Hi everyone, you all have convinced me to order my first jujube trees (1 Honey Jar and 1 Sugar Cane) which will be arriving bareroot next spring. I’m planning to plant them in a location that is currently lawn on my property. I was wondering if you have any tips I should keep in mind when I plant the trees. How should I prepare the soil (compost/fertilizer)? Should I remove the grass around the trees and add mulch?
Any general jujube tips are also greatly appreciated!
I planted my first two jujube like that… in a long borderless raised bed … on the end.
I would not recommend that at all because in a few years they will start sending up and out root shoots all over the place.
Jujubes need to be planted in a bed by themselves that you can mow around to help minimize the root shoots.
By year 3 my jujubes were sending out and up root shoots all down my raised bed… some 20 ft or more from the original jujube.
They were a real pain to manage. To make things worse… i did not get the variety I ordered… what I got tasted like styrophome that had been slightly sweetened. No real flavor just sweet and aweful texture.
When I decided to get rid of them… after removing the trees… i had to continue to remove root shoots for near 4 months…
At least in my limited experience, jujubes don’t seem to do good when bare root. I’ve planted two bare root jujubes. First one never woke up and the second one I bought last winter took forever to sprout out and had some dieback.
This is the bareroot jujube I got early this year, with fertilizer its grown alright but you can still see the dead bits. (Unfortunately it’s a Lang)
I ordered a shanxi lee from one green world… but by year 3 it was obvious to everyone here that knows jujube… that what I got was lang.
It was pear shaped…
I tried to make myself like them… even made some nasty jam with them. But in the end they simply were not fit to eat.
Slightly sweetened Styrofoam.
If I ever try them again… i would try honey jar… and something like chico, black sea… expect I would like any of the varieties that have some tart in the mix.
I am no expert on jujubes by any stretch of the imagination, but I planted my first two at the beginning of June of this year, so I will give you my two cents worth regarding what I did and how they have done here in zone 6A/B in southern Indiana near Louisville, KY.
I planted potted plants, a Tigertooth on its own roots and a grafted R4T3 on Tigertooth rootstock. Both were quite small and spindly, with the Tigertooth being a bit larger.
I removed the sod and dug a nice hole in my loamy clay soil and added a good bit of compost to lighten things up. Even though I read not to fertilize at planting time, I just could not stop myself and added some Azomite and some organic fertilizer, maybe 4-6-5 or similar composition. (Just can’t stand the thought of my babies being hungry, ).
I covered the sod left around the planting hole in about a 4-5 foot radius with cardboard to kill the sod and weeds hopefully and then covered with bark mulch which was all I had. I really need to find someone to deliver a big truckload of woodchips. I have plenty of room for them to drop loads of chips.
I also put fencing around them, as I do not know if deer like jujubes, but they seem to eat everything else so I did not want to take a chance.
They have grown wonderfully since June and are healthy, lush and green. If there is not a good rain, I water them weekly with a 5 gallon bucket of water each. Don’t know if this is too much or too little but they seem to like it. Once they are well-established, I will just let them live on rain water unless we are in a serious drought.
The R4T3 started flowering within a few weeks and has had tons of flowers all summer, but has set no fruit, although I did not expect it to fruit this year. It is about 3.5 feet tall now and has almost tripled in size since planting. I was told by the nursery owner who grafted it that it might be a good idea to bury the graft when planting so that is what I did. Of course this would be hard to do if the graft is high up on your plant. England’s orchards in Kentucky also recommends on their website burying the graft site on jujubes in colder areas.
The Tigertooth seems to be a very vigorous tree and has grown to about 5 feet tall with lots of branches. It started flowering a few weeks ago. I will have to graft another earlier-ripening jujube on it (as soon as I learn how to graft), as I don’t think the fruit will ripen here before mid-October which is our usual first frost, from what I have read. Both trees have suckers already sprouting around the roots which I need to remove. I am glad I planted them in an open grassy area of the orchard so I can mow around them to keep the suckers in check.
Anyway, I am excited and have high hopes for my juju babies and wish you good growing with yours.
Sandra
I grafted a tiger tooth this year and it’s growing out of control. Almost 5ft as well. It’s also fruiting on every flower. I don’t see any of my other jujubes are flowering right now. Is it known to be self fruiting?
Actually recent genetic testing from prof Yao indicated that Sugar Cane is actually the same as Coco. That matches my limited experience with Coco and extensive experience with Sugar Cane. I wouldn’t be able to tell the fruit apart. Both are very crisp, juicy, and sweet.
Yup, that is Lang. Lang is only useful if you want to dry the fruit. I’m not a big fan of dried jujubes, but my wife likes them for soup. But, I don’t need Lang for it. Lang isn’t some sort of superstar for drying- it just doesn’t have any other uses. I’d recommend grafting over it.
I haven’t been a fan of either variety. Tigertooth is very late and texture is poor, though not as bad as Lang. I haven’t grown R4T3 for as long, but the 2 small crops from it haven’t impressed me.
I think this is a good thing to do with jujubes. In recent years, I’ve been mixing 2-3 buckets of composted leaf mulch into each planting hole. Not every site needs it, but I have some places where jujubes didn’t grow much, possibly because of the low water holding capability of the soil. More recent trees planted there with the compost have grown much faster. I’ve been top dressing the other trees at that site and eventually got them growing. Once they got their roots deep enough they started to take off, but it added several years to the timeline.
I generally don’t add fertilizer until they have been in-ground for a few months, but I don’t have any evidence it would be bad. Once they are growing, plenty of fertilizer (I’ve been using 10-10-10) seem to help.
I don’t know if it is self-fruitful or not, but if none of your other jujubes are flowering, it seems it could likely be. Very few people in the U.S. seem to be growing jujubes yet, so not very likely your neighbor has one. Or maybe a few flowers in the leaf axils escaped your notice. That would be easy to happen unless you are like me and sit on the mower staring at your jujubes endlessly.
At any rate your Tigertooth with fruit looks great and in your zone you will hopefully get to actually taste some. I will get mine grafted over to Honey Jar or Sugar Cane next spring/summer hopefully so I can get some ripe fruit from it. Also, if you are into having more jujubes on their own roots or suckers for rootstock that isn’t of the wild very spiny variety, then from looking at the suckers already coming from my fairly new plants, you will probably have plenty of material.
Please let us know what you think of Tigertooth when you taste it!
I am not too concerned with the taste and texture of Tigertooth, as I will probably never get a ripe one here. I got it because the two I planted were all the local nursery had in stock and were reasonably priced and I hoped it could be a pollinator for the R4T3.
I did read a few reviews of R4T3 and people seemed to like it. It does have a weird interesting elongated shape, which may make it easier to dry??? I, unlike some others, really like dried sweet fruit and it sounds like jujubes would work well for that.
Hopefully my climate, soil, etc. may result in a better tasting R4T3. One never knows how different environments can affect fruit. We shall see what transpires. If it is not tasty at all, grafting may be in its future.
Thanks for your input on these varieties, and also on your compost and fertilization practices related to jujubes. I am always looking to learn more.
Sandra
Hi Sandra, thanks so much for the detailed response! I’m glad your jujubes are doing well. That’s a good tip with the cardboard and mulch over the sod.
Also, I’m the same way - I can never resist adding some fertilizer
Hmmm…interesting that coco and sugar cane are the same! Thanks for the tips. Sounds like I’ll add some good compost into the hole during planting and fertilize later.
Picked up from a local nursery named Harmony Farms Supply & Nursery that we often get veggie starts from but they also have a pretty good selection of bareroot after Christmas. Their bareroot is normally great quality, large trees complimented with great roots. The bareroot jujube that managed to make it had great roots and the unsuccessful one the year before had MASSIVE roots.
After realizing the error in my ways of buying a Lang, I also got a supossed Black Sea in a gallon pot from them recently. (When I got Lang, I’d passed up on Harmony’s even better looking bareroot SC and HJ for sale)
Black Sea:
Maybe, but if anything I would think that your Sugar Cane is wrong instead. “Juicy” is a perfect descriptor for Sugar Cane/Coco, It has one of the crispest/lightest textures of the 50+ jujube cultivars that I’ve tried.
It could just be that they are both the same, but one of the trees is having problems. Some size/shape variation is normal, especially if one of the trees isn’t happy. Here are a few pics of my Sugar Canes, as grown on 3 different sites, in 3 different years.
There was a study done on jujube pollination and most (but not all) varieties require pollination. It was Li (and Li synonyms) and Autumn Beauty (and synonyms) which produce fruit without pollination. But, Tiger Tooth wasn’t included in the study, so it is hard to say.
Interesting info. Maybe some others who grow Tiger Tooth can chime in. My Shanxi Li fruited on every node/flower in the same way that this Tiger Tooth has.
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