I have several Lang from DWN, I got them for cheap for stocks. They were grafted.
Scott
When some nurserymen get fruit tree stock, they’d better know how they are propagated… 
Almost all desired varieties for fresh eating have no viable seeds. The kernels are empty. Some success can be had with sour jujube seeds, but pre-treatment is needed. Some folks even soak the seeds in hot water to force them to germinate, at the risk of killing the seeds.
Most of the other common propagation methods just do not work well for jujube trees, partly due to its thin bark and very strong and woody wood. Some farmer in China claimed to have success with jujube cuttings and applied a patent. But folks do not see sizable nursery stock coming out of his farm.
I grafted ten jujube rootstocks from Roger last spring and they all grew to 2 1/2 feet tall. This past Winter the temp got down to around -14F for a couple of nights. I went out and checked on them yesterday and all of the top 2/3 of growth last year died from the cold temp. I now have bunch of new shoots about 4 inches above the graft union. I will have to choose the strongest shoot as a central leader and knock the rest of them off. All the varieties were: So, 2 Sugarcanes, Honey Jar,Shanxi Li, Sihong, Tigertooth, GA-866, Li, and Lang. I should have wrap them all up for winter protection the first season. Oh well, they will grow back fast, I just have to give them some Urea Nitrogen for a Jump start tomorrow.
Tony
Tony, glad to hear they took those temps, even if they died back some.
Looks like digging up suckers or buying trees is the way to go for rootstock. Thanks everyone!
Redsun- that’s probably why none of my seeds from cultivars have come up. I’ll probably try to grow some of the wild jujube seed, see what happens. I’m always up for an experiment as long as it’s cheap!
If you get a bunch of seed for $2, what to lose?
To start from seeds, all the hard shells should be removed. The seeds from most of the supermarket bought jujube (fresh or dry) are spindle shaped. If you crack open, most of them should be empty.
I know grafting is not easy at the hobby level. But that is about the only way to go on the commercial side. In china, they are mostly filed grafted on pencil thick rootstocks. The success rate seems ok.
I’ll recommend get one or two trees first, then learn to work around with them. Then you can do better than Tony or Fruitnut can do
The only experience I have in propagation of Jujube so far is TIgertooth grown on their own roots. I’ve taken root cuttings and applied rooting hormone and placed them in different media. I’ve tried promix, sand, and a combo. So far, my success rate is poor. The best I’ve done is about 30% and progress is very slow until they finally produce top growth. At that point growth speeds up. I’ve only grown these in rootmaker pots so far. I’ll be field planting the first propagated trees when they go dormant this year. My hope is that the high density root system forced by air pruning will substitute for the large tap root that a direct seeded jujube would have. I sent one of these to Tony. It will be interesting to see how it does for him.
Another interesting data point for what it is worth: I’ve been grafting other varieties to this propagated Tigertooth rootstock with limited success. So far I’ve only had 1 of 3 bench grafting attempts succeed (probably poor grafting skill) . It was an Admiral Wilkes scion. At any rate, the interesting thing is one of those that failed. It produced a tigertooth shoot below the graft. I was pretty sure the graft had failed, so I let it grow to keep the rootstock alive. After the shoot filled out and got about 10" tall I planned to attempt to cut off the tree below the shoot and re-graft. I then noticed new top growth coming from the edge of the 3 gal Rootbuilder II pot. It was about 4" tall today and the primary tree in the pot was about 10" so I decided to attempt the re-graft.
I first cut the cable ties and unwrapped the pot from the mix. I then tried to separate the new shoot from the main root system with enough roots intact to sustain it. I transplanted it into a 1 gal Rootbuilder II pot. I then re-wrapped the 3 gal pot, filled the hole I made with mix, and attempted the re-graft.
The data point here is that it may be possible to stool the tigertooth rootstock. On the other hand, The other graft that failed shows no signs of producing any growth below the graft or any new shoots from the root system. It was a bit smaller rootstock. I plan to give it more time since Jujube are so slow. I’m sure there is no hope for the graft, but there may still be hope that the root system will produce one or more new shoots.
I’ll report back as things progress…
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Great job. Just want to add that, the quality of the scion wood is also very important. Not all the shoots can be used as scion wood…
Jack
The Tigertooth on its own root that you sent to me, I planted in the ground in early April. It grew 3 inches of new growth. Once it get bigger, I will try to cut some roots and to see if I can clone some more.
Tony
My success has been poor, but for what it is worth here is what I’ve found that works best with my limited experience. First, roots 1/3 to 3/8 inch work best cut to about 3" long. I’m guessing that larger roots may be too mature and that smaller roots don’t have enough energy stored to survive the long duration it takes for them to produce top growth. It may be a while until you can extract roots that big.
I generally cut the distal end at an angle and the proximal end square. That way I don’t forget which end is which. I usually plant mine at an angle with the proximal end just below the surface of the media and the distal end a few inches deep. I typically dust them with Rooting hormone #1 with a small paint brush. I’ve tried dip-n-grow but my results were slightly worse that year. It may have been coincidence but I went back to #1.
My poor success rate my be a bit artificial. First, when I take a root, I usually cut it at a point a bit thicker than that optimal diameter. I then take as much of that root as I can get so the distal end is often only 1/16" of an inch. I then cut it into 3" sections planting everything down to about 1/8 of an inch at the proximal end. Again, I’ve only planted from 9 to 15 a year so I don’t have a great statistical base, but I think all of the ones that survived were in that 1/3" - 3/8" diameter range. If I excluded larger diameter and smaller diameter sections, my success rate would be much better.
I find it hard to find roots in that right size. I don’t want to mess with my trees so much that I hurt them.
re: rootstocks, the wild type is hands-down the most persistent and resilient. In the pic below is an ‘orphaned’ rootstock segment which was torn from the main tree when i decided to transplant the tree by uprooting it. This segment was held down by the concrete paver which i was stepping on, and evidently it has persisted. As one can see, have planted it over with citrus on a heavy concrete pot. Quite incredibly, what little gap remained between the paver and the concrete pot was all the root segment needed to insinuate some buds through and literally regenerate from certain death. Most people feel threatened by the suckering of juju’s, afraid that these could become immortal weedy pests. But am going to treat the ‘pest’ like Mr Meyer treats his ‘pests’. Come winter, i will pull up that paver, and then dig up the little pest and temporarily transplant into a pot, which will then graft over with sihong or honey jar next spring
I firmly believe you are correct. I have an unusual application and that is why I’m using tigertooth as the rootstock. I would not recommend this for everyone. My application is for wildlife. The problem is that the wild rootstock is so prolific that it tends to produce thickets of wild trees with poor quality sour fruit. This is not an issue in an orchard or back yard where you can simply mow around the trees (or dig up the root suckers for grafting).
In a wildlife application, I’m looking for trees that are low maintenance. I can maintain them for a few years but in the long-run, they are on their own. By using an improved variety like tigertooth as the rootstock, I sacrifice some of the benefits of the wild rootstock growth characteristics for a lower chance of thicketing and trees that are produced from root suckers produce fruit of the same quality as the parent.
I just wanted to let folks know why I’m taking this approach. It is because I think it fits best for my specific application, not because I think it is the best way to proceed for everyone.
Oh yes, by the way, the reason I was asking about air-layering was that I’m current trying to conduct an experiment. While my bench grafting success with Jujube has not been great, I’m trying to first bench graft some named varieties to wild rootstock in the root pruning containers. If they take, once established, I plan to score them above the graft, apply rooting hormone, and raise the pot height and add medium to cover the scoring.
This is equivalent to air-layering but with the entire tree. If successful, I’ll have other varieties growing on their own roots. Since I’m growing these in root pruning containers, unlike normal air-pruning, sufficient rooting does not need to occur in one growing season. I can mulch in the containers and overwinter the trees giving them more time to form roots above the graft.
good luck, and keep us posted with your experiments! Juju’s are still a bit of a novelty here in usa, so any experiment may add valuable knowledge re: its growth habits.
i have a couple of silverhill juju’s, which am almost certain were propagated as marcots, and they are painstakingly slow-growing. Prolific, but literally have not grown at the past three years, since all they do every spring are send out fruiting branchlets, and all of which ultimately gets shed during winter.
I’ve seen conflicting information as to whether Tigertooth and Silverhill are different names for the same variety or distinct varieties. The best source I could find was one of the commercial propagators. According to him they are unique varieties, but who knows when it comes to Jujube.
I posted this on another thread (can’t remember if it was here or on GW), but I have tigertooth over 2 inches in caliper that have never fruited in the field. They put on a lot of vegetative growth for me, but no fruit. I took root cuttings and got a couple fruit in the first year in the air pruning containers. Go figure…
They are certainly an interesting tree.
Great experiments Forestandfarm! I will definitely be interested to find out if root prunings from other varieties (once they are on their own roots) have a better success rate. What are the root pruning containers you use?
it is a bit confusing, perhaps due to the shape. Silverhill assumes the shape of fang-like daggers.
and as for tigertooth, i have seen pics of them looking like barney’s(the dinosaur), stubby and roundish at the edge, and not pointy. So not really sure which is what
When I decided to try starting my own trees from seed, I started doing some research. I wanted to start them under lights during the winter since I get a bit of cabin fever. I found the biggest issue with container grown trees is circling and j-hooking roots. You can prune these by hand at planting time. The downside is that cutting offers an opportunity for pathogens to enter. But you also have to disturb the root system to do that. Both things mean more transition shock when you transplant. In addition to that, the plant wasted lots of energy growing roots that will never help the tree. Root pruning containers solve all these problems. They force early upstream branching making a better root system.
From all the reading I did, it seemed that Dr. Whitcomb was one of the pioneers in this area. He has a lot of papers describing concepts and methods. I think Rootmaker was the pioneer in commercializing this technology. There are now a lot of other root pruning systems out there. I’m sure they each work to different varying degrees, but I couldn’t find any that seemed to take in to account all of the underlying concepts as well as Rootmaker did. I have friends using some other root pruning containers because they are less expensive for them but none of their results yet convinces me to change. If you are buying them retail, Rootmaker seems to command a premium over some of the competition, but I was planning on producing trees at the prosumer level (a couple hundred a year) for my farm. I was able to get a commercial account with Rootmaker which seems to reduce the premium significantly over the retail premium.
I have not used all of Rootmakers containers. I have not used any of the in-ground bags at all. The specific containers I personally like bests are:
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Mesh flats lined with shelf liner (Shelf Liner) for initial seed propagation.
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Rootmaker Express Trays with 18 cells as soon as I see a root radicle with large nuts or and top growth with seeds. They are good for 12 to 16 weeks.
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Rootmaker Rootbuilder II 1 Gal containers for the first growing season.
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Rootmaker Rootbuilder II 3 gal containers for the second growing season.
I’ve tried the 5" roottrapper bags. They have some good applications like starting cuttings that need to be cut long to get buds both above and below the medium. The size is a bit awkward for most applications. They do make larger above ground bags, but I like the Rootbuilder II containers better.
I’ve only started using the 3 gal containers and only planted a few trees from them so far as experiments. This fall I’ll be planting a good number of second season bench grafted trees (mostly the Nikita’s Gift persimmons tony provided scions for) from 3 Gal pots.
I have tried planting directly from the Rootmaker 18s in the spring. At first I thought that was the way to go because you can plant a lot of trees at a very low expense both money and labor. I’m beginning to come to the conclusion it is worth keeping them in the 1 gal containers for the first season and planting them when dormant in the fall. I’m not sure yet whether it is worth the extra cost and effort to keep trees for a second season.
The one down side to container grown trees is that without the long tap root as insurance against drought, you need to ensure they have sufficient water until they are well established. In my climate there is no problem if I plant from 1 gal or larger when dormant. By the time summer rolls around they are well enough established for all but a total drought. Planting in the spring can be a bit iffy depending on the weather since I can’t provide supplemental water in my application. For back yards or orchards, I don’t see any real down side except the cost and effort.
I have some Li jujube. I was thinking of starting some seeds for rootstock. Will they produce fruit close to li ungrafted
James, do you mind sharing a little about your air layering technique? For instance, did you use any rooting hormone? Did you do anything else to encourage the branch to grow its own roots?
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