I ate my first jujube of the season…. JF&E So. The ones that were a little more than half ripe was premature ripening from lack of rain. I’m sure I was on here a month ago discussing (not complaining) of all the rain we were getting but sure enough that dried up quickly and now everything is beginning to show some signs of needing some water. That may be corrected tomorrow because as of right now we are projected to be in the centerline of hurricane Beryl’s inland trek. All that really means for us is some rain and we don’t know how much because if Beryl heads more east we may not get much at all. Who knows. Anyway I got some half ripe half dried baby fruit today…. Not too bad for what they were.
I got a nice walk through the orchard tonight not having to hurry or sweat a lot (thanks again to Beryl). I’m going to show you some of my trees with fruit but please no comments on the tall grass underneath them. I’ve been slacking and it’s really hard work and……
I’ve gotten the little ones cleared out…… kinda.
SiHong. It fell over about half way during all the wet weather we had. It’s been rescued and restrained
TX Twister. A So seedling. This is the largest fruit set I’ve had. It has typically been a late ripening variety but looks like it may be earlier this year
Xu Zhou…… fruit is always abundant and I rarely eat any of it. It ripens late and I don’t care for the taste but it makes great seedlings to graft on and many of these seedlings bear fruit precociously and several are producing good size and tasty fruit.
And the last one that just showed up this year couldn’t care less if he’s included. He doesn’t have time for posing and such. The black and white Alfie the A-hole is caught in the picture with the resident idiot, Bertie.
Aww! Your gang of pups are cute!!
And as a fellow Texan, I would never criticize someone for having a little unkempt undergrowth in an orchard in the middle of summer. Texas is hot, evil hot sometimes. I do not know how my great grands farmed in this state before the era of AC…
But I’m thankful for that hurricane. We might get rain again here in DFW tomorrow. Fingers crossf.
and yeah, really nice trees you got there! Would love to see updates/evaluations of the fruits when they ripen. Speaking of which, vegas just had a never-before daytime high of 120F, and an entire week of >110F, so makes me wonder what effects on the fruits would be when they mature. I plucked a halfway ripe HJ and the eating quality seemed unchanged.
Thanks but I have to disclaim again! When we were getting rain the grass grew soooo fast and so high and stayed wet. It was difficult to mow. My husband has stayed at it over the last two weeks but he’s been taken too many times by jujube thorns so doesn’t want to get too close to the trees. It’s my job to weedeat—that also keeps him from getting yelled at for girdling a tree!! I’ve been using my spare time to get the seedlings transplanted and then it’s soooooo hot that I fizzle out after 3-4 trees and have to take 5…or 60…… . Bahia grass just gets tougher with dry weather. If we do get rain I’ll have to start all over. I’m too old for this!
Agreed. In fact, I feel bad giving it away, since it could hurt the perception of jujubes. If I do give it away, I make sure to label it and also give some good ones, generally giving it to people who are asking for lots more. They also crack and I’ve just been drying the cracked ones. One of the guys at the farmer’s market wanted to try fermenting them, so I have him 5-10 lbs of them. I just started going to it again this year (I don’t bother before sweet corn ripens), so I need to look him up and see how it went.
Some of those look like Lang. Though others look more columnar and a bit less pear shaped.
I actually grafted Pan last spring as well and it seems to be one of the weakest growing varieties. Most of the grafts just sent out leaves, without shoots. I may have had 1-2" of growth from one, but it was very little. Most of the new Pan grafts haven’t grown much this year either, but I think I have a couple in the 3-6" range.
2nd Generation Dong and Goose Egg on the other hand are strong growers. Most of the 2nd Gen Dong grew 2-3 feet and several Goose Egg were in the 4+ foot range. I noticed a few small fruit on a Goose Egg today, as well as a Cliff’s Big Sour, so even if I don’t get much fruit on the new grafts, there are a whole bunch of grafts from last year which are likely fruiting for the first time.
I’ve grafted Pan about 4 times in two years and never gotten it to grow. I had a couple push a bud but never saw leaves. I have a couple of branches of Goose Egg which does have fruit this year on my frankentree. I also have Persimmon graft growing with fruit but it is very stingy with fruit.
I thought nanjing looked a little different in shape this year…… shorter but I don’t really think they are pear shaped. To me they just looked not quite as long in their columnar shape as they did last year.
The summer, besides the resultant fruit, is not my jam. I’m more of an autumn child. I cannot wait for Jack-o’-lantern season, to be honest.
Past the early morning, I have like a 20 minute window in the peak summer season to do some hand watering and things of that nature.
Mowing has to be at daybreak 7:00 am. I’m sure my neighbors love that. But tough t*tties, it’s about survival, ya know?
I sympathize with your husband though. I’ve been snagged by a Juju a time or two on the riding mower, and it’s not fun.
It’s a bit more tart. Not enough to be sour but it has more than just sweet. This is the first year to have a large trial and the tree is more mature so it will be a better test. I had already decided it was a keeper for me but I haven’t shared it much. I thought it was going to be very stingy with fruit but this looks like that was only from immaturity. It’s looking like it may be a good one. It’s hard to tell with leaves on but it has really nice contortions also. I’ll let y’all know….
Jujubes love the heat. They are still putting on rapid growth here in the middle of summer, and are still continuously flowering.
Most of my other trees are suffering here. Three Asian pears on BET and callery have lost most of their leaves, including a Korean Giant that was able to weather the last several summers with much less injury. The persimmons are looking ragged but are holding on, but the fruits are not growing any bigger, making me think that the trees might be going into some sort of heat-induced dormancy. The grape vines are frying, but I think they’ll make it. I have a few apples on M7, and they are surprisingly doing better than the pears, with relatively little heat damage.
The jujubes and pomegranates are loving it, though.
Last year in our prolonged drought my older jujube trees never looked bad and gave lots of super good fruit. The smaller ones I was watering but never put any on my older trees. The persimmons suffered and the fruit shriveled badly on one of them and some apple trees died despite being watered. The heat was high but not nearly Vegas range. Jujubes do enjoy water but they are a quite capable tree once established.
in this hot and dry desert, hj and sherwood seem to be the most resilient to extreme heat, practically with no variability in fruit quality regardless of time of year their fruits are borne. Li bears bigger fruits on its first crop(in the heat of summer july-aug) but the texture, juiciness and taste are inferior to its subsequent crop/s that develop and ripen in cooler weather(sept-nov).
My jujube have put on some long growth with side branching. This winter if I take scion from it can I only use the side branching of the new growth or can I cut them off and use the main stick as well.
If you have enough growth and want to use it you can. The side branches are the ones that are going to produce the fruiting stems that will give you fruit.
if you were pertaining to the upright stem(instead of side branch/lateral), the buds on upright stems are typically situated diagonally below the base of the laterals. Jujus have this curious feature of handedness(chirality). If our DNA is exclusively right-handed, jujubes tend to be ambidextrous.
some upright stems will have the buds diagonally to the left neath each lateral base, while others(on the same tree) will have theirs to the right neath each lateral base, and you can have both on the same tree
and while we’re at it, i was thinking perhaps Prof Yao can have one of her students write a thesis determining whether or not there is a pattern or influencing factor to handedness.
from my observations, the apical growth of any upright stem(in one growth spurt)will be true to its handedness until it stops growing(if one bud is situated at the left, then all above it will be on the left until the apical growth spurt comes to a halt). It will be the buds along its length which may change chirality should they develop into uprights themselves
. Guess you need you some Beryl! Much cooler and rain.
