Jujubes- Our New Adventure

[mamuang]

@jujubemulberry is technically right that jujube is a stone fruit but it is not counted as a stone fruit by general American fruit growers

@Bede - where did you get your So from. I will give up on mine. No doubt about it.

My Sugar Cane is a winner from year one. It is productive and sets crunchy and tasty (to my taste) fruit every year. A friend tasted Honey Jar and Sugar Cane from my trees. He went on to order a Sugar Cane tree for his garden.

I think if possible, people should try the fruit and decide which varieties they like. Taste is subjective.

[castanea]

I am also in SW Missouri. It’s nice to know what does well here. Do you grow Chico?

[Bede]

‘So’ came from Roger Meyer as well. Definitely one of my favorites.

[mamuang]

@Bede
You are double lucky.

[Bede]

I never tried ‘Chico’ based on negative recommendations for this area. Here are the ones I’m growing, propagating, and getting good fruit off of in SW Missouri:
-Li,
-Li 2,
-Lang,
-Tsao,
-Tigertooth,
-So,
-Sugarcane,
-Topeka,
-Admiral Wilkes,
-Shanxi Li,
-Xu Zhou,
-Redlands 4,
-September Late,
Seems like ‘Xu Zhou’ really is a winner here as well. Time will tell with the others as to how productive they’ll be but at this time they all seem to be producing relatively well.

[BobVance]

@Kate6b

I am at New Haven CT which is the same zone as @BobVance

You’re about 45 min East of me. You could actually be in zone 7a, depending on which map you use and where you are in the city. I think I’m actually into the 6b zone, though I’ve occasionally seen 7a maps. Looking at what I’ve measured, the low temps I get are sometimes into 6a. Thankfully, those type of lows are fine for jujube. What I need more of is sun.

@mamuang

My Sugar Cane is a winner from year one. It is productive and sets crunchy and tasty (to my taste) fruit every year

Some people were recently saying Sugar Cane has bitter overtones that made it unpleasant. It has never had that for me and has always been very good. But, it doesn’t seem to bear as heavily or consistently as Honey Jar, though the fruit size is larger than HJ. .

@mamuang

I think if possible, people should try the fruit and decide which varieties they like. Taste is subjective.

People should try them if they can. Not so much to help with the decision, but because they may decide they want more trees if they know how good they are. I got the first couple trees because my wife wanted them (she also hadn’t had them fresh in China, only here). After I had some good ones, I added a lot more trees.

But in this area, it is more important to get a tree full of fruit than to perfectly optimize which kind. Other than some which are traditionally grown for drying, I find most of them pretty tasty, especially as grown here. The production-wise the variety can make the difference between 0 and dozens or hundreds of fruit.

@Bede

getting good fruit off of in SW Missouri:

How are Topeka and Admiral Wilkes? I tried to graft AW from Roger Meyers years ago, but wasn’t successful. I think I remember hearing that Topeka is a bit like Chico, in that it has some acid.

@Bede

Seems like ‘Xu Zhou’ really is a winner here as well.

Production or taste? I’m anxiously awaiting my first Xu Zhou crop, which is on the tree as we speak…

[DAVELn17]

Your trees look great. How tall and wide are they?

Dave

[castanea]

Good to know. Thanks

[jujubemulberry]

how cool is that?
there’s at least two juju experts in Missouri!

[Bede]

Thanks Dave - These two are only maybe 12’ and 15’ tall.

[Bede]

I actually haven’t tried ‘Admiral Wilkes’ or ‘Xu Zhou’ yet. This is really the first year for them setting well too. I got ‘Admiral Wilkes’ and ‘Topeka’ from Roger. ‘Topeka’ definitely has a more acid taste than most which I like.

I’m probably the last person that needs to be offering tasting notes. I wind up loving everything that makes a crop and is easy.

[mamuang]

My productive Sugar Cane but not as productive as HoneybJar.

My slow to grow Massandra setting about 10 fruit from a 3ft tall, 3 years old tree. I will not buy small jujube trees again. Money saved is not worth the time wasted.

[BobVance]

@mamuang

I will not buy small jujube trees again. Money saved is not worth the time wasted.

I think I’ve said almost the same thing. It takes forever for me to size up the small ones. Though I think I’ve gotten a bit better about it in recent years, though liberal use of fertilizer.

Two suckers I grafted (TVA R1T4 and R4T3 from Cliff) last spring were up to about 3’ tall in a pot. Today, I started an experiment with them. I planted both at a rental property which has grown jujubes very quickly. The biggest was up to 11-12’ tall, within 1.5 years of planting, before I recently staked it and cut it back by a few feet.

I’ll be interested to see if these small ones shoot up too. It was almost a pleasure to plant them. The soil was so easy to dig, compared with my yard. And not an excessive number of rocks. For anyone keeping score, that means I’ve got 2 rental properties with great soil, 2 with pretty iffy soil and the rest are all in the middle, similar to my yard.

I put one of the small potted trees in an area which has been a bit of an eyesore- before I bought the property, the previous owner cut down a tree and left the hill around the roots and the stump. I couldn’t really mow it due to the slop and had been dreading digging it out. It turned out to be a breeze, at least so far. I’ll bring back an axe to take care of the old rotted stump…

Here’s a pic of the R4T3 roots- growing, but not root-bound.

Even though they grew really well, they don’t have many fruit that I think will ripen. It looks like the two I cut back after staking them have started to set quite a few. But, it is almost certainly too late in the season for them to ripen.

Honey Jar, near the top of a side-branch:

Li, at the top, so all I have is the silhouette, as I’d need a ladder to get up there…

I wonder if cutting back the central leader stimulated it to set fruit. Similar to pinching a fig.

Speaking of figs, as a bonus, here is a fig at the property. It is grown from a cutting from the Reservoir fig and has a decent amount of fruit on it, for it’s age (planted last year). I located it right outside a window and an in-wall AC unit, figuring that whatever heat they leak may help keep it warm enough in the winter.

[BobVance]

@Bede

‘Topeka’ definitely has a more acid taste than most which I like.

Nice! I tend to like fruit with some kick as well. I’ll need to add that one, as in addition to the taste, it sounds like it produced for you even before Xu Zhou which has seemed pretty speedy.

@Bede

I wind up loving everything that makes a crop and is easy.

Nothing wrong with that. I like easy to grow…It’s harder to get excited about eating the 1/4 of the peach that doesn’t have the rot, scab, worm, and a bite from an animal, which you picked a bit under-ripe to keep the animals from coming back and finishing the rest.

In fact, I had half a peach today. It was the first one I picked this year (even though I have a number of trees). No animal bite on this one, other than yellow-jackets.

It was 12 brix and could have used a few more days to ripen. But, by that point it would have rotted or been eaten. I still ate every bit of it that I could trim away from the bad parts.

This is the part I saw from below (it was high up). Talk about false advertising…

[mamuang]

Bob,
If you lived closer, I would drive over and drop off some peaches for you. I am serious. You have too much pressure from critters on top everything else. Whatever have survived bugs and diseases have gotten taken away by critters.

Choosing to focus more on jujubes is a good move. So far, only the paper wasp, yellow jacket type has bothered fruit. I hope squirrels, raccoons, opossums won’t find or ever like them.

[mamuang]

My dug-up rootstocks. Small ones seem to do OK. Bigger ones are wilting, probably because they do not have enough roots to establish.

[snowflake]

@mamuang

Bigger ones are wilting

If you are patient with those bigger ones, they might grow back up from the lower portion/roots if you they have some roots. I’ve had those sucker tops die back, and then get new growth from below. If they are in the way, you could stick those roots in the ground somewhere this winter and watch them next summer.

[Z9gardener]

Ant Admire and Sugar Cane from current year grafts. I have more Ant Admire fruits than Li, the host variety.

I don’t get any primary shoot from Li after putting a few grafts on it. Hope it will grow more primary shoots next year as I like it a lot. It’s crunchy, sweet, juicy and large.

I tasted a tiny bit of tartness in all three varieties which enhanced the flavor.

[PharmerDrewee]

I’ve complained a lot on here about my jujube trees not cooperating. Tippy @mamuang has had to listen to a lot of it. My trees did not set very well on growth from last season. There are quite a few fruit on new growth though. I did not really pay attention to them the past month or 2 since most of the flowers from the beginning of the summer yielded no fruit. I did apply a heavy amount of tomato fertilizer and langbeinite about 5 weeks ago. Not sure if all these new fruit are a coincidence or not.

Fruit set on Li above

Also, I have 2 Honey Jar trees. One from England’s and one from JF&E. The one from JF&E bears small fruit and grows very upright. The one from England’s is very sprawling and has these larger elongated fruit. Some of the England’s Honey Jar have a reddish blush as seen in the pictures above. Both trees have no thorns.

Do these large, long fruit look like Honey Jar?
I could not get a picture of the fruit on my JF&E tree since they were 12 feet up. I know fruit can look different depending on the part of the country but these are only 25 feet apart in my yard.

[snowflake]

Nice crop!