Is there any way to reduce the amount of suckering with jujubes? My potted jujubes relentlessly send up suckers from the rootstock. This is maybe the 5th time I’ve pruned this back this year. I know in-ground trees sucker too, but is it this extensive? I feel like my trees hardly grow above the graft at the expense of so much growth from root suckers.
I wonder if using an air-pruning pot would help by reducing root circling.
If you’re only cutting the suckers to the ground then you’re just giving them “heading cuts” which encourages them to branch out and keep growing. You need to remove them down to where they attach to the roots (easy enough to do when re-potting).
I planed 2 jujubes in ground in a long food forest bed in 2020.
By year 3 they were sending up root shoots 15-20 ft up and down that bed… sprouting up everywhere.
I got a first crop of them and was not impresssed… my Shanx Li… turned out to be a Lang. The fruit was really unimpressive.
That plus all the root suckers… it was an easy decision. I dug the two trees out… and tossed them into the woods.
I spent months continuing to dig up root shoots out of that bed… Finally got them all.
Jujube… no more at my place.
TNHunter
I air layered my grafted Li so that the suckers are less aggressive, have smaller thorns, and actually produce good fruit
Bought at 1G size and repotted at the very bottom of a 5G pot, above the graft union I scraped the bark and lightly applied rooting hormone.
The next season when it went in ground Li had produced tons of roots
I personally would never plant a grafted jujube above the graft union in-ground
I have a differing position…Jujubes are the absolute best fruit tree to plant. What other fruit doesn’t need sprays for insect or disease, gets to 25-30 brix, and tends to get ignored more than most fruits by animals? The closest I can think of is a non-astringent persimmon, which has hardiness concerns and reaches lower brix levels (generally around 20 for me).
Lang is a drying cultivar and is very unimpressive fresh. Even Li, which I find unimpressive, is miles ahead of Lang. And from your prior posts, I think the other tree you had was GA866, which has a well earned reputation for not producing fruit outside of CA (and possibly other parts of the SW). The few fruit I managed to coax out of GA866 (with branch girdling) weren’t very good. You were growing the 2 worst possible jujube trees, so it doesn’t surprise me that you have a low opinion of them.
Could just be a rootstock which suckers a lot, though it could also have to do with the watering practice.
It really isn’t bad if you have lawn around the tree. Any suckers get mowed easily.
I have ~100 jujube trees in ground and haven’t had any problems with suckers. A few send up some shoots in the lawn, but many of them haven’t suckered at all. I’ve been growing them for 15 years, though most trees are younger. Quite a few are closer to 8-10 years old.
I had the same idea, planting some jujubes on their own roots (from JFaE) in 2019 (Honey Jar, Sugar Cane, and Autumn Beauty). Regrettably, none of those trees has sent out a sucker in the 6 years I’ve had them.
I’ll likely be moving in the next year (larger property ~10 minutes away). When I do, I’ll be transplanting them (and a lot of other jujubes- thankfully half of them are planted at other properties). But, any time you dig up a tree, you lose some roots. I think I’ll take this as an opportunity to start a bunch more jujubes on their own roots.
In the past, I’ve grafted scions directly to roots and had pretty good results when I used a good sized section of root (small/short roots tended to not work). So, in this case, say I dig up a Honey Jar and in the process, break off a few roots. I would then dig the leftover roots and graft Honey Jar to the Honey Jar root. Just potting up the root might be enough for it to generate a sucker, but it might not. If I graft a Honey Jar scion to the root, then I know there will be an active bud for the root to put it’s energy into.
Right, not an issue. But suckers that have high quality fruits that can be transplanted are a boon instead of a chore (assuming you have the space)
Interesting. I believe Sherwood and Raf’s Vegas varieties do.
Wondering if
I loved those suckers. They will be rootstock for me to graft new jujube varieties onto.
Tony
