Ordering Jujube and Chinese Hawthorn Trees

i hope your future chico manages to fruit in your area. Fruits are outstanding. Ony drawbac are the thorns, which are ‘outstanding’ too. You might want to plant them far from traffic

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That works well in the spot I’ve got planned for it. A hot (near rocks) dry location (which has claimed one tree already) and the thorns should deter the neighbor kids from (dangerously) climbing down the rock wall.

An update on my jujube’s from JFaE: When I planted them, the soil fell away from both So’s roots. The Tigertooth had quite a tight rootball which I loosened a bit and pulled some of the circling roots straight. While smaller, the So’s roots should still be plenty.

Apparently, all 3 were planted (potted up?) at the same time, as they had identical dates from May 2014 on their tags. I wonder if the difference in the roots was due to JFaE treating the trees differently, or if it has more to do with the cultivar.

The oldest, which is also the one which has given me the most production so far, a So, gets sun pretty constantly during the early summer from about 9am to 5pm or a bit later (for the top of the tree). At this time of year, it’s not getting as much due to the lower sun angle and shorter days. I think the sun is done for the day by 3 or 4pm.

I’m trying to get my new plantings more sun. Some of the spots will be almost complete sun, though it is hard to avoid losing a half hour on both ends of the day in a populated area.

quite sure our jujus do the same, looming over our concrete walls.
below is a chico fruit which has been scarred and impaled by its own thorns multiple times during windy weather. The fruit heals itself pretty well, and ripened just as nicely as the undamaged ones.

I got my order from One green World today. While they are almost as expensive ($6 less, at $40) as Just Fruits and Exotics, they are much smaller.

JFaE: 1/2"+, 38-42" tall, 3 gal pots
OGW: 3/16", 13-17" tall, 1 gal pots

The Viktor arctic kiwi in the back looks like the nicest of the 4.

Yes, the trees you got from JF&E were a lot larger. I would paid $6 more to get a nicer tree and a head start.

Tony

After a flurry of orders tonight, I think I’m done with 2016 orders (I don’t have any more spots planned). It looks like a couple more varieties came available.

Trees of Antiquities got Shanxi Li and Sherwood

Rolling River has Shanxi Li and Ant Admire, as well as the standards (Li, Lang, Sugar Cane)

@RedSun- I think you were looking for Shanxi Li and now it is available at 2 locations, though I only see 3 in stock at RR.

I ordered my first few Tigertooth on their own roots from Just Fruits and Exotics. They were very tiny bare root trees and one was cracked at the root in shipping. They offered to replace it immediately but I wanted to see if it would survive. It did not. The next year, I ordered a few more and had them add the replacement tree when they shipped. That second year, the trees were much larger, of much larger caliper, and grew much faster. I ordered much earlier the second year. I think what happened was that it was late when I ordered the first year and I got the leftover runts.

The trees I got the first year were quickly surpassed by the second year trees. I eventually used those first year trees as rootstock for grafting other varieties.

The Rolling River order arrived.

I ordered:
Ant Admire- This was one of my grafting failures this spring, so I was glad to find it.
Norris #1- One I haven’t found to graft yet, but I think it is related to a couple of the other TVA varieties I’ve grafted.
Redlands #4- There was a mixup on this one and they were out of stock. I do have a tiny graft of it going from this spring, but I’d been hoping to get a whole tree given the reports on it being a consistent fruiter in cooler climates.
Anna Spath (Euro plum)- RR is the only place I see offering it. I saw a European study which mentioned that it is resistant to brown rot.

The two jujube’s were both small, though somewhat larger than the ones from One Green World (and $10 less). The Anna Spath was a very decent sized tree (far right in pic).

Here’s a shot of the Ant Admire’s root system.

bare root jujus do pretty well even when all its fine roothair have been trimmed and left with nothing but thic buttress roots(though most people, myself included, get sore and worried when receiving specimens with no roothair).

so receiving them as potted plants with undisturbed rootballs and undamaged fine roots is quite reassuring.
glad to see your specimens are relatively big and more established. The same jujus i ordered from rollingriver 3 years ago, and they arrived as scrawny and tiny specimens. Not that am complaining–they were the only source at the time. And seemingly they continue to be the only one with norris

I think a place called Hidden Springs may also have Norris.

I wouldn’t call the RR trees scrawny, but they were pretty small- just bigger than OGW’s. Both places make JFaE’s trees look like giants. And those are probably about what I would expect for most fruit trees (apples, peach, plum). I think that the scale is different for jujubes.

I’m looking forward to seeing the trees from ToA- their site says 6-9’, trimmed to 4-5’ for shipping and 5/8", which sounds great.

when i received mine from rolling river, they were so much smaller than what you just received. Each of mine arrived less thick than a barbecue stick. And ~5" tall. But no protesting that, since they were the only vendor where it was available

as for hidden springs they don’t have norris for 2016 shipment, and if remember it right, rollingriver acnowledges it was originally from there.
norris has the weirdest fruit shape. Quite a conversation-piece.

Have you eaten the fruit? If so, how do you think it compares to other varieties?

taste and texture are almost the same as silverhill. Personally find both varieties best reserved for drying as dates.

I got one more jujube today- a Contorted from Sanhedrin. This is a divergence from the plans I posted on October 5th- I ended up getting a couple late peaches from Sanhedrin and threw in a Contorted (and didn’t get any jujubes from Raintree). Though for an add-on, it was pricey- Possibly the most expensive tree I’ve gotten, at $48, $2 more than JFaE’s jujubes.

But, the tree is a monster. The rootstock is just over 1.25" diameter, with the scion in the 7/8" to 15/16" range. The peaches (to left in pic) are pretty big in their own right (3/4"-7/8").

After seeing this, I’m optimistic that the trees from ToA (another CA nursery) will also be large. I’ve got 7 trees on order from them.

Bob,

Your orchard soon will be looking like a high density growing method with all your trees.

Tony

My first jujubes I got from a Dave Wilson supplier and they were also huge.

I ordered a couple more jujubes myself, I don’t have the room but I will cram them in somewhere so I can see if they fruit more with more sun.

it is still worth the price imo, if it is that caliper.

can almost guarantee it will shoot up > 6 feet in one summer.

I’ll be very surprised if it does. I’ve got a So which has been in-ground for just over 4 years and it is only 7’ tall, with a 2"+ base. Assuming that So and Contorted are the same, I would expect a similarly bushy growth. But, I’m still pretty happy with it.

Yes, while it was pricey, the quality looks top notch and I’m glad to have it. Here is a pic from this morning when I planted them (in existing rows- thankfully no need for heavy digging). The Contorted and the Heath Cling both had plenty of roots and the Carnival wasn’t too badly chopped.

‘so’ and ‘contorted’ are the same, so i guess your cool summers and shorter daylight hours are holding them back. A 1" caliper li can grow 11 feet in one summer in the desert, what have noticed when getting >9 hrs direct sunlight. Honey jars are the least vigorous here, be it under part shade or in direct sunlight.

what i dont like about the root system in the pic is that the nursery seemed to have trimmed it so much. It may not be detrimental, but vegetative vigor will be reduced proportionally. Otherwise an excellent specimen, and hands down larger than the biggest have received from other nurseries, the largest of the batches(>30) were a measly 0.75"

I got my jujubes from Trees of Antiquity yesterday afternoon and am pretty excited about them. They were all nice large caliper, at least 5/8" or more. I’ll need to do detailed measurements soon, but barely had time to snap a pic and get them into the ground. I did measure the Li, which is the largest, at 15/16", which is huge. Not quite as big as the contorted from Sanhedrin, but it blows away all the other jujubes I’ve gotten this fall.

The only one left is Burnt Ridge. Maybe afterward, I’ll post a summary comparison of the six places I’ve gotten them from this year.

The jujubes from my ToA order (there are also a few Euro plums to the right, which were both ~5/8"):

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