I know it’s been discussed before in this forum but I feel I should express caution again about using horse manure. Hay feed to horses often contains aminopyralid or clopyralid herbicides that wind up in their manure. So before you ever use any that you are unsure about it is best to test…If a tomato plant won’t grow in it, you don’t want it.
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I know it is just a matter of time…but so far nothing has messed with my jujubes…Not birds, raccoons, opossums, or even squirrel has messed with them so far…seems very strange.
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Usually the ants and Japanese beetles will eat my Honey Jar fruits due to the high sugar level.
Tony
Hey Rafael… I still can’t get GA-866 to fruit, so I still feel there is a deeper mystery to jujubes than just nutrition. My Ant Admirer didn’t even flower this year (bunches of fruit last year), but a Sugar Cane grafted to it has fruited well. But another Sugar Cane that has produced well in previous years looks like it is in some sort of decline…no blossoms and no new growth. I feel your observation about “hot and dry” is still correct…Jujubes feel threatened in dry conditions, and plants under stress often fruit under the fear that it may be their last chance to “spread their seed”. If they were like other fruit trees I would think that chill hours also played into the equation…but, there again, you don’t have a problem getting certain cultivars to fruit and Las Vegas is warmer than my location in Gainesville. I still have hope that ten years down the line, as the jujubes mature, that all the trees will perform well without all this fuss.
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from what am seeing here, ga-866 is more stingy than sherwood, porterville, gi-1183, and autumn beauty(although autumn beauty can be precocious as new grafts), so probably even less reliable ‘outside of its element’. The cultivars ma ya zao and r4t3(which are reportedly productive in TN) are kind of similar to ga-866, and in my opinion better in flavor, so those might be a better fit for your growing conditions. Both were also precocious on li interstem. R4t3 was also precocious on contorted.
am thinking some jujus might change into biennial or triennial bearers in subpar conditions, but that is just a hypothesis. Our lang was a biennial the past four years, not producing flowers for some reason. Ant admire has been an incredible annual performer here, btw.
hormonal inhibitory effects of multi-grafts may also occur, but that hypothesis is difficult, if not imposible to prove. The incredible diversity of spinosa-type rootstock evidently also play a huge part in juju well-being, especially in subpar conditions. Unlike apples and drupes where named rootstock(gisela, m1, etc) are used specifically, the nurseries selling jujus seem to just graft their named varieties to random rootstock suckers or random seedlings. I have noticed manganese/iron deficiency-type symptoms on some of our trees here(common problem in alkali soils), even though juju trees a couple of feet away are verdant, lush, and loaded with fruits. If variances occur on our trees here, quite certain those would be amplified in less favorable conditions. Possible that some rootstock are better extractors of nutrients from the soil than others.
in the rainy tropics you cannot get certain cacti to flower unless you grow them under an umbrella, limiting the amount of water they get, and letting the pots dry out in between. Many native xerophytes in the southwest(tepary beans/cacti/succulents) need periodic dehydration to flower and fruit.
dry conditions may play a part in triggering hormonal effects, but also may ‘increase’ fertility of soil not by adding minerals to the soil, but by removing a great deal of the diluent. A crude and admittedly sophomoric analogy could come up with would be that one of the first lines of treatment for dangerously high blood sugar among diabetics is hydration. A couple of bags saline rapid iv infusion. The acidotic gradient typical of the condition decreases by mere dilution, so conversely with removal of excess water from the soil, the gradient increases in favor of absorption. If soil nutrition is something to rule out, growing jujus in pots(or dumpsters with wheels) might be too much work, but perhaps worth experimenting with since you could pretty much use 100% miracle gro potting soil and avoid leaching by not watering too much.
i agree, longevity and hardiness are good traits to have, but inutile if productivity is negligible or nil…
Wow! Thanks for the in-depth response.
I haven’t considered the role of the rootstock as to why some trees perform better than other…definitely something to look into.
Some of my grafts onto spinosa rootstock have greatly outpaced the rootstock, growing much quicker in diameter than the rootstock can keep up…Will the spinoza rootstock eventually catch up?
Thanks…I will check into procurement.
As a test, I had a ‘Li’ growing in a twenty gallon pot, but gave it away once my in-ground ‘Li’ started producing well. I’ll have to repeat it again using GA-866 to see what I can come up with. But I have noticed (between myself and a neighbor plant enthusiast) that jujubes have no problem fruiting in pots…but is that nutrition or just the jujube feeling threatened by a small container?
Even the Sihong air-layered last summer is fruiting in a pot:
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well, if there’s any advantage to your location vs. mine, is that it seems easy to airlayer jujus! Was clicking the ‘like’ button several times but only allows one per person, haha
kind of off-topic, but has your airlayered sihong suckered? That is a gold-mine Travis, especially if it is inclined to sucker. Funny about jujubes is that, people will actually pay top dollar for suckers if named varieties are on their own roots as opposed to grafted specimens. Even though grafting is more costly due to time, materials, and labor. A business model where both the seller and buyer are quite pleased.
on their own roots, juju aficionados would be interested in paying top dollar for root cuttings, even if not suckered yet. One instance when a root cutting is exponentially more valuable than budwood, since it is effectively a rooted budwood, and not as susceptible to sudden-death syndromes as airlayered apples etc.
jujus in pots will bear for many years, but will ultimately need amendments/foliar or repotting to bigger containers once production declines.
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i actually see this the other way. When i see budwood being much thicker and vigorous than the rootstock, i actually feel that the rootstock’s efficiency as a conduit is superior to the budwood ‘parasite’ that is growing on it.
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I heard from lots of sources that GA-866 is difficult to get to fruit. When at Brenham, which is a high humidity area, they had GA-866 potted trees fruiting. They were not ripened and most other jujus were but there was quite a bit of fruit on the tree.
that’s promising news Katy. Potting definitely has effects on fruit trees, and evidently, not all are bad!
Neither the Sihong planted in the ground last year, or the two growing in pots have produced any babies yet. Sihong air-layers easily, but takes about a month longer to start forming roots than mulberries (three months as opposed to two).
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Did you score it or remove bark? Any unusual steps to the air layer process?
I have had this Li for several years and have not received any fruit. I hope this year is the year. What do you think.
Hi
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My Sugar Cane from Burnt Ridge must have 1,000 blooms…just potted it up 2 months ago.
Don’t know if there will be fruit…my Li has no blooms so far…and there are no other Jujubes around.
Just a standard air-layer; cutting and removing about a half-inch strip of bark completely around the branch…no hormone or anything.
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Do you have other cultivars of jujus? If you don’t, it is not unreasonable to suspect that your tree could be the cultivar lang, as the two are often subject to inadvertent switch-a-roos. Lang seems unable to produce on its own, and is not a reliable producer(to begin with) even with different cultivars nearby.
The best suggestion often come up with when it comes to any unproductive juju is to plant where they will get the most sunlight. And if not possible to move, to trim trees that cast shadows on it.
btw, can you post a picture of its thorns?
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Thanks.
Thanks for the pics. I didn’t see much thorns, but that’s because there aren’t many laterals, or the laterals are still developing. Li generally has imposing spines on the laterals, while lang has small thorns, if not outright thornless. Keep us posted. Am a bit sore and perplexed(and quite certain others are, too) as to why your juju isn’t fruiting at your zone.