Finally got my first jujubes. Ordered in the spring from Edible landscaping and received in a timely manner, but my wife had a spinal issue so i never got around to planting them till now. hoping they have enough time to establish. also, I ordered a honey jar and a sugarcane but I didn’t notice till planting that they are both honey jars. I called edible landscaping and they are sending me a sugarcane so now I will have 3. at some point I would like to also grow a black sea based on the findings from @BobVance and his amazingly detailed spreadsheet.
8 Likes
I bet they will do fine in Maryland, and I think they have plenty of time to establish.
In North Georgia, where I grow some jujubes, the big threat is the late spring freezes. Jujubes are normally conservative about leafing out, but this year, spring came in February, waited for all my trees to leaf, and then rug-pulled. Many of my jujubes took pretty severe damage, and an Autumn Beauty was almost killed.
Looking at your very attractive setup, the one concern I would have is critters. Do you have deer or rabbits? In my experience, both are very fond of jujubes. Rabbits will girdle jujube saplings by eating the young bark, and deer will devour the foliage and chew the bark. As the trees start to mature, the bark will lignify, and I suspect (but don’t know for sure) that the bark becomes hard and unpalatable enough that rabbits and deer will leave it alone.
As for other varieties to grow – I have Black Sea, but it hasn’t fruited for me yet. I think that most reports indicate that it is very similar to Honey Jar, with small but crisp and sweet fruit. One that you might consider is Autumn Beauty, which has several points of merit – it is one of the better larger-fruiting varieties, comes well-recommended from the experienced people here, and it is an early ripener. It also hasn’t yet fruited for me, so I can’t comment on its taste. Lastly, consider Chico – it reportedly has a unique, more tart taste, and is near the top on a lot of lists, while nobody ever seems to have anything bad to say about it.
You might consider arranging your jujubes so that they can cross-pollinate each other. Honey Jar has been self-fruitful for me, but my understanding is that jujubes produce better when pollinated, and many cultivars require pollination.
3 Likes
we do have deer and rabbits. what would you recommend for protection?
1 Like
The rabbits are probably the bigger threat, as they can be invisible for the whole year, and then kill all your trees outright in a night. (Ask me how I know.) I use these commercial plastic tree protectors that I found on Amazon, as they are reasonably inconspicuous with the brown color and get the job done: https://www.amazon.com/Orchard-Innovations-Tree-Shield-Grow/dp/B08LMK3P16/ref=sr_1_10?keywords=Orchard%2BInnovations&qid=1687897474&sr=8-10&th=1
However, lots of people make their own with wire mesh. I happen to have two left hands, so I prefer a turnkey solution whenever possible.
Deer are probably less of a threat because they usually will only munch the green parts of the tree and won’t kill it outright as rabbits will. To protect against them, most people cage their trees when they are young. I used to buy these (The Deer Cage) until I realized that I could make the same thing at a fraction of the price with garden fencing from Home Depot, some 12" steel rebar j-hooks, and zipties. Cut the fence to size, turn it into a cylinder by fastening the ends together with zipties, and then stake it to the ground with three of the j-hooks, encircling the sapling.
You probably don’t want to leave cages in your yard long-term, so you might want to let the trees start branching a little higher than usual (at around four or five feet) to keep the foliage largely out of reach of deer (although this will naturally make harvesting fruit more difficult). Young jujubes produce some wicked thorns that I used to prune off, but the thorns do act as a natural deer deterrent and will limit browsing damage.
There are some automated sprinkler system products that use sensors to detect deer and then activate the sprinklers to drive them off, but I haven’t tried them. If you have a sprinkler system, it might be something worth investigating.
Once the trees are a few years old, the bark will start to lignify and become very tough and striated – much better protection than most fruit trees are provided. I haven’t experimented myself, but I suspect lignified jujube bark to be unpalatable to deer or rabbits.
Edit: fixed link
1 Like
I know rabbits like jujube, but for me they only eat the new growth on low grafts. That has happened several times when I graft to suckers. I’ve got dozens of jujube trees in my yard (including some which are smaller than the ones you just planted) and have never had something eat the bark and girdle one. Maybe your rabbits are hungrier than mine…
I’ve also had deer come through once in a while and they like the green parts. Not a big deal in my yard (knocks on wood…) when one tree gets munched a bit every few years or less, but I had a few other properties where the deer would continually eat everything, including the new regrowth, resulting in 100% mortality.
2 Honey Jar aren’t bad to have- I have over a dozen 
(spread around several properties- I only have 4 or 5 Honey Jar at home).
It looks like you have some big trees. Which direction is South? If the driveway is on the S, that could be best, as jujube really want a lot of sun.
IMO it isn’t in the same class as Honey Jar or Sugar Cane for crispness, but your points are correct.
I’m lukewarm on Chico. It takes a lot longer to bear than the others we’ve spoken of. It also gets quite a few missing pits, where the seed doesn’t have a pit around it. I don’t think it bothers some people, but I don’t like that, And similar to Autumn Beauty, I don’t think it measures up to HJ/SC. It does have a distinctive flavor, so I wouldn’t dissuade someone from trying it. Just to temper expectations.
Two that I would recommend adding are Dong and Bok Jo.
Dong- can be as good as HJ/SC and it would really extend your season.
Bok Jo- great to add when you are first starting out, as it is very precocious and productive. It’s good to have something pumping out fruit while you wait for the other trees to catch up. Honey Jar is pretty fast too, but can’t match Bok Jo. In terms of fruit, it is in the Autumn Beauty level, a step below HJ/SC/BS/Dong.
You may want to graft some varieties on next spring. So, the bigger you can get these trees this year, the more space there is on them for grafts. Lots of water and fertilizer should help, as well as keeping the deer away.
2 Likes
I was looking at rabbit protection online and I found a cheap alternative is to staple window screen in a cylinder around the base. gonna give that a try. I’ll keep an eye out for deer damage and if I notice something I’ll put up cages. they tend to prefer my white mulberries so hopefully that draws their attention.
Yep, the driveway is south of the trees. my house faces roughly east west. the red dots below are approx where the trees are planted
I’m still new to fruit trees and I don’t graft yet. I don’t know of a source for these as grafted bare root or grafted potted. if I can source them already grafted to rootstock I will get them.
I had read that I shouldn’t fertilize them in the planting year, just keep them watered as needed. is that incorrect?
1 Like
they are 3 gallon potted grafted plants from edible landscaping. they were covered in flowers when I got them. very happy with the quality
1 Like
I meant that you have big trees which could provide shade, depending on which way is North.
I remember seeing something about not fertilizing for several weeks, until active growth had started, but I don’t think it needs to wait a year.
I don’t think anywhere sells Bok Jo, but you may be able to get a Dong from Chinese Red Date.
1 Like
ah yes. I tried to offset them from a cedar in the front yard. You can see it casting a shadow in my driveway. my house and that cedar give a bit of shade in the early morning. there is a black walnut in the back that I need to get cleaned up and trimmed, then I will have it measured as it might be a state champion tree.
1 Like
you are.
can you move this, maybe to the Jujube 2022 thread? there you will notice Dong and Winter delight are separate entries in the spreadsheet.
2 Likes
They are. It’s Dong that I’d recommend for lengthening the season. Sandia is another possibility, as the fruit seems identical, but Sandia is a bit earlier and wouldn’t lengthen the season by quite as much. I don’t even know if my Winter Delight is the correct type, due to all the mixups at nurseries with that variety. My Mango Dong appears to be an Autumn Beauty.
As soon as I saw “Black Walnut”, I was going to say “get it out of there”, but then I saw “state champion” and I get the sense you like that tree
Black walnuts give off a hebicide from their roots which keep a lot of other types of fruit from growing. I’m not sure how sensitive jujubes are to it, but it can be a problem for a lot of other plants.
Missing a bit of very early morning probably won’t hurt much. But, you do want as much sun as possible. The best spot along the driveway loots to be just North of where the short turnoff is.
My best jujube producers are at this rental, where the only sun is a bit of late afternoon shade from the neighbor’s tree.
The 3 X are jujube, with the neighbor’s tree to the West. The canopy starts about 40 feet away from the closest jujube and is about 30’ tall.
So, this should give an example of what level of shading seems “OK”.
Another site has several ~80 foot tall trees to the West, about 50 feet away and a 30’ tall building 25 feet away to the East, with only open Southern exposure. So it has shade in both the morning and afternoon. That Honey Jar and Sugar Cane there grow well, but don’t make that much fruit (a handful per tree). The Li hasn’t fruited at all.
1 Like
oh I’ve lived here since 2015 and we have several black walnuts so I’m very familiar with Juglone poisoning. that’s why I have such an extensive test of gooseberries in my warmer climate - they are resistant to juglone. it is produced from all parts of the tree so even though I have 2.25 acres, space sufficiently beyond the drip line (canopy) of about 20 feet for all of the walnuts is reserved for very specific plantings of non resistant or unknown resistant plants. walnut trees are in red.
1 Like
so on Monday I noticed one of my jujubes had been browsed by some deer and by the time I got to addressing the issue this weekend they have munched most of the foliage on all of them. luckily they didn’t touch the bark so no girdling risk, but the green leaves and stems are mostly eaten. I wrapped the lowest foot or so with window screen mesh and secured it with staples to protect against rabbits (as I happened to see a baby one in my flower bed as I was outside working). for deer protection I made cages out of 5 foot sections of 4 foot tall hardware cloth and secured them with t posts. I didn’t have enough to also get my goumi shrubs wrapped (in the background) but they were barely touched so hoping they can make it another week before I can get to wrapping them. I had one 5 foot section of hardware cloth that I placed temporarily around our dogwood that was also hit hard by deer, but it is too tight so I did not secure it to a t post yet. the last 5 foot section of the fence (it was a 25 foot roll) is pretty useless for now as it was rolled so tightly from storage. I decided on hardware cloth because I saw Michael Judd from Ecologia Design post that as the trees grow taller the smaller holes in the hardware cloth prevent deer from climbing on the fence and standing on their back legs to browse higher. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUKhcXS9tjc
Initial Damage
Today’s damage
prep
wrapped
3 Likes
so all of my jujubes recovered well from their deer damage. the one that was eaten the most with all leaves removed actually seemed to recover the best with the most leaves grown and I even found some suckers growing at the base. this tree has only been in the ground for a few months so I’m quite amazed. what strong grower!
I also just ordered a black sea jujube from one green world. I suspect it will be much smaller (1 gallon size) but if it is anything like these in terms of vigor I shouldn’t have any issues.