Mature viewers only -- explicit Jujube videos/photos

Sounds like it needs more water.
How old is it?

3 Likes

It’s 3rd year, I’ve been given it extra water. Today I gave it a layer of top mulch, actually on on all of my trees and extra water.
I also removed all the ugly crinkled ones, only ShangXi Li has this problem with the big and medium size fruit. The rest of the trees, the little fruitlets turn brown and probably will drop off eventually.

1 Like

if it is not a drought issue, it makes me think the fruit will be still-born or about to succumb to fruit-drop.

can also be due to high temps. Here in vegas, many jujus on their first crop that ripen in summer will have a matte appearance especially at 115F , but subsequent crops borne sept to november will be glossy

2 Likes

The top layer of mulch seems to be helping, less wrinkly, I hope in the few days the skin of the remaining jujubes will turn more waxy. I think it maybe sun, this tree is facing the sun the most.

1 Like

My Orange Beauty has more fruitlets but this is going to be a problem, I need to provide support for this graft otherwise it would break. My first grafting season is great, most of the grafts took, but the problem is I grafted too many scions on a single branch, I think when the season is over, I might regraft some of the varieties to my other Lang tree. Believe it or not, I think I can stop acquiring new scions now. More than 10 varieties is enough for my yard.

2 Likes

I’ve noticed the same thing on Shanxi Li- both wrinkled and bumpy. It often sets a lot of fruit, then drops most of it. I’ve noticed that the ones which are dropped are generally not the shiny ones.

Here’s a post with pics from 3 years ago:

While all jujube can drop some fruit, Shanxi Li is one of the worst. You think you’ve got a decent set and bam…only a few left.

I have single trees with that many varieties :slight_smile:

Though it does complicate things a bit. I try to keep it down to 5 now. Original and roughly each compass point.

I was at one of my poorest performing locations yesterday. It has pretty good sun exposure (the shade in this pic is around 5:30pm), but tends to be too dry and has delayed the establishment of the trees.

The below So is the largest. It was planted in 2018 and most of the others from the same year are about half as big. Spread over the tree is 5-10 fruit.

That 5-10 fruit doesn’t count the Bok Jo graft. It is covered.

None of the other trees have much in the way of fruitset either (even good producers such as So and Sugar Cane). A few per tree.
This is another example of why Bok Jo is such a good variety for people to start with- you get fruit much more quickly.

At another site, some of the girdles have already healed. I wonder if that mean I didn’t make them big enough, or if they have done their job in ensuring earlier/heavier fruit-set.

For this one, I’m most interested to see if the Sugar Cane ripens even earlier, as moving the start of the season up is more important that moving a mid-season variety to early-mid.

Sugar Cane:

6 Likes

Wow @BobVancel your trees are loaded. I don’t have Sugar Cane, I’m not sure I want this variety. I think I have about 15 varieties in total, not 10, lol. Orange Beauty and Autumn Beauty seem more fruitful. If these varieties are good I might graft themselves to my extra Lang.
Eventhough my most stingy one this year is Honey Jar. I think have between 10-20 GA-866 out there.

1 Like

Some trees at least. The ones at the site from the girdling above have plenty of fruit, even on the ungirdled branches. Hopefully the girdling advances the harvest though.

The other site has really only has significant fruit on the Bok Jo graft. The rest of the 6 jujube trees there don’t have much.

This is pretty surprising to me. HJ is one of the more productive and precocious varieties. Not like Bok Jo, but still one of the best producers. And top quality texture

At least in my area (doesn’t necessarily translate to CA, growing in a pot), Sugar Cane is a top 5 quality and productive tree. That is out of the 50ish varieties I’ve sampled so far. I think I’m close to 100 now, but it is hard to say, as the same variety can have multiple names and it seems that some which may not be 100% identical are virtually identical (Maya/Massandra/Moonlight for example).

1 Like

I think I read Tony took out his Sugar Cane, bitter taste or something. Not only that it’s thorny.
I think I moved my HJ and that’s maybe the reason for it not being productive.

I had my first Honey Jar today, light green, I don’t think I could wait any longer, it’s pretty tasty. One thing I like about HJ is that I don’t have to wait like the rest. They have to brown up, etc…, not HJ.

There can be a slight off-flavor, depending on the year and the person sampling it. I’m guessing that is what he’s referring to. I seem to recall noticing it when others (kids, wife, etc) didn’t notice it. I also didn’t notice it when someone else did. So it is pretty variable. Even when the off flavor was there, it didn’t make it inedible, nothing like an astringent persimmon.

Two other varieties which are over-the-top productive:

1.) Xu Zhou- in this pic, I’ve got a Xue Zao graft to a Xu Zhou tree. Per Cliff they are similar, but not the same. So I grafted one to the other to get a good comparison. Looks like they are both pretty productive, as the graft’s fruit isn’t really behind the rest of the tree’s fruit.

Regrettably Xu Zhou doesn’t really compare to Bok Jo, as the fruit is generally lower brix and tends to crack very easily.

I did girdle one branch on the Xu Zhou just to see what would happen. I guess it can’t really make any more fruit that it is already. But a large number of the fruit on the girdled branch were pretty dark colored. I’ll be interested to see if it has any impact on the fruit quality.

Another massively productive (and easy to bear) variety is Texas Tart. It set two crops on a new graft last year and it completely covered again.

The set on this branch is even heavier than the picture makes it look.

Of course the problem with Texas Tart is that “Tart” is somewhat of an understatement. It’s more like very very sour. Hard to see how it can be so sour with 30+ brix, but it manages.

I suspect it could make a good dried fruit.

5 Likes

It looks like I have at least one Chico, and a few Bok Jo, I thought at first the Bok Jo fruits were Chico, round and slightly flat bottom, are they both the same shape or did I not look at them carefully. It’s hard to identify them with some many grafts on the tree.

My tag says Bok Jo but are they?

Is this graft look ok, I’m supporting it, but I worry with more fruit, the branch might break, btw I’m not removing the electrical tape, last time I did on a BNR fig, one tree rat broke it.

2 Likes

The large amount of fruit, matches Bok Jo, as does the cleft chin at the bottom of the fruit. But yours look a lot more round than mine do.

Here’s a pic from a rental where a single Bok Jo graft is the vast majority of the fruitset from the 6 trees at the site. All of the fruit seems more elongated that those in your pic. I’m not sure if different growing conditions could lead to that.

3 Likes

@BobVance, yours are more elongate, I’m thinking mine could be Chico.

Chico would definitely be much more round than Bok Jo, so it could be a match. You’ll know when you eat them, as Chico has a fairly distinctive tart flavor.

And yes, with that fruit-set, supporting the branch is a good idea.

1 Like

I checked my grafts again. Somehow I thought I had a successful Black Sea graft but I didn’t, but I only found one tag and not 2. This variety is supposed to be small and sweet. It goes to show when you thought you had it but you don’t. Maybe it knows deep down I do t really want small fruit, lol. I have to wait for the tree to die down before I can find the other tag.

I was at another site today (it’s always good to see what has happened in the 1-2 weeks it has been since I last mowed…) and Baby Red has started to get big.

I just finished re-reading some of the other posts and it looks like when they turn from red to brown is when they will be ripe.

In one of the posts Castanea mentioned that his hasn’t grown much, but that is likely due to it being in a pot. While one of my 3 grafts didn’t grow at all (just a lateral), this one is up about 3 feet. It will be a balance next winter when I decide how much wood to take to put it at other sites versus current year production.

The other trees at this site are also doing well. Here are girdled Sugar Cane and Sihong, which have lots of fruit. The non-girdled versions have some too- maybe half as much.

I’ll need to go back to the area tomorrow for a property around the corner. When I do that, I’ll bring some materials for emergency tree surgery for a Redlands branch which got too heavy and partially broke. I think I can splint the branch, then prop the splint up.

3 Likes

Does anyone here know if SiHong is self fertile?

It is not.

1 Like