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Tropical Fruit => Tropical Fruit Discussion => Topic started by: Fiddler on January 08, 2019, 04:53:04 AM

Title: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: Fiddler on January 08, 2019, 04:53:04 AM
My "Thai Giant" Indian jujube trees are producing very small fruit this year. They are not much bigger than large olives. While my jujubes typically aren't huge, this year's crop is very disappointing. The trees seem healthy and are aggressively pruned back every summer.
    Is there anything that can be done to encourage these trees to produce larger fruit?
Title: Re: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: pineislander on January 08, 2019, 07:44:26 AM
Maybe thinning if fruit set is too heavy.
Title: Re: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: roblack on January 08, 2019, 10:20:08 AM
Might need fertilization
Title: Re: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: Cookie Monster on January 08, 2019, 04:24:12 PM
Yah, check fertilization.
Title: Re: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: sapote on January 08, 2019, 05:06:03 PM
My "Thai Giant" Indian jujube trees are producing very small fruit this year. They are not much bigger than large olives. While my jujubes typically aren't huge, this year's crop is very disappointing. The trees seem healthy and are aggressively pruned back every summer.
    Is there anything that can be done to encourage these trees to produce larger fruit?

Aggressively pruned back? I bought the house with a giant Jujube on the land -- the trunk now is around 16" dia and my estimate it is over 60 yrs old. I never prune it and every year I collected 40 lbs + dried fruits even thought I let the migratory song spiral birds filling up their tanks before making long winter trip to south. Why prune?

The only issue with this tree is the thorny suckers popping up. I guess it is a grafted tree and it has no thorns above the graft line.
Title: Re: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: Fiddler on January 08, 2019, 05:34:36 PM
Yah, check fertilization.
My "Thai Giant" Indian jujube trees are producing very small fruit this year. They are not much bigger than large olives. While my jujubes typically aren't huge, this year's crop is very disappointing. The trees seem healthy and are aggressively pruned back every summer.
    Is there anything that can be done to encourage these trees to produce larger fruit?

Aggressively pruned back? I bought the house with a giant Jujube on the land -- the trunk now is around 16" dia and my estimate it is over 60 yrs old. I never prune it and every year I collected 40 lbs + dried fruits even thought I let the migratory song spiral birds filling up their tanks before making long winter trip to south. Why prune?

The only issue with this tree is the thorny suckers popping up. I guess it is a grafted tree and it has no thorns above the graft line.
I'm in Southwest Florida and the only jujube which does well here is the Thai Giant, a variety of Indian jujube. What variety of tree are you talking about?
Title: Re: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: simon_grow on January 08, 2019, 09:06:12 PM
Here’s a thread that talks about increasing the quality of fruit.
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=8097.0 (http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=8097.0)

Here are some of my fruit grown using the technique described in the thread above
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=6538.msg85480#msg85480 (http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=6538.msg85480#msg85480)

And a little bit of data that shows specific foliar sprays can increase fruit quality, including fruit size for Mangos
http://scihub.org/ABJNA/PDF/2010/3/1-3-421-429.pdf (http://scihub.org/ABJNA/PDF/2010/3/1-3-421-429.pdf)

Sometimes trees are mislabeled but if you are sure genetics is not the reason for the small fruit and you have ruled out nutrition( fertilization), water has a significant role in increasing fruit size.

Sometimes when you push for larger fruit, you will have issues such as cracked fruit or watering down the flavor of the fruit.

Simon
Title: Re: How To Improve Jujube Fruit Size?
Post by: sapote on January 10, 2019, 09:32:01 PM
I have no idea what variety I have. Not an expert on these but really like to eat the dried fruit as snack , like palm date. It is a very hardwood tree with cracked wrinkle bark, 25 or 30ft tall.