Making some money on Putsa (jujube)

[Jotham79]

I have a total of about 300 small trees (you could call them bushes) with about half being the smaller variety and half being Putsa Apple (the larger ones). We are about 80% done with the harvest and looks like we will sell about 5,000 kg. at an average of 15 Baht a kg for a gross of 75,000 bhat.(yes I know they do sell for more) Costs are hard to track as there are a lot of other things going on out there, but we are figuring 35,000 baht for labor, fuel, sprays, and fertilizer. We sell for 13 baht per kg if they are picked up on the farm, 15 baht a kg if we wholesale and 20 baht/kg if we retail. I think we will be able to get the costs down a little and if we could get more/better labor I think we could gross a little more. I estimate we have about 2.5 rai under cultivation.

[teletiger]

Netting 16k baht per rai is good money.

Regards.

[wjhall]

How old are the trees? How many years after planting before you get a crop? Where in Thailand are you? Sorry about all the questions but I have 10 rai I am just deciding what to do with. 16,000 baht profit per rai is good i think

[Jotham79]

How old are the trees? How many years after planting before you get a crop? Where in Thailand are you? Sorry about all the questions but I have 10 rai I am just deciding what to do with. 16,000 baht profit per rai is good i think

The Putsa Apple (larger ones) I are 5 years old, the smaller ones are 3 years. You will start to get some fruit in 2.5 years and full production in 3.5. My farm is just outside Petchabun. You need to consider the market.....our fruit has a rep for being really sweet (could be the soil and we got good stock) and few other people are growing them. I am actually thinking about reducing the number of trees because my wife is killing herself getting them all sold, but we are beginning to get people coming out to the farm. If you want to do 10 rai you will need to be near a large population center and will have to wholesale in bulk. I have 45 rai and would plant more than what I have. It is just a piece of what we do to sell into a limited market.

Also, we did so poorly last year I was ready to cut them all down. You must really take good care of them and this can take a while to sort out. Putsa is one of the first trees we put in 15 years ago (24 plants) and we know they loved the soil. We made good money on those, but there was no work in marketing. PM me if/when you go forward.

[Jotham79]

It looks like we have finished the harvest. The final tally was around 100,000 baht gross and 50,000 in expenses. Probably close to 7,000 kg.

We will wait a month or so and cut them back. I took another look and it was probably closer to 3.5 rai. This is the best harvest with these trees. We put 24 trees in when we bought the farm and did as well per tree about 7 years ago (that's why we decided to plant more trees. We have decided to keep what we have. Any more and we wouldn't be able to sell them.

Next year I want to try to thin the branches and bag the fruit to see if I can get more of the really nice large ones we were selling for 30 baht a kgn. Now we are getting ready for the Manilla Tamarid harvest and 14 rai of corn will be ready in about 5-6 weeks.

[JungleBiker]

Next year I want to try to thin the branches and bag the fruit to see if I can get more of the really nice large ones we were selling for 30 baht a kg.

For many kinds of fruits, and so I would assume jujube also, you can get larger fruit by thinning the fruits. The aim is to increase the ratio of leaves to fruit. The leaves being the suppliers of nutrients to the fruits. By thinning just the branches you would be removing leaves and fruits and not changing that ratio. Mind you there may be other benefits to thinning the branches, such as improving aeration within the plant (which may e.g. reduce disease problems), improving exposure of remaining branches to sunlight (which e.g. may improve fruit quality), give easier access to fruit during bagging, harvesting, etc.

I see there is a lot of jujube in the market now, so it seems you're harvesting at the same time as everyone else which means lower prices. Have you searched for ways to make your plants give fruit outside of the main season? In the case of other fruits, this might be done by one or a combination of techniques such as pruning time, irrigation, use of hormones such paclobutrazol, day-length manipulation using artificial lighting, and so on. Googling jujube and off-season or similar keywords may reveal such techniques.

And thank you for openly sharing real world information about your jujube crop.

JB

[thoongfoned]

that's a good return for size of the size of land me thinks.

in our village one family has some of these trees about a rai under plant, only one year old but giving fruit, all be it very small, people buying all the time 20 baht a kg - sort of pick your own. they have sort of trellised the branches, looks ok.

always good to hear people making some money.

[Jotham79]

We started at the end of November and had our harvest go longer than it should have because 1 row didn't mature as fast....less light. My idea with thinning branches was to make it easier to harvest, allow more light and so the roots would be able to supply water and minerals more easily (going for size). Most people prune (the larger variety) to have about 3 main branches and we have 5-7. We already thin the fruit some (to keep branches from breaking, but I'll try a combination of things next year. We had some fruit we couldn't pick this year because we couldn't reach it as it was high and the branches are thorny as hell.

Next year I want to try to thin the branches and bag the fruit to see if I can get more of the really nice large ones we were selling for 30 baht a kg.

For many kinds of fruits, and so I would assume jujube also, you can get larger fruit by thinning the fruits. The aim is to increase the ratio of leaves to fruit. The leaves being the suppliers of nutrients to the fruits. By thinning just the branches you would be removing leaves and fruits and not changing that ratio. Mind you there may be other benefits to thinning the branches, such as improving aeration within the plant (which may e.g. reduce disease problems), improving exposure of remaining branches to sunlight (which e.g. may improve fruit quality), give easier access to fruit during bagging, harvesting, etc.

I see there is a lot of jujube in the market now, so it seems you're harvesting at the same time as everyone else which means lower prices. Have you searched for ways to make your plants give fruit outside of the main season? In the case of other fruits, this might be done by one or a combination of techniques such as pruning time, irrigation, use of hormones such paclobutrazol, day-length manipulation using artificial lighting, and so on. Googling jujube and off-season or similar keywords may reveal such techniques.

And thank you for openly sharing real world information about your jujube crop.

JB

In the third year they should get into full production of over 20kg per tree.

that's a good return for size of the size of land me thinks.

in our village one family has some of these trees about a rai under plant, only one year old but giving fruit, all be it very small, people buying all the time 20 baht a kg - sort of pick your own. they have sort of trellised the branches, looks ok.

always good to hear people making some money.