Jujube cultivars

October 10, 2021, pictures

Ant Admire (2 left fruits) and Hidden Gem

Hidden Gem has some pleasant acidity. Ants Admire feels more sweet.

Shanxi Li make very large and sweet fruits

Chico row, #1 makes excellent, very sweet fruits

Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com

Feijoa tasting on October 10, 2021

 My seedlings

I described these seedlings earlier.  All started from Mark Albert’s fruits in 2015, and planted in the ground in 2016. I evaluated this seedling in two previous years, in 2019 and in 2020.  This tasting from today just confirmed that #10 and #7 are still the best fruits. They are followed by 6, 9, 8, and 11, which are OK seedlings but not worth naming. #10 and #7 have high sugar with some acid.  #10 ripens a week or two earlier than #7.  I came up with the name for # 10, Oktoberfest. Looking for a name for #7.  Both will be registered through CRFG this year.

Known cultivars

Apollo - Sweet, smooth, very little acid, very little grit.

Marion - Low sugar, some acid, mostly flat, juicy, gritty. (Turned out that the fruits I tasted here are from the rootstock, and not from Marion, edited on Oct 23) 

Tagan II - Flavorful, but not ready yet, this was the first fallen fruit.

Kakariki - Sweet with some bitterness, gritty.  The fruits are from small plant that made too many fruits for its size.  

Marjane - Very nice clean flavor with sugar and acid, but needs more time, not fully ready yet. No grit, very smooth.

Chesterwoody - Sweet-sour, very dense jelly, no grit now.

White Goose - Sweet with some acid, juicy, smooth, no grit, needs more time to ripen.

Albert's Supreme - Very good flavor, high sugar, high acid, mostly smooth, low grit.

Kaiteri - Excellent fruit, high sugar, some acid, no grit. Best in this tasting.

The grafting material is occasionally available at reallygoodplants.com

Feijoa tasting on October 1, 2021

 Left to right in the picture: Chesterwoody, Marion, Apollo 

The best tasting fruits here are Chesterwoody and Apollo. By now Chesterwoody fruits developed more sugar and flavor, and they are better than 2 weeks ago. Marion flavor is very flat (edit on Oct 23: the fruits I picked were from rootstock branch, not Marion). No acid and low sugar. I hope they will become better in a week or two. Apollo is very smooth and sweet with less acid than Chesterwoody.

Another variety I picked today, but forgot to take a picture is Kaiteri that was the overall best at this date. 

The grafting material is occasionally available at reallygoodplants.com

September fruits of Sacramento Valley

 September is a very fruitful month here. Here is what I have i in the picture:

Figs - many cultivars are fruiting now

Kei Apple - my Sweet female #4 is dropping fruits

Oak leaf papaya - this year I like these berries a lot

Strawberry guava - nice complex fruits from few trees

Lemon guava - my large leafed seedling started getting ready 

Jujube - all cultivars are ripening now. I only like these fruits at the brown crunchy stage

Duke avocado - I just picked these first 2 fruits 

Mexicola avocado - the fruits are ripening from early September 

Peaches - Fairtime is ready, Last Chance is starting 

Feijoa - Chesterwoody is ready

Apples - Fuji and Reinette Simirenko. The small flat apples are from a clone of an old tree in Coloma.

Asian pears - Shinko and Unknown Asian Pear

EU pears - Buttira Rosata Moretti

Asian persimmon - Coffee Cake

American persimmon - H63A

Pomegranate - Balegal 

The propagation wood is usually available during our winter sale at reallygoodplants.com

Feijoa tasting in September

 

6 ( Marta 6, my seedling) - just ok for this fruit. I don’t think it ripened on the tree

7 ( Marta 7, my seedling)- good flavor but no sugar yet. These were the prematurely dropped fruits 

KK ( Kakariki ) - not ready at all

KT ( Kaiteri ) - I pulled these 2 fruits from the tree. Nice flavor and texture but these need a week or more on the tree

10 ( Marta 10, my seedling) - almost there. Very nice sweet flavor, but the main harvest will be in October 

CW ( Chesterwoody ) - ripe, flavorful but not overly sweet, gritty. The only ripe feijoa I have now in September, harvesting for at least 2 weeks already.

Foolproof Cucumbers of 2021

I always had trouble growing most cucumber cultivars, as they would just decline yearly after producing few fruits. But this summer I was pretty happy with the cultivars I grew in my backyard and in the field.

I used to grow the Armenian cucumbers and they usually produced. They also seem to be the most heat tolerant and have a very long season. Here they are together with Mashhad melons:

The Armenian selection I grew in 2021 is light green. These are the same species as melon but separated into to their own subspecies Cucumis melo var. flexuosus. They are very large and the flesh is dense and never bitter.

The other four are true cucumbers (Cucumis sativus):

• Hybrid Persian
• Hybrid Tasty King
• Sweet Gwendolyn 
• Hybrid Natsuhikari

All of these are wonderful fruits and are still producing in September.

Hybrid Persian makes relatively small smooth fruits. It is probably my favorite, but I like all the others too.

Hybrid Tasty King is a long cucumber with some small spikes on the fruit. It is probably the sweetest of the all long cucumbers I grew this summer.

Sweet Gwendolyn is a dark skinned, long, and smooth cucumber. It is juicier than the two other long cucumbers I grew this summer.

Hybrid Natsuhikari is the crunchiest and most dense of the three long cucumbers. It has some little spikes on the skin.

I recommend growing all of these. I am now trying to find the source of Sweet Gwendolyn as I do not remember where I got it.

If you prefer cucumbers without any spikes on the skin, these three selections lack spikes: Hybrid Persian (the short ones), Sweet Gwendolyn, and Armenian (the light colored one).

Large melons in 2021

 On July 31 I harvested and tasted three different melons, Mirza (from Uzbekistan), Prima (Russian selection), and Mashhad (from Iran).

Prima was the largest melon on that day at 8.1 kg.

The melon was sweet, but the flavor was too bland for me and the texture was kind of mushy. The flesh is white. I didn’t like this fruit at all.

Mirza was the second largest fruit with this half weighing over 3.6 kg. It was probably close to 7 kg for the whole fruit.

The flesh is very sweet, aromatic, and melting. This is an excellent melon.

 Mashhad fruit was the smallest this time, but these fruits can also be very large. Here it is under 5 kg.

Mashhad flesh has a green tint. It is very crisp, sweet, and aromatic. It has a nice creamy-vanilla or creme brûlée flavor. 

The flavor varies between different fruits and may depend on the ripening stage and the weather pattern during ripening. The best fruits have some creme brûlée flavor as I described earlier. 

In the image below, the bottom slice is Prima, the left ones are Mirza, and the right ones are Mashhad. Mirza and Mashhad were excellent melons in this tasting. They are very different and it’s hard to choose the best from these two.

On August 7, I tasted more fruits of these three cultivars and also an Afghani melon. 

Prima:

Mirza (front) and Mashhad (back):

Mirza cut (left and front), Mashhad (upper right):

Afghani:

Cut Afghani:

Cut Mashhad:

My favorites from the August 7 tasting were the same, Mirza and Mashhad. The Afghani melon was crunchy and not very sweet. I didn’t care for Prima. However, I sent the halves of the same fruits I tasted to a group of friends to try, and their preferences were different. 

In this box, left to right: Afghani, Mirza, Prima, Mashhad.

They rated them in the following order starting from the best: Mirza, Prima, Afghani, Mashhad. I was very surprised by their grading, which confirmed that we have different taste buds.