I’ve previously grown several loquats, with Onesy-twosy at the top of my list followed by Big Jim. Now after a 10 year hiatus I plan to acquire another. Like most people, I’m looking for a moderate grower with excellent flavor.
Do you like the loquats with the orange flesh or the white flesh?
I had the 1z2z for the first time this month, it was nice but not the best orange flesh for me.
What’s your favorite of each?
Richard, that is a tough one since I do have so many varities. I would have to say for the white flesh loquats, maybe the Big Jim White (Jim’s White) from Jim Neitzel is excellent and so is the China White. There are also some excellent seedling varieties that have been introduced by local growers that are great tasting to me.
For the orange flesh, they seem to be very similar tasting varieties. I do like them all and most are very good tasting so it is difficult to pick just one or two best tasting. I always thought my 35yr old Big Jim was my gold standard for how a loquat should taste but recently found out my tree (from Armstrong nursery) could be a seedling of Big Jim and it seems to be sweeter than the named Big Jim ( have 3 other sources grafted). I sent some fruits to some people to eat and they thought my Big Jim was excellent, for me it was how I thought all Big Jim’s tasted. But I have so many seedling trees that have fruited for me, and some people like my KT9-Lindsey a lot. It has larger fruits than the Big Jim, but to me taste is very similar, just a larger fruit.
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Thank you, I’d forgotten about China White.
Some years ago Laverne’s was sold and there was a hiccup in their Loquat source. The gossip I heard in the trade was they had begun selling seedlings of Big Jim. As you’ve said, it seems to be an improvement on their prior stock.
Jim Neitzel was a personal friend and I’m happy to hear his breeds are among the best in your collection.
Yes, Jim has some great varieties of loquats. I would say his Jim’s Big White (or BJW) is on my top 3 for the best tasting white loquats. I just had a friend from SD send me some of his fruits since his tree is older and larger than my grafts and it is good.
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I do have the China Doll grafted but my grafted branch is only 1 year old so the small fruit is not representative of the real variety yet. I heard from a few people that China Doll is as good as China White so I wanted to compare by having both grafted on the same tree. Have you tasted the China Doll fruits, if you did how was it compared to other white flesh loquats.
I’ve not heard of China Doll. Are those other cultivars of Jim N. coming from Ben K.?
Kaz, do you grow Dongshan Baiyu loquat aka white jade?
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Yes, China Doll is from Jim N. I got mine (scionwood) from a person in SD. It is hard to find anyone that has this one.
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Yes, just got a few Baiyu, grafted on my trees last month. I hope it tastes good.
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In my limited experience, loquats are FB magnets. If you have pears and apples nearby (and they are not FB resistant) you’ll forever be pruning branches out of them. I like loquats but they have poor seed to flesh ratio, birds go after them crazy even more than cherries (and they turn color much earlier than they are ripe) and fruits are very sensitive to heat. Add FB problem to that, I am debating whether to get rid of my loquat tree. The big pro is their ripening time which is earlier than stone fruits and adds diversity when you are starting to get bored of eating citrus. Even then, I prefer mulberries during that window.
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My neighbor has a loquat, that might explain why I had FB last year.
If you thin the fruit, they get really quite large with excellent fruit to seed ratio.
That thinning naturally happens in cold climates like mine. Fruits are much larger here as a result. The downside to loquat here is they ripen after plums as late as August!
There’s an old Japanese children’s song about thinning the Loquats.
Wow! They’re on the ground here.
Have you any observations or Brix data about sweetness of the two?
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Yes, brix of white flesh varieties go higher, my seedling tree fruits last year measured as high as brix=30. The closest orange flesh fruit had brix =18. This year is not a good representation of the fruit brix since we did not get as hot as normal so most fruits have much lower reading this year so I’m not even recording any fruits with lower than 16.
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I sought out one of the original Big Jim’s today so my wife could sample some ripe fruit – and she liked them. So that was a good sign. Then later I picked up this “Big Jim White seedling” from Leo Garcia. Not sure if it will end up as fruitstock or rootstock.
That’s very interesting about your original Big Jim (orang flesh). It’s so hard to find the real Big Jim now since most of the nursery Big Jim trees may be seedlings and so the fruits may not taste like the real one. I don’t know anyone who actually has the Big Jim from Jim N.
As I mentioned my Big Jim seems to be a seedling tree, but the fruit is very sweet so I’m happy with it. It is also a very productive tree, many times the weight of the fruits will break some branches since I don’t thin the fruits.
You will like the Big Jim White, excellent tasting fruits. I just picked up a loquat seedling tree (fruiting) scionwood which the tree owner said an expert (Ben Kotnik) told him his tree is a Big Jim White tree. I disagree and know that it is not a Big Jim White and will be contacting Ben to discuss his thoughts on this tree. I’m pretty sure this person’s tree is also a seedling tree which has much larger white flesh fruits than the Big Jim White.
I have grown out seeds from the Big Jim White tree and my seedlings already have fruited and it is not bad tasting. Already assigned it a name. I have over 20 seedling trees that have fruited for me, and maybe half of them have fruits which tastes better than your average named varieties (Big Jim, National, Avri, Angelino, Yehuda, Advance, Champagne, Gold Nugget, McBeth).
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How many years to fruit for you?
As your probably aware, Ben established a repository of sorts of Jim’s cultivars from his property.
Even the crows around here seem unhappy with the free loquats in our neighborhood this year.