Jujubes Have Frost Power!

Southwest Yard & Garden

By Shengrui Yao, Marisa Thompson, and Bethany Abrahamson

 

QUESTION: I want to grow my own fruit, but the area where I live tends to experience late spring freezes. What can I grow that will survive the cold weather and still produce fruit?

-- frequently asked question from gardeners statewide 

 

ANSWER: Late spring frosts are a major limitation to fruit production in much of New Mexico and surrounding areas. Warm springs, especially the one we had this year, exacerbate this issue by speeding up orchard bud break and flower development in late winter and early spring, only for those buds to be taken out by the spring frosts. We took a close look at stone fruit and pome fruit trees and jujubes from Alcalde to Los Lunas to see which trees were able to recover from this year's late spring cold front. 

In mid-April of 2026, minimum temperatures at Alcalde (north of Española) dropped to around 25°F  (New Mexico Weather, 2026), injuring flowers, young fruit, and new growth of several fruit species. An additional freeze occurred later in April, but the earlier freeze events had already caused most of the damage. In contrast, Los Lunas temperatures only dropped to around 30°F, though frosts in late February and early March severely affected apricot bloom and fruit set. 

Fig. 1. Daily minimum temperatures (in Fahrenheit) from February 20 to May 10, 2026, at Alcalde (black line) and Los Lunas (red line), NM. Blue dashed line represents 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

Stone Fruits

For Alcalde, April frosts resulted in complete peach and cherry crop failure. Peach seeds turned brown, cherry fruitlets became discolored, and apple fruitlets developed internal browning before dropping about a week later. Peach and cherry leaves escaped injury, whereas expanding apple leaves were damaged and became twisted as they developed.

The apricot crop, however, tells an interesting story about the importance of fruit size, developmental stage, and location. In Española, smaller fruit frequently developed severe epidermal blistering, whereas larger fruit exhibited fewer symptoms. Similar injury was observed at Alcalde, Santa Fe, and in colder areas of Albuquerque. Because of the unusually mild weather from mid-March to mid-April, some apricot trees had heavy fruit set before the big freeze. The damaged epidermis peeled away easily, and severely blistered fruit almost all abscised (dropped). In contrast, a small proportion of larger fruit that developed a hard pit survived and matured. Apricots survived what the peaches, plums, cherries, and apples could not—a first for us!

Home gardeners in Albuquerque later reported mature fruit with russeting, which was likely associated with epidermal blistering caused by the mid-April freezes. At Los Lunas, the few apricots that survived freezes in February and early March matured, marking the first apricot harvest since those trees were planted 19 years earlier. Cherries, apples, and peaches produced normal crops at Los Lunas in 2026.

We believe that the April 2026 freeze produced an unusual pattern of apricot injury because it occurred so much later in terms of fruit development than our usual late frost events. At the time of the freeze, some apricots had reached up to an inch in diameter, and the short period of freezing temperatures only caused the apricot skin to blister without damaging internal tissues. While severely blistered fruit subsequently abscised, fruit with mild blistering remained attached, and developed into a harvestable crop. Apricot freeze injury may depend on cultivar, fruit developmental stage, freeze duration, foliage protection, and local microclimate. Fruit that’s had a chance to develop far enough could survive a late spring cold snap, but only if the circumstances are just right.

 

Jujubes

Jujube shoots (branchlets) measuring up to three inches in length were damaged by freezing temperatures in the Alcalde–Española area. Injury varied among branchlets within the same tree. On one tree, new growth on one branch remained unaffected, whereas growth on two adjacent branches died off, suggesting that both microclimatic conditions and physiological factors influence freeze damage susceptibility. Approximately two weeks after the freeze events, jujube trees resumed vigorous vegetative growth. Unlike stone and pome fruits (which do not produce additional flowers after severe spring freezes), jujube demonstrated exceptional recovery following freeze injury, and by June, the trees were flowering again. Among the fruit species observed, jujube was the only crop capable of producing a near-normal crop following multiple late spring freeze events after the unusually warm March. Similar recovery was observed at Alcalde following late spring freezes in 2014 and 2015, suggesting that this capacity for regeneration is a characteristic adaptation of jujube under northern New Mexico conditions.

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Freeze response and recovery depend not only on minimum temperature. Many factors affect cold hardiness. Fruit developmental stage, freeze duration, foliage protection, microclimate, physiological condition, and crop variety can all affect your yield at the end of the season. Of the species observed in Alcalde, jujube was the only crop capable of recovering from freeze injury and producing a near-normal crop. Apricots similarly performed well by taking advantage of the warm spring months to develop fruit that was mature enough to survive later freezes, but this was an unusual outcome--in normal years, apricot trees bloom very early and are often the first fruit trees to have their flowers of developing fruits killed by spring frost in northern New Mexico.

So, if you live in a location that’s prone to cold snaps, the jujube is a great option!

 

To learn more about growing jujube, frost management in orchards, and other orchard tree help check out these resources:

Jujube: Chinese Date in New Mexico, revised by S. Yao (2023), NMSU Extension Guide H-330. 

Fruit Tree Freeze and Frost Damage and Its Management, by S. Yao (2021), NMSU Extension Circular 701.

Fruits and Nuts for New Mexico Orchards, revised by S. Yao and R. Heerema (2014), Guide H-310.   

 

For more gardening information, including decades of archived Southwest Yard & Garden columns, visit the NMSU Extension Horticulture page (http://desertblooms.nmsu.edu/), follow us on social media (@NMDesertBlooms), or contact your County Extension office (https://extension.nmsu.edu/county.html).

 

Shengrui Yao is the Extension Fruit Specialist and a Full Professor at the NMSU Sustainable Agriculture Science Center at Alcalde. Marisa Thompson is the Horticulture Specialist at the NMSU Agricultural Science Center at Los Lunas. Bethany Abrahamson is the Cooperative Extension Agriculture Agent for Sandoval County.