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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] che or jujube in Zone 5?

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  • From: lee reich <lreich@hvc.rr.com>
  • To: mark@markriver.com, North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] che or jujube in Zone 5?
  • Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:30:52 -0500

I'm not in the midwest but am in Zone 5. In my experience, the problems with those two fruits are some winterkill and just barely, or not enough, time to ripen the fruits. A bit of winterkill is not a problem because both trees will flower on new growth. My outdoor jujube died back below the graft but every year the seedling rootstock bears a few fruits some of which ripen (but don't taste very good).

I grow che in a pot and am able to ripen quite a large amount of fruit, letting them finish off in the greenhouse. There are no cultivars of che and repeated selection from among a large number of seedlings might be able to result in earlier ripening clones. For fun, I'm going to graft che onto a stem of an osage orange tree growing outdoors. The graft is possible and perhaps the stem will grow and bear fruit. 

(My book, Uncommon Fruits...) has a chapter on each of these fruits.

Lee Reich, PhD

Books by Lee Reich:
Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden
A Northeast Gardener's Year
The Pruning Book
Weedless Gardening



On Mar 18, 2006, at 1:04 PM, Mark River wrote:

Hello, wondering what experience fellow Midwestern Zone 5'ers have had with either che or jujube?  These fruits sound interesting, but the literature I'm finding states that zone 5 might be pushing the northern limit.  Do they winterkill, is spring frost a problem, or is the issue not ripening the fruit?

Thanks,
Mark
Zone 5a, Western Iowa

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