recent grafts are prone to dieback(over a severe winter) compared to the interstem or rootstock they are grafted to, especially if the graft junction still has cracks and crevices. Even here in vegas, i have had grafts that didn’t leaf out despite leafing out on the year of grafting.
conversely though, i had grafts that didn’t leaf out on first year, but leafed out the second year…
these jujus are just inscrutable sometimes!
we can always try and try again, until you get many( if not all) juju cultivars established on your patch of mother earth 
Raf,
I recalled you mention a one year delay of your jujube graft leafing out. That gave me hope so I left my not-leafing-out grafts on the tree. They still were dead, 2and 3 years later!!
I think @BobVance is right that I grafted too many on a tree. Grafts that were dead the following year often were the ones grafted on small branches or twigs.
This year I did only 16-17 grafts. After a month, only 3-4 of them started to show signs of life. This was after we had temp 70 F and warmer for over a week now.
The grafts that are taking are good-sized scionwood. Any skinny or short wood (shorter than 3” ) have not pushed buds. I know people can graft jujubes with a single budwood. I obviously not one of them. 
I have had good success with skinny wood on apples, pears, plums, etc.
We finally had a whole day of no rain!!! And later in the day the sun came out so I got to make use of it! I only had to pull the mower out of the ditch once when james thought he could make it over to higher ground and buried it up in the mud… 
. So the jujube part of this is that I got out my weed eater to trim up the foot high grass around some of my trees. The little Massandra that died had suckers around it that I planned to let one grow to graft to and dig the others if possible. This is what I found growing around Massandra.
I think this taller sucker may be Massandra!!! I think I may have found the graft line…maybe. But these two suckers are very different from each other. Y’all check out the pictures and see if you agree with me. If so, I’m really excited because this “sucker” is already twice as tall as my stunted Massandra.
Smaller sucker and thorns: very short internodes, small light green leaves, spikes for thorns.
Larger “sucker” and thorns: long internodes, wider, darker green leaves, “delicate” thorns.
And maybe this is the graft line with the Massandra growth coming off at the top right.
What you think?
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% |
Notes on data- excludes a few recent grafts (no time yet to see if they took), Also excludes 4 grafts where I forgot to include the thickness. There could still be a bit of movement in the numbers- hopefully a few more will break bud over the next few weeks.
From this data, I would conclude that thin wood lowers success rate some, but not by as much as very thick wood hurts success rate. You want the Goldilocks wood…Not too big…not too small…just right.
It’s interesting that the 2016 apple results I posted above (post 2109) were a bit different:
So in the 2016 apple data, Medium-Thin and Medium had the most success, while in the 2021 jujube data, Medium-Large was the leader. I have a few possible explanations:
1.) The apple study had a very small sample size (36 vs 157 grafts). The clearest result from it is that when the wood gets too big, the success goes way down. The 2021 jujube data also shows that same result.
2.) Maybe there is a difference in optimal size between apple and jujube wood (jujube being slightly larger, but still not too large).
3.) The categories (ie thin, medium, very large, etc) are subjective and my categorization may have changed over the last 5 years.
To make this meaningful to others, I’ve included an estimate of each size in parenthesis). This is something I came up with by classifying some scions, then measuring to see how wide they are. I don’t measure each scion as I graft them (when I first started in 2013, I did it for a dozen or two, but skipped that for the next few thousand grafts ). Even when I did measure, the results were often like “4.5-7mm”, as not every scion is perfectly round.
I tried to take a look at it based on the number of buds, bud I haven’t been as careful about counting buds and only have that metric for a bit under 75% of my grafts. Even so, it doesn’t seem that a single bud harms my success rate, as I used one bud 44% of the time and the success rate was slightly above the overall average.
| Buds | Grafts | Takes | Pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Bud | 71 | 60 | 85% |
| 2 Buds | 31 | 27 | 87% |
| 3 Buds | 10 | 8 | 80% |
| 4 Buds+ | 6 | 4 | 67% |
| No data | 43 | 34 | 79% |
| 161 | 133 | 83% |
What I think does hurt my success rate is if the scion is so short that I can’t really hold it to cut. Like the one in this pic. I only had 3 like that and was 1/3 in terms of take rate. So one bud is fine, but I need a bit of hand-hold.
One thing to consider. If I had a stick with 10 buds, even if the space between the buds wasn’t all that much (like the below pics), I think I would do OK, as long as I made each wedge before separating the bud from the rest of the stick. That would leave only the last bud with nowhere to hold, giving you 9 decent grafts (in a situation where you don’t have much wood and want a lot of copies).
One which hasn’t grown so far:
One which did take:
@BobVance you have amazingly good percentage of successful grafts. Please, I beg you, tell me how you make your grafts, when, which technique you use, etc.
I have similiar percentage of successful grafts with any other plants. Plums,cherries,apples, pears, quince etc. It’s even higher than 80% , I’d say more than 90%. Jujubes and walnuts are my nightmare for now. No matter what I do they just dont take 
I watched youtube video of dr Yao doing it, and that’s pretty much what I do.
I’d like to think that is not about my technique or time, but that tigertooth is not suitable for grafting or scions are not so good. After all I receive them after months, my friend keep them in refrigerator , but who knows. Also I recieved some peach scions year or two ago and none of them was good, they looked ok but none is pushed bud. But grafts with peaches I get from here, and almond as well, was successful. So I comfort myself that way. It’s frustrating.
There is still hope for some buds to break, will see in few weeks. But in two years, last one and this one, I made about 50 grafts of jujubes. For now 0% of success.
At least seeds are good and sprouting. I’ll have enough plants for rootstock and for planting. Wild ones and xu zhou are the most. Even have 3 honey jar for now 
@BobVance
You are so good at keeping data. When I said single bud by wood, I meant extreme short wood like in your pic. I do need some length of scionwood to hold onto when grafting. It is interesting to see the results of larger sized wood. Thank you.
I do not like to graft with scionwood larger than a pencil size so now I have another reason to avoid it 
I’ve been using cleft grafts, with Temflex tape to hold the union together. Parafilm pre-applied to the scion and added on top of the Temflex at the end.
This winter, I stored the scions pre-wrapped in parafilm. I think that really helped for some such as persimmons, but am not sure how much impact it had for jujube. I had pretty decent results even before doing that. Peaches are much harder for me…
From a timing perspective, I generally do it a bit early (early to mid April), but I’ve done it later in the past and had success. This spring, it was cold, so it took a while for things to leaf out.
I don’t think that would be a problem- I have several takes on my Tigertooth. I hope it is good for grafting, as it isn’t good for producing tasty jujubes…
Also, I think that suckers from a Tigertooth on it’s own roots were one of the rootstock sources that Just Fruits and Exotics used to use.
That’s a possibility. Maybe you can see if they can send them to you as soon as they are cut. Then, you can manage their storage. Make sure they are sealed up well and aren’t stored with fruit (which produces Ethylene gas).
I checked and pencils are reported to be 6-8mm wide, depending on the type of pencil. The one I measured was 7mm. That puts it in the “Large” group, and already starting to see a slight drop in success. From the above data, it seems that the best target would be about 5mm, just slightly thinner than a pencil.
Thanks- part of it is that I’m pretty bad about labeling, so I like to have a good record of what is grafted where. I also just like data
One thing that makes it easier is to make a recording with my phone. That way, I don’t need to bring a clipboard everywhere while grafting. Then, at night, I can go through the recording and put it down in the spreadsheet.
Something like:
“Tae Sang Wang grafted on the Sugar Cane near the block bed by the driveway, one bud, medium large, 3.2’ up, to the WNW, 70 degree above horizontal”
If I’m doing a mix of grafts (bark, splice, cleft, etc) I’ll note that, but normally everything is a cleft and I figure I can remember that until evening…And I don’t actually measure-I’ve created a rough idea of 6’, 5’, and 4’ high (my height, a tad under my shoulder, and my elbow respectively). For close to the ground, I use my 12" long shoes to measure.
Looks like it could be. But, you’ll really know when you get fruit. Massandra’s shape is distinctive enough that I bet it will be different than the rootstock.
All five of my Jujube planted this spring are now leafing out. Whew!
That’s pretty much the usual procedure. Although I didn’t wrapped the scions, next time I will wrap it all the way with tape and prevent drying out. I have some thin grafting stretch foil but it’s very good for that , and buds easily break through it. Now it’s late to do that, and besides that we have rain for days, and it will be like that at least for 10 days more. So scions will have moisture.
Dr Yao didn’t wrapped the scions on that video so I did the same.
But my failures are not related to my technique.
it’s vegas booty from Raf , and as you can see it’s cleft grafted.Ahh, it’s not so simple. I live half way around the globe, last year and a half everything is turned upside down because of the pandemic. My friend live in New York, and he brings the scions and seeds when he come here, again because of the pandemic he hasn’t been able to travel. He tried to send them to me but without succes. I mean probably it can be done but only with phytosanitary certificate which cost a lot and I’m not able to pay it. Maybe regulations are more strict now, because two years ago I received lot’s of seeds and scions by mail. This time I said to my friend to put a piece of moist paper towel in zip lock bags so the scions can have moisture. I cannot complain about how they are stored, everything was in zip lock bags.
Have one question about wild jujubes, I checked jujube seedlings at my sister’s place and take few photos of them. There I have 3 seedlings and 1 sucker. One of the seedlings have big thorns, like spikes. Others, including shanxi li and tigertooth, don’t have big thorns or they almost dont have it at all.
Some of my wild ones have had big thorns and some of my cultivar seedlings have had big thorns. I do have a rootstock seedling that has really nice fruit. It’s not very big (much larger than a sour jujube fruit) but sweet and good tasting.
Ahh I can’t wait to see the fruits on them, maybe I’ll put some more fertilizer to boost them
If you fertilize with a general fertilizer you will get more plant growth and less fruit in the short term. Is that what you’re trying to accomplish?
Generally speaking yes, those jujubes are small,about 30cm or 1 foot. If they grow more they will produce earlier. Or at least I think so.
If they put on more vegetative growth they will generally produce later.
Then i will not fertilize them, thanks for information. Today I checked them again and they have very small flowers, so maybe they will fruit already. If I’m correct this is their 3rd year. Like with grafts I’ll just have to wait.
Do you mean later in the season, or pushing productivity into future years? Some of my fastest growing jujubes have been the most precocious, while I’ve had very slow growing ones which still haven’t produced after 3-4 years. Obviously very unhappy plants may not produce, but the fast growing ones (10-12’ in year #2) being quite productive in year #2 seems pretty good. But, the fast growing ones did produce pretty late in the season, maybe 2-3 weeks behind the same varieties at other locations.
If they are only one foot tall, then I’d say to size them up, even if it delays fruiting a year. There isn’t much point to try to get a small handful of fruit off a 1-2’ stick, when you could have a much larger tree full next year.
Depending on the size of the plant, and its individual genetics, jujubes that are putting on significant vegetative growth will delay or minimize flowering to next year or later that same year. Larger plants tend to delay to the same year. Smaller plants tend to delay to the next year.
So I am in the process of planting out some Jujubes as a new experiment but now have to contemplate leaving them un-tended for a few years in a high deer pressure area.
How deer resistant are established jujubes?
Varieties:
Honey Jar
GA866 (I am aware people have had issues with this one, but I am trying growing it in a grassy area inside a black asphalt circular driveway. If it likes heat it will get it there…)
So
Li
Shanxi Li
I have already discovered that deer will eat tender new growth, my hope is that once the trees are better established and the thorns have hardened the deer won’t find them enjoyable anymore.
