Question: 3years ago I bought a Sherwood jujube from Doan's Nursery in Irving, TX. It had tags from your farm. While it has grown well and flowered profusely in the last two years it has not made any fruit. I read somewhere that another variety planted close by might help. Is this true and if so what variety would you recommend? Thanks a bunch in advance.  Ruven - Flower Mound, TX.

Sherwood Jujube

Answer: This is an interesting and troubling question.  Generally, all of the nursery growers I know believe they are self fertile or at least semi-self fertile and have no reason to doubt them until a question or experience like yours pops up.  Searches on Google seem to concur.  But this is about the third time I have heard it on the Sherwood so makes me wonder too.

I called Roger Meyer from Valley Vista Kiwi in Fountain Valley,CA about your question.  He is the one person I know who is a walking encyclopedia on Jujubes and grows many himself in his orchards.  Of the Sherwood, he reminded me that it came from a single tree in Louisiana so it must have been at least semi-self fertile.  He also noted that in his Southern California climate, it blooms very heavily in May but he never sees any fruit set until late July.  I asked about method of pollination and he said he never sees bees but does see a lot of ants and other insects on the flowers.  This observation coincides with a very good article by the California Rare Fruit Growers here: CRFG - Jujubes. The method of pollination seems to be by wind and insects (ants) but not bees.  (Any chance you have great insect control and thus have eliminated the mode of pollen transport?)  What I found interesting was the statement that each flower was receptive to pollen for only about a day.  Thankfully it blooms for a fairly long time.

Here is what I know from personal observation.  We have 19 Sherwood Jujube trees which we use for our cutting wood in row 1 of our scion wood orchard.  Used to have 20 trees but one was removed because we never saw fruit on it (we never cut from trees that have not had the fruit verified as true to name).  So it is possible that a single bud that started that tree misbehaved in its genetics - bud sports do occur naturally in nature.  Rows 4 and 5 have Jujube seed trees and rows 5, 6 and 7 have some Lang and a lot of Li Jujube trees.  About 10 acres away in row 34 we have the GA866.  And these GA866 fruit well with nothing else around them except for like variety trees.

Of this group, the Sherwood produces the least fruit - a little stingy compared to the others in my opinion.  But then the others fruit their crazy heads off so it is a relative thing.  Sherwood was also my favorite (sweeter and less thorny) until the Sugar Cane came along which really tickles my sweet loving taste buds.  Obviously most these bud wood orchard Jujube trees are close enough to the others for some cross pollination by insects and the prevailing northwest wind is normally from the side of the other varieties.  So I do not have any trees isolated at this time to use as a check.  (Add to the project list...)

I always recommend pollinizers be planted for commercial orchards since fruit set is usually heavier.  This is not normally needed for most (not all) fruit trees we sell for the home gardener.  They usually get more fruit that a family needs all on their own.  You might try planting another variety to see if it solves the problem.  Please let me know the results.

One last thought - again a little lack of experience on my part for your climate and location.  The Sherwood ripening is about a month later than the other Jujubes putting it into mid to late October in our climate.  With this year's cooler spring, everything is even a little later.  I know your warm season starts later than ours and ends earlier so I suspect you are on the edge of seeing consistently successful Sherwood crops.  This is unrelated to the fact that you have no fruit at all, but it does raise the question whether it will fully ripen each year when you do.  If any reader has personal experience with Sherwood in similar climate latitudes, I would welcome your feedback and learn from it.

Roger was hoping to go to an international Jujube symposium next year if it gets fully organized. He said he would ask the group what they have experienced and add that to our collective knowledge.

You asked what to plant as a pollinizer.  All the Jujubes in our orchard overlap in bloom so any should suffice.  The Li is still the most popular due to size of fruit and heavy production so you might like that one as a "sure bet" for it's own production.

Ron Ludekens

September 27, 2010