower branches.
Jujube trees are easy to transplant in the winter when they are dormant. Ideally, I would recommend growing your rootstocks at least a year in the place where you want them before grafting. It’s less stressful on the tree not to transplant and graft the same year. You could graft right away, but in my experience you’ll get more growth on your new grafts if the rootstock is already established in the ground.
I want to add that I’ve spoken to their representative on there and they don’t offer phytosanitary certificates or anything that would help USDA push the plant through customs. They said it’s on us to do it even though we can’t since we aren’t the shipper (someone correct me if I’m wrong on this one). They did say that they’ll send another tree if the first one gets destroyed at customs but that they will only do it once.
Unless someone has had decent experience with them, from my emails and messages back and forth with their customer service agents, of which, have been great with communication overall, they don’t guarantee the plant to get through customs with is an issue in itself. This was earlier in the year when i spoke with them because i was interested in a few plants.
About 10 minutes drive, at least when a jujube tree isn’t hanging out the back of the car
I’m not sure if they eat the whole branch, but deer will eat the leaves. I had 2 properties with high deer pressure and all the jujube at both were killed by deer. Thankfully, we sold both of those houses
The following are at a minimum almost identical:
Li and Yazoo Li
Coco and Sugar Cane
Dong/Sandia would be a good one to add, as it is a very late variety and lengthens the season. So/Contorted can sometimes produce very good fruit, with high brix, good crunch, and a hint of tart. If you want very tart, then Texas Tart is like a lemon, but high brix. The two NcDabbler cited are both good for productivity, though I prefer the fruit from Bok Jo to Xu Zhou (BJ gets higher brix and Xu Zhou seems to crack more if it rains).
Sounds risky. Both that you might not get the tree and you might introduce witches broom into the US. And $180 is pretty steep for a bare root tree.
I’ve started picking my first jujubes of the season over the last few days. At first, I was surprised that any were ripe so early. Then I noticed that the branch with the ripe fruit was one I girdled in a past year. I guess it never healed over and is still providing early ripening.
