the australian farmer didn’t sound like he was applying much science to horse manure being a be-all for jujus. It sounded like it was all he had and that’s all he will be using… The gentleman was taking the weeds lightly(heck his orchard is actually weedier than mine, lol), yet his trees seem to be just as productive
quite certain his trees would still be productive without any amendments. And if amendments were needed, any type of compost or what available organic matter/manure would suffice. I feel that with jujus-- the most limiting factors to juju productivity would be lack of sunlight/photoperiod, and possibly, too much water…
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Same here. I don’t have access to horse or cow manure but have compost. I’m a bit afraid to do that because I won’t have access to spare Jujube sprouts anytime soon…
they sure invested on high quality building materials/structures. While we seem to have more cutlivars of jujus here in usa-- them australians have been growing jujus at a much wider scale. I can safely say the biomass of chico trees on that part of mother earth outweigh the chico trees we have here in usa.
By at least 10 to 1 … and that is sad since chico is a bonafide juju americana-- having been bred, born, and raised in the land of the brave and home of the free.
anyway @k8tpayaso, below is a saggy branch of autumn beauty(aka qiyue xian/alcalde?) that started to ripen. Fruits are large alright, and quite sweet, but seem sensitive to hot weather, as i can’t even characterize it as ‘good’ .
pits often have seeds, but the seeds are a bit too large, which is not a good sign of viability(just as exceedingly tiny seeds are generally not viable)
and speaking of weedy orchards, please pardon the lush tumbleweed and overtly fruitful spinosa suckers LOL!
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True, but he did mention his son planting the 200 trees in manure and how they did better than normal, rather than dying like he expected.
It looked like a pretty dry and sunny place in that video. I wonder if the manure helped because it held what little water there was better. If so, it probably wouldn’t have the same beneficial effect for me, where I am more limited by sun, than water.
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oh, ok, i guess missed that or just couldnt decipher through the southern twang(i mean, the ultimate deep south/southerner!)
perhaps, apart from adding some nutrients. Jujus, being drought tolerant seem to also revel at high-solute conditions. I tend to hypothesize that soil fertility can be ‘increased’ simply by reducing the water content. The concentration of minerals/nutrients would obviously increase per unit cc of water, and perhaps more absorbable due to the gradient effect, especially for xerophytes.
much like marine algae-- if transplanted to a freshwater pond–would find it a barren growing medium
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I have found seeds in the pits but they are all dried up.
What type of support are you guys using for jujubes? Do they grow steady enough that you don’t need any?
Some, like my oldest So don’t seem to need it, as it is growing into a very large shrub (aprox 11-12’ tall by 11’ wide):
I have tried to take out some branches in the middle, so that there is still good light exposure. If I left it to it’s own devices, it would be impenetrable foliage.
Closeup of the branch on the bottom right (just starts to get shaded by 4pm, which makes it show up in the picture better…)
Others, get quite floppy, so I’ve started staking them with 10.5’, 1 3/8" galvanized top rails (normally used to make chain link fences).
Honey jar at rental property:
In the background of this pic, you can see the large Reservoir fig:
I cut up sections of coaxial cable to tie them up- it is often used outside, so I’m hoping that it will be both strong enough and long-lasting.
One thing I sometimes need to do is figure out what part of the tree should be the leader. Often it is obvious, be in cases like the below pic (a Lang at the same rental property as the above pics), I had to think about it a bit, before picking the part I am pointing at.
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autumn beauty, li, hj, chico, and r4t3 have the saggiest stems where am at,but partly because they are heavy bearers. Burntridge’s contorted seems to be moderately stiff, but will sag a bit when laden with fruit
coco, sugarcane, and sihong are quite stiff and rarely sag, even when loaded with fruits. Full sun seems to make the stems ‘stronger’, as the internodes tend to be shorter and the trunk thicker.
btw, and maybe am off-topic @BobVance but have to say your fig is just incredible!
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Do the saggy varieties get over their sag after being supported for a while…or do you just let them grow out of it?
I’m not sure how they are in other climates, but I suspect that if I was willing to prune them back more, they wouldn’t need as much support. But, jujube haven’t always grown fast for me, especially the small ones, so I hate to put the brakes on them. At least, until they start to get too big. Once they get much taller than the support poles, I prune them back a bit- trying to keep them to about 10’.
Of course, the So has gotten taller than that this year (for the first time, at 9 years of age) and I will probably cut it back some this winter. I’m afraid I may max out the smaller ladders to pick it…
Sherwood seems pretty droopy, even without any crop. At least, the two that I have are. In fact, I just added support to the one at home (which actually has some fruit) and plan to do it for the one at a rental soon.
I just got lucky when I bought the property. It does that all on its own. I just mulched around the base (which you can’t see in the pic, to the left of the stone wall) last winter.
Here’s a pic from last week of the fruit:
And not to have a post with no jujube pics, I’ll include one showing some early drop (or will soon drop…). I’m guessing it is due to the cloudy weather we’ve had recently.
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Bob,
I have had jujubes that size dropped,too, eap. shanxi Li.
Raf, when you said Burntridge’s Contorted and “ laden with fruit”, I had tovread it twice. I have the tree for 4 years. Itmay produce 3 fruit total. It jet full sun 10-12 hours a day and plenty of water. It sucks.
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they usually spring back up in winter when fruits have been dropped and foliage sloughed off, maybe 75% back up instead of 100%, not sure though about this super droopy one below: xu zhou and r4t3 on li
below is autumn beauty grafted on a 15 ft tall li
below is chico
and @mamuang, below is burntridge’s contorted, with first crop borne at the lower half of photo, and the second crop(in the form of blooms) pending at the green growth above it
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connecticut figs, wow! I hope they sweeten up before getting caught by cold weather
I grafted some honey jar mid-May. They seemed to grow very vertical on their own, but I staked them as they grew so that I didn’t take a chance on a broken graft. I grafted them a couple inches above the ground and got much more growth than I expected.
That tree started some fruit a while back although it’s late in the year. We usually stay hot here through Sept with mostly sun (not quite Vegas hot, but plenty of 90s), but maybe that’s not enough time. It’s interesting either way.
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looks so promising that hj graft, even trying to bear fruit on the same year it was grafted, which indicates it being ‘happy’ where it is at.
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RRaf,
I should have said that my Burntridge’s So is the one that sucks, not anyone’s else. It is unproductive and not balancedly contorted.
well actually my contorted from burntridge sucks too(taste-wise). It bears so profusely, yes, but the quality is awful… and even subsequent fruits which will ripen this autumn won’t be much better either, even though way more juicy. If youve noticed, i pretty much leave them drying on the trees, just like i do with autumn beauty. Will literally use those contorted juju dates as a seed source…
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Forgot to mention about taste. A few I got tasted awful. At first I thought I could graft it with a EL’s Contort. After thinking about it, I may as well do what @tonyOmahaz5 has done. Graft it over to Honey Jar. My HJ tastes very good, sweet and crunch. Also, last year my HJ were almost as big as Sugar Cane. That could be because they got water.
I think giving jujube trees water sufficiently adds to the juiciness of the fruit. It does not dilute the taste but add to nicer texture. That’s just my thinking and I am sticking to it 
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lack of water is no bueno even for cacti. In my vegas experience though, a perpetually wet soil seems not as good as the soil drying up a bit in-between waterings, since jujus are desert denizens, prospering in high-solute conditions. The default growing conditions that our jujus have here anyway
as with my weird and extreme seaweed scenario analogy: if you pull out live kelp from the pacific ocean, and then plant it at, say-- lake tahoe, the seaweed won’t prosper much since the freshwater lake is ‘too wet’ lol
I will also graft over my BR Contorted. So far, HJ is the family favorite as it lacks the the grassy flavor that other varieties have. What other varieties lack the vegetal-ness?