Jujube 2022

[BobVance]

@snowjunky

it will also allow you to hold the rootstock steady with your other hand without danger of cutting your hand because the clothes pin will stop the knife

I like this idea. it’s a bit like the board with a hole in it, but self-adjusts to the size of the branch. I may try this out, so that I don’t need to carry around the heavy leather glove.

@snowjunky

clamping the graft tight with clothes pins is much easier and faster than tying the graft with a rubber band.

I’m not as sold on this aspect. I don’t use rubber bands either, though I suppose you could use a really thick one. I don’t think the thin ones (the kind I have) would be strong enough. Maybe if you are very precise with your cuts, the slight pressure of a rubber band or a clothespin would be enough. But I tend to butcher my cuts a bit and rely on brute force to smush the graft closed. The rubber electric/splicing tape lets you get quite a bit of force into it, yet still eventually lets the tree grow through it without girdling (make sure not to get vinyl electric tape, as it needs to be manually removed).

Maybe this type of clamp is worth trying- it looks (and felt) like it has enough force, but I am a bit concerned that there could be open spots. Maybe I’ll try one of these in concert with my normal technique as well…

@snowjunky

And don’t forget to use foil to protect the graft from the sun for a few weeks.

This could be more important in CA than it is in the Northeast. I don’t usually put foil on any of my grafts. I think I tried it on a few really late ones (June, when 90F+ was coming), but I don’t recall how much it helped. In my area, jujubes can be grafted with very high success anytime in April. May isn’t too bad either, with the success rate dropping off a bit in June (but it can still work).

[SoCalGardenNut]

It’s 77 degrees high today, not too bad, my jujube trees are on the shady side at this time of the year. So hopefully my grafts were not damage by the heat.
But I really can’t wait for Spring. I now only want to graft the early variety, I’m impatient, I want to eat jujube earlier in the season. What else should I graft next year. I see from Bob’s chart that Black Sea and Massandra are early. Should I graft Sugar Cane or Chico? But this is it for next year. Next year I will also graft more from my own GA-866, I like this variety, decent size and sweet, but it’s pretty late is the drawback.

[castanea]

Autumn Beauty is also very early, sometimes earlier than Black Sea and always earlier than Massandra.

[SoCalGardenNut]

Thanks @castanea, I did buy one small Autumn Beauty from OGW, very small plant. It will take at least 3 years to get fruit from this plant. I hope they sent me the right variety.
But when it gets bigger I tend to graft this variety to my existing Li and Lang.

[Noddykitty]

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good variety to try around seattle.? I think I am sold on getting one after reading thru this thread.

[snowjunky]

Protect your fingers and control the split cut.

Add a strong clamp like this if you need more pressure than just the clothes pins. I like clothes pins for speed, easiness and because the pressure is directional from two sides, which is perfect for the cleft/wedge graft. You can also quickly remove them to check your graft and then clamp them back on.

Cara Cara orange graft with foil protection from the Phoenix sun. Sometimes I have to use a ziplock bag to protect the new growth on the scion from being dried out by an early April heatwave here. Hot dry desert wind is not my friend.

[Noddykitty]

@snowjunky, what a great idea, that is so clever.

[snowjunky]

I learned the hard way

[SoCalGardenNut]

That is clever, now I need to get a pin and a clamp, where can I get one like that.

[snowjunky]

That’s just the bag clamp from my grafting snack of Lay’s. Any strong clamp that opens wide enough will work. An XXLarge paper clamp like in Bob’s photo might work too.

[BobVance]

I’ve now used the last of the 2022 jujubes.

Some, like these rootstock fruit (which aren’t all that good to eat fresh) came through OK and I was able to dry most of them.

Mostly full dehydrator:

Bok Jo, Honey Jar, and So also came through better than average.

But there was a lot of waste. I filled two 5 gal buckets with bad jujubes.

Now that I have the dehydrator, I need to stay on top of dehydrating any excess (in future years). Especially any with cracks, as they go bad so quickly.

I found one small bag of Texas Tart jujubes. They were all bad, but I still found a use for them. I popped the seeds out of the rotten fruit, then washed the remains off the pits.

I then got to work cracking the pits with vice grip pliers.

Texas Tart is an interesting cultivar. It is small (half the size of Honey Jar) and extra-extra sour. I like some tart, but it is a bit extreme. Almost like a lemon ball. But, I bet it would make good dried jujubes (extra sour from Chico helped and it isn’t anywhere near as strong as TT). The problem is getting them bigger. So, I decided to plant some seedlings. I’m not sure where these Texas Tart fruit came from (rental or from my yard), but I suspect it was the rental, as that one produced more. If so, the most likely pollinators (from the same tree) are Sugar Cane and Dae Sol Jo. A cross with either (or just about anything else I grow for that matter…) should yield a larger fruit size.

I’ve now planted 16-17 Texas Tart seeds in 4 pots. Texas Tart has a very high incidence of double-seeded pits, which are full size, despite the small fruit. They are also a bit harder than average to extract without damaging. Maybe it complicated things that I didn’t wait a few days/weeks for the seed to slightly dry/shrink.

Note that some (most) of the seeds split right down the middle between the 2 halves, leaving each see enclosed in a half-shell. I was able to grind down my fingernails and get a few out. Some came out when I bounced the pit off the wall/floor and I just planted a few that way and will be interested to see if they come up.

I should also note that although the Texas Tart fruit size is small and similar to some wild/Spinosa varieties, I don’t think the shape matches. In the past, the Spinosa ones have a shorter, rounder seed, unlike the elongated ones from above. So, while it could be a wild hybrid, there is at least some cultivated ancestry.

[castanea]

This is an old photo of four Texas Tart fruit with one Lang fruit. TT fruit was definitely very tart with little or no sweetness, but I still liked them. They also dried well, better than Lang.

[BobVance]

@castanea

This is an old photo of four Texas Tart fruit with one Lang fruit.

Yours look slightly more elongated than mine, but pretty close.

@castanea

TT fruit was definitely very tart with little or no sweetness, but I still liked them.

I agree that there isn’t much sweet taste, but they actually have quite high brix. 32 in the above pic.

Texas Tart is also massively productive/precocious. In the below pic, the ripe fruit to the right of my hand is from a new graft made a few months earlier. The unripe fruit above my hand is a 2nd crop on new growth from that new graft.

[castanea]

I think the tartness must have overwhelmed the sweetness.

[SoCalGardenNut]

My Lang Jujube is breaking dormancy, here is a picture of the suckers

It looks like I might have something here

[evilpaul]

Went out to find something dug a more than a foot deep to the bottom of the hole, fully exposing the roots, where I planted my Sugarcane Jujube. I hate animals so much.

[txlonghorn]

Small grafts have leafed out. Buds are yellowish. Last year I dug up some suckers and planted them into containers. The grafts were done in mid June. Both took and had leaves, but no primary shoot. The containers were moved into windowless garage in December to avoid cold and out today.

[SoCalGardenNut]

I wonder what to do with my suckers, I have 6 out there.

[Susu]

How forgiving are jujubes when it comes to brutal/not the most accurate pruning? I find jujubes hard to prune. I prune them the same way I prune peaches. Just wondering if they are fine with that.

[BobVance]

@Susu

How forgiving are jujubes when it comes to brutal/not the most accurate pruning?

I find jujubes to be easier for a few reasons. For one, they don’t send out as much growth as peaches, so there isn’t as much pruning needed. For another, they can fruit on new growth (depending on when it grows in the season), so it isn’t like you need to plan far ahead of time, or risk cutting off next years flowers, etc.

@Susu

I prune them the same way I prune peaches.

The most interesting thing with jujubes is the “1 cut stops, 2 cuts go” described in the below article. Basically, you can keep it frozen for a year or more, but by cutting to a side-branch. If you want a new vertical to come up, cut to the side-branch, then cut the side branch itself off. That leaves the bud from the base of it, which then grows a strong shoot.

Jujube Training and Pruning Basics | New Mexico State University - BE BOLD. Shape the Future..

So when I have a tree that is as big as I want, I cut to a side-branch (pic A below). And when I have a moderate sized tree that I cut back (say for scionwood), I also cut off the side branch, so it can continue getting bigger (the bottom pic below).

From the linked site:

@SoCalGardenNut

I wonder what to do with my suckers, I have 6 out there.

My vote would be to pot them up separately and graft them.

@txlonghorn

into windowless garage in December to avoid cold and out today.

Your spring is quite a bit earlier than mine. We’re in the process of getting ~5" of snow. Of course it is our first real snow of the winter. We had 1/2" back in December which melted pretty quick.