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.
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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.
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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.
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Yours look slightly more elongated than mine, but pretty close.
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.
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I think the tartness must have overwhelmed the sweetness.
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My Lang Jujube is breaking dormancy, here is a picture of the suckers
It looks like I might have something here
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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.
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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.
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I wonder what to do with my suckers, I have 6 out there.
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.
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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.
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:
My vote would be to pot them up separately and graft them.
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.
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Thank you. This is helpful. Now, if you were to graft to the branch you just pruned in the bottom picture, where would you graft? The side branch or the main branch? If you graft to the main branch do you prune off the side branch completely?
First, I should say that the picture is from Prof Yao’s web page, not something “I just pruned” 
But, if I was to graft to that tree, I would probably make 5 grafts (marked with a yellow line in the pic). One to each side branch and another to the leader. I tend to like to have some backups and you can never be certain which grafts will do well. My jujube take rate is 95%+, but not all of them grow well. Many cling to life for a year or two, then die. While others grow 2-3 feet the first year and produce fruit immediately.
Now, if I was to guess which graft would do best, I think it would be the leader. But, that somewhat depends on how thick the leader is. Too thick and the take rate starts to drop. This is likely due to increased difficulty in forcing wood together in the face of my mechanically imprecise (also known as ugly…) grafts. Thin wood bends more when I force it tight, so it works better until the size is too small for me to comfortably work with (or there isn’t enough contact/energy for some other reason).
From my post last May:
Here’s my 2021 Jujube data for in-ground grafts on established stocks:
| Size | Grafts | Takes | Pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thin (<= 2mm) | 12 | 9 | 75% |
| Medium Thin (3mm) | 19 | 15 | 79% |
| Medium (4mm) | 26 | 23 | 88% |
| Medium Large (5mm) | 34 | 32 | 94% |
| Large (6-7mm) | 35 | 31 | 89% |
| Large-Very Large (8mm) | 13 | 10 | 77% |
| Very Large+ (>=9mm) | 18 | 10 | 56% |
| 157 | 130 | 83% |
One thing that is still a question in my mind is if/how a bud on the primary shoot is different from a bud on a side branch.So, if I graft a section of side-branch into a primary position on a rootstock, which does it behave like?
To play it safe, I’ve been trying to cut mostly primary wood, but I will often slip a few side branches in if I have extra. I can graft it as spares. And it helps a new variety take over a larger proportion of a tree. In recent years, I’ve decided I like having only 2-5 varieties in a tree. Once you get more than that, it gets tough to keep track of everything, even with a spreadsheet. But 2-4 on each tree, I can almost keep straight in my head.
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As always, thorough answer. Thank you so much. Hopefully I’ll get to eat jujubes this year. My tree is a moody little thing. Hoping to graft some of it over.
My Winter Delight and one Lang is breaking out, I hope OGW sent me the right variety. I thought this is a late Jujube.
@BobVance, I’m too nervous of removing the suckers, how do you tear one off the main tree. This particular tree has a lot of grafts. Maybe I just leave it alone.
That would be my last choice, as you will have some of the vigor of your tree going toward building a sucker you don’t need.
If the tree is dormant, it shouldn’t be much of a problem to clear away a bit of soil and see if you can remove the sucker with only a bit of root loss to the overall tree. When it is a big tree in-ground and the sucker is more than a foot or two away, I don’t worry much about that, but you probably need to be more cautious when it is only a few inches away and the tree is potted (limited root system).
If you decide not to harvest the sucker, I think your best remaining options would be to cut it off at ground level or slightly below (so you don’t have its energy wasted on rootstock growth), or graft another variety onto the sucker, though that is somewhat dependent on having a big enough pot and enough space around it.
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I did just that last year. I got a R4T3 scion from someone who I guess didn’t know the difference between a primary branch and side branch. I topworked a Chico on Tigertooth rootstock to this scion. To my surprise I ended up with a super vigorous side branch that grew 3 ft up then started to curl over towards the ground. The Tigertooth rootstock, which usually doesn’t sucker much, suckered like crazy all year long trying to grow a new primary branch. What a mess.
I cut the side branch back to the curl apex and hope it will grow a primary branch from somewhere. Or maybe I should just get a new R4T3 scion and graft it to the tip.
Empress Gee is breaking out. I think Massandra grafts took, I think this is an early variety too. I’m not sure the long wait has been worth it or, trying my patience,lol.
But unfortunately my GA-866 grafts are not doing well. I didn’t know thick canes were not good for grafting, I thought it’s the opposite.
Thick ones work fine.
What problem are you having?
The grafts never took, they died on me.