North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Richard Moyer <ramoyer@gmail.com>]

While living in Seoul, Korea a few years ago, walked to work past many apartments and small houses, a number of which had small jujube trees in pots.  Pots ranged from a few to over 20 gallons.  Folks there with small yards had kaki persimmons, goumi, apricots and other prunus planted in the ground, but virtually all the jujube plants I saw in various neighborhoods were in pots, often on porches or roofs.  We were not there in the fall, so did not see them in fruit, with the prevalence of jujube in certain Korean dishes, I assume these plants fruited.

 

Li, Lang and Sherwood are shy bearers in the upper south and mid-Atlantic states, as far as I've observed here and for several other growers.  Any of you out there getting hundreds of Li, Lang or Sherwood per tree, especially in mid-Atlantic, mid-west or northeast locations?  If we get 5-10, we feel blessed on these cultivars.  Surely they must bear better somewhere.

 

Far and away, our best jujube producers are from a TVA planting near Knoxville, TN, which bear thousands of fruit per older tree.  When transplanted to east TN, these trees bear hundreds of times more fruit than the Lang or Sherwood cultivars blooming beside them (so much fruit that I let the late ones rot).  But one large TVA-transplanted tree bears only 0-5 fruit/year from tens of thousands of blooms, again with several potential pollinators nearby.  Haven't tried putting this selection in a pot.

 

So agreed with Lee's post.  Jujube pollination is yet to be worked out.  My suspicion is that some cultivars are much better suited to certain growing conditions than others, and that potted culture may be able to push some of these shy bearers into production.

Richard Moyer

East TN, Zone 6