Some friends and myself are interested in ordering some jujube and Chinese hawthorn trees. For hawthorn, I’m thinking about Burnt Ridge, Raintree and Rolling River. Any recommendation? Any wholesale grower do we know? I can possibly order 20+ trees.
For jujube, I’m at a loss now. Roger Meyer is not well. Not sure if England has recovered. Hidden Spring, One Green World? Who else?
Cliff England recently sent me his fall availability, here are the jujubes listed:
Chinese date (Jujube): Trees are grown in pots Medium 2 to 3 feet $35.00, large 4 to 5
feet $45.00 GRAFTED Zone 5-9
Known as Dai Chu in Korean. A small tree and shrub up to thirty feet tall which bears edible fruit that are cherry to plum size and very sweet. Can be eaten fresh, dried and used in place of raisins, and cooked into sauces.
LI - Large rounded fruit 1½ inch long, 1 inch in diameter and up to 3 ounces. Best eaten fresh, ripens in Aug.
Lang – Large fruit, pear shaped, fruit is red when ripe. Best when dried and made into jujube butter can be eaten fresh when red ripe. Can be substituted for apples in pies and is extremely productive.
Sugar Cane-Medium fruit which can be round to elongated. Extremely sweet fruit but on a thorny plant. The fruit is worthy of the thorns!
SO - Dwarf trees with a zig-zag pattern growth structure. It makes a great specimen tree and conversation piece. Fruit is very large and round with a crisp apple-like flavor. It ripens in September and is one of our favorite Jujubes to consume fresh.
COCO - It is prized for its abundant crops of medium size golden brown fruit with a unique flavor reminiscent of coconut and apple. Spring only dug and shipped bare root 2 to 4 feet tallIt seems folks are happy with Cliff England. Certainly will consider him. I do not see Honey Jar and Shanxi Li jujubes there.
I think he often has small quantities of other varieties or can graft things for you if he has scions available. Shoot him an email!
burntridge actually had honey jar last feb, but was sold out pretty quicly.
Redsun,
You may try to order from Roger Meyers.
Tony
Great. I’ll try to contact his wife… for the trees…
If anyone gets an order in with Roger or his wife please post here so we know they are still in business.
Several nurseries have added varieties this year. Between just fruits and exotics, rolling river, and England’s, the selections really good. Bay laurel too
Bay Laurel, Raintree, and Rolling River.
… and I forgot to mention Bay Flora too.
i talked to Shirley several days ago, and she says they are still shipping fresh sherwood fruits(while supplies last), but to resume selling budwood and grafted plants this winter or spring is contingent to Roger’s full recovery.
and yes, actually ordered a box of fresh sherwoods, and happy to learn that cali-grown sherwoods taste exactly like those have grown here(even though our sherwood trees are still small and had produced just a handful of fruits). They are at least as sweet as sc and hj, but more juicy, and bigger.
I’ve gotten 3 boxes of jujubes from them so far and emailed Shirley earlier tonight to ask for 2 more. The Sherwoods are much denser textured than the others she sent (first box was supposedly Li, though I think it was a mix). While good, and much better than the jujubes my wife has bought from Chinatown (Flushing, NY) they aren’t even close to the ones I’ve harvested. Some of that may be the shipping distance- by the time they get to me, they still have firmness and crunch, but aren’t crisp. It’s also possible that they don’t get enough water to be crisp, even straight from the tree.
In fact, all the rain we’ve had in the last week actually made a few of the smaller fruits crack (most are fine- only maybe 5-10% cracked). They still taste fine, but if you don’t pick it right away, it looks like it starts drying on the tree. Here’s a pic of the first one I noticed (note how small it is- I haven’t seen a big one crack yet).
from my experience, sihong is more dense than sherwood, and that both are miles away from the fluffiness of fully-ripened li’s. Additionally, sherwood is probably the most juicy of ~20+ varieties i have tried.
we don’t get much rain here, so have not observed much cracing of fruits. Athough sugarcane seems to be the most susceptible, as i have seen some with tiny slits(nothing like what you’ve shown on your pic).
as for store-bought jujus, you’re absolutely right, they really can’t compare to homegrown ones.
I got a very low survival rate from the rootstocks from Roger this spring, so I’m planning on adding a bunch more trees. I’ll shell out the money and get bigger trees this time. I’m not confident that I’ll get big yields, but I am sure that we can eat (or if we really have a surplus, give away to Chinese friends) lots.
My initial thought is to get:
Just Fruits and Exotics- 2 So and a Tigertooth.
They list a bunch of other varieties as out of stock, but are not going to be shipping any of them this year, other than possibly a few Sugar Canes (in a week or two when they’ve given the people on the waiting list a chance to respond). They are building up mother plants, so that they can propagate from them going forward.
One Green World- Black Sea, Coco, and Massandra
Trees of Antiquity- Li, Lang, Sugar Cane (a 2nd one for me), and GA866
I’ve heard that GA866 really needs hot conditions, so I’ll put it next to my driveway in a hot sunny spot and hope my wife doesn’t hit it with the car.
Raintree- Contorted (just to see if it is different than So) and Sherwood (already have on in a less than ideal spot). I probably wouldn’t get these, but I plan to order some euro plums from RT anyways, so I may toss these in.
Bob, how good are the other vendors? One Green World, Trees of Antiquity and Raintree? I spoke with Brunt Ridge and RollingRiver, but have not heard from Raintree.
Tree quality and survival are important here. I do not want friends come up with dead trees.
seems like you’ve decided to just do away with grafting and now investing on the ‘big guns’. Couldn’t blame you, i have been guilty of it many times before, and probably many times more in the future-- should more varieties get introduced…
btw, contorted is the same as So. There is another ornamental variant though which, instead of zigzagged branches, have twisty branches instead, and have been trying to find it.
the varieties you mentioned from one green word might be more productive in your area, being from the soviet/eastern europe.
ga866 might be a tough one, as people i know who’ve tried growing it aren’t too impressed with the taste and production, and is very slow-growing, seems more of a laggard compared to hj! I have tasted just one given to me by another grower. Sweet, but definitely notches below sherwood.
but do keep us posted here!
Has any one here grown these jujubee before? I am very interested in hearing the pros and cons comments about these three varieties.
I’m not doing away with grafting. I’ve got 20+ varieties growing on my So, which I can graft to the others in future years. I just want additional, bigger, and more mature trees to do the grafting onto. It has a cost in dollars, but what is money for but to make me happy 
Bob is on all 8 cylinders… 
