I got 2 Li jujube from Ison’s Nursery last week cause they were on sale at $19 (overstock), caliper was about 3/4" and just over 5 ft tall bare root. Due to lack of space I planted them about 3 ft apart hoping to graft another variety on to one of them and obviously I’ll have prune between trees. I’ve seen other fruit trees planted like this on YouTube but not a Jujube, hope this isn’t a problem.
I live in Pensacola Florida, hope Jujube does well here regarding taste. Have no clue which variety or varieties I should graft to one of the trees coming winter.
$19 for a 3/4" caliper jujube is an incredible deal. I just checked their site and the price is now $29.95, so it looks like they burned through a lot of the inventory they needed to and raised prices back a bit.
In terms of the spacing, 3’ feels a bit tight to me. At least in my climate, jujube need all the sun they can get and 3’ spacing could interfere with that. But, as you say though, pruning in between could effectively make it into a single wider tree.
Maybe we’ll hear from someone local to your area about what works there. But, I’ve heard that Tigertooth handles wet conditions and GA866 and Sihong handle hot sunny well. Of course, I think most jujube like hot/sunny…
I also ordered a jujube tree from Ison’s couple of weeks ago and paid $29.95 for it. Don’t know when they had it for 19.95. It sounds like a great deal with 3/4” caliper. I asked them to ship mine last week of March. Hope they don’t run out of all the big ones😀
The bottom two trees are apricots (Tomcot and Harcot), whose roots were really butchered (especially the Tomcot). The jujubes weren’t cut back as far. I wonder if that was by design, or just luck of who was pruning them ready for shipment.
I’m going to be watching to see which jujubes get a faster start and put on more growth in year #1. But, it’s important to correct for the planting location. I put a couple of the trees at another property and it was night and day different from my yard. It had few rocks and was almost a joy to dig. I was able to dig a bigger hole and with far less effort.
Vincent,
I think @jujubemulberry mentioned that jujubes do not do well in pot long term. I just put my So in a 15 gallon pot last fall. I was pleasantly surprised that this month it has leafed out and is doing well despite my rough handling of digging it up last fall and unceremoniously plopped it in a pot.
My 4 ft Honey Jar (in ground) started fruiting in its 3rd leaf. I don’t know how much sun your jujube gets. It really likes to be in the sun all day to be productive.
That’s a pretty small pot. If you were digging a jujube from in-ground, you’d need to get a lot more roots. Here’s a pic of one I transplanted early this spring.
Almost all the roots reach out at least 2 feet, with some 4 feet. No way to put this in a pot without removing 90%+ of the roots. Note that when I planted, I didn’t make the hole with a 4’ radius (8’ diameter!). Instead, I had a 4’ wide hole (still plenty of work) and dug small trenches for the longer roots.
While your tree looks a bit smaller, I bet that it had roots a log longer than fit in that small pot- looks like maybe 2 or 3 gal.
If a jujube has been grown in a pot the whole time, you may be able to get that sized tree in a 3 gal pot, but once they stretch out their roots it is hard to put put them back in.
I moved half a dozen jujubes this spring and all of them seem to have lived. Though this one took a bit longer than the others to leaf out, so maybe I cut it close on that one.
@BobVance
My jujube rootstock still ok and come back. It’s die right on grafting join union I believe. So it might not because I didn’t dig big enough the rooting system.
My jujubes only just started leafing out and they’ve been in ground undisturbed for multiple years. We had such a cool spring they didn’t get the cue to start growing.
