Jujubes- Our New Adventure

I am in zone 6 I like Honey Jar and Sugar Cane. They are sweet and crunchy. I like wthem with crunch.

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Honey Jar and Sugarcane are great choices for most of the country. No variety seems to be great everywhere, local info is always best, but I see good reviews for those 2 all the time. I really like Li too, here in Dallas.

Others on my A list here include Autumn Beauty (edited), Contorted So, Shihong, Chico.

There are also varieties that can in some locations be good, but can have issues. Tigertooth, GA 866, Lang, Sherwood are some

Good luck!

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Bob,
I can never get Winter Delight story straight. Is it really WD or Autumn Beauty? Which nursery sell the real WD?

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i agree, hj and sc are probably the best for beginners, since these are some of the more readily available, relatively precocious, and juicier varieties. And if you’re planning to grow jujus on ‘virgin’ land, and if not in a hurry to get instant trees, would strongly recommend you obtain them on their own roots. Jfae supposedly offers hj and other cultivars on their own roots, and then just graft them over with other cultivars with budwood from england’s, burntridge, etc., and of course from the scion exchange here. Should your grafts fail, your ‘rootstock’ would still be topnotch, since its fruits are desirable, and any sucker that sprouts won’t be too thorny and will produce the same desirable fruits. You may also could dig up and re-plant as a new tree.
if you’re on a tight budget and in a hurry to grow lots of trees, of course you can always buy grafted ones, but be ready with your lawn mower if the rootstock has strong wild-type characteristics. Grafted jujus involve extra labor and materials compared to self-rooted jujus, but are still offered cheaper than self-rooted ones because jujus are difficult to raise from cuttings/airlayers, and may take a bit longer to mass-produce if merely waiting for the specimen to sucker

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Sorry, I’m drinking wine :slightly_frowning_face: Autumn Beauty is great. Winter Delight I hope to try in a couple weeks

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i sense a great load of bewilderment with the above quoted. Rightfully so!
Maybe Bob has some answers or at least an educated guess.
am afraid though that it might be impossible to answer, since the importer which registered the trademark(onegreen world) themselves have been selling different-fruited cultivars with the same name. I bought massandra twice and one has totally different fruits than the other, and the winter d that bought from ogw a few years ago is totally different from the one obtained from Bob, who originally obtained his winter d from ogw as well. Jfae’s pictures of their winter d(aka mango dong zao) also has a different fruit shape from what ogw posted recently, which are more like sc in size and shape.

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Raf,
And you think I shouldn’t be totally confused. :grin:

we are only as accurate as the original distributor. The problem is— the distributor is inaccurate!

A friend, who is new to jujubes asked if he should buy a Winter Delight. I told him I don’t know which nursery sells the real WD.

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My educated and wine enhanced guess

Castenea’s descriptions are correct

OneGreenWorld sold me 1 mislabeled tree 10 years ago, and my reporting of how good it was created a lot of confusion

The pictures at OGW are sometimes meant to be “representative”

I buy a lot from OGW and like them a lot. I trust their trees.

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So, @castanea has the real WD?

Do you know if OGW is selling the real WD now?

if remember it right @castanea 's winter d are pear shaped, or like little butternut gourds. The winter d i obtained from ogw a few years ago look exaclty like what ogw posted pictures of recently-- with fruits like sugar cane in approximate size and shape, being oval/eggshaped .

have to add though that the young winter d i got from ogw produced fruits much better than sugarcane(no bitterness when borne and ripened in >110F summers), and seems to be precocious.
i also obtained a winter d from jfae, supposedly self-rooted, but it has not fruited yet afterbeing shipped bare root and toasted by our summer solstice in transit to vegas

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I have 4-5 fruit ripening now on a OGW WD. We’ll see!

Are your WD a pear shape or a oblong shape?

Autumn Beauty ripens here in August.
Winter Delight Ripens now.
These are WD fruit-

These are AB -

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YThe way I understand it…with input from @castanea, is many of the Winter Delight that are sold are actually what he knows as Autumn Beauty. He has a “real” Winter Delight that is a different shape…and in his opinion not as tasty as Autumn Beauty which is being touted as Winter Delight. So…when @Bhawkins thought he had Winter Delight as his favorite (uninfluenced by wine) he really had Autumn Beauty—maybe. Now…I was sold a Winter Delight from JF&E on its own roots (MangoDongZao) that bore fruit this year that looked like, tasted like, and had the physical characteristics the same as Autumn Beauty, sold to me by OGW. Now if we all had some wine this might make sense—or not!! :joy::joy::joy:

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Thank you Raf, Bob, Kathy @castanea for your input on Winter Delight.

As this point, wine would not do, I need something stronger :grin:.

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hopefully this will do, and per the website:

“It’s excellent paired with matured cheeses, also with spicy and blue cheeses and great to accompany dry pastries.”

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@castanea,
Thanks for the pics.

Since your real WD just ripened now, there is no way it can ripen here in time. Our low was 35-40 F these days. Not enough heat to ripen them.

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Enjoy it with your friends or while you are reading a good book.

Hmmm… the book part is questionable…

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