Looking great!
My friend bought them from Grow Organic last year. Her husband does not like to grow fruit trees with thorns so she gave them to me.
As you know, this is very late to buy fruit trees but if you check Grow Organic in the fall, you may be able to get them.
@mrsg47 . Thank you. Wish you were near. You can tried all jujubes I grow. New grafts are producing now.
I still have never eaten one. Here they are called jujubes and are light brown. They look like dates. Do they taste like dates, but fresh and not dried?
I donāt think they taste like dates, though i have heard some people say they do. A sweet, light apple flavor is more appropriate i think. But it also depends on when you eat them, some people prefer them slightly dried and crinkled. And some varieties taste better that way than still plump.
They produce heavily and are carefree! Add in the ornamental value of some varieties (i look at my contorted every day and think, man that is an interesting looking tree), and it is an all around winner (to me at least).
Nice job. Your bud graft was beautifully done. Look like the bud has grown very well.
All my jujube trees are still dormant. I wonāt see them wake up before May. I have several grafts planned for them. Grafting later is fine with me since I am busy with other things in the yard,
I started a jujube from seed, I think sugar cane, and itās about couple of feet high now. Itās still in my vegetable garden but looking to relocate it to a permanent home. One spot that will get good sun is very close to a rain garden. How do jujube trees react to wet soil? I donāt imagine it being wet all the time. Just that after a rain this spot might take longer to dry out. Will it do ok there?
How long did it it to grow two feet? My jujube suckers seem to take forever to growā¦
I think I need to crack the seeds I have and grow from seeds, too. I donāt know the answer to your question but I think most fruit trees do not like their feet wet. My jujube trees are on the low spot of the yard where rain water gathers but they are planted on a foot tall raised beds so they are doing well.
I think I started them last year or year before. Canāt seem to remember. They grow slowly. I have two seedlings. Started at same time. Second one is about 8 inches now. It got attacked by rabbits or groundhog. Iām surprised it came back at all. The one thatās close to 2 ft is in a veggie bed with good soil.
I put in 18 jujube grafts this evening. 13 on this So from Burnridge. It is 5 th leaf. Set fruit once, a couple of meh fruit and has not set fruit in 2019 or 2020 even thought it bloomed plenty.
@BobVance , Although these were only 1/10 of what you grafted this year but it took me the same amount of time you did yours .
Iāve also realized that grafting jujubes is a pain, literally. I got stabbed by those thorns so many times today.
Thank you the folks who sent me scionwood. I really appreciate your generosity.
The wood is also very hard. I always need to re-calibrate before starting on the jujubes so I donāt cut myself from over-exerting on the hard wood.
For the thorns I trim all of them off anywhere near where I am working. Too much blood drawn in past years.
Thatās exactly what I have to do too - re-calibrate. I can graft an apple without giving it any special attention at all, but if Iām grafting jujube I have to tell myself to slow down, and work very deliberately and carefully.
My tree is relatively young so I underestimated their thorns. I mostly grafted on last yearās wood so the wood is not too hard. I think persimmon wood is as hard if not harder.
Jujube is much harder than persimmon wood. Maybe your knife is so sharp you are not noticing
I vote for jujube to be the hardest wood. Much harder for me to graft than persimmon.
My memory cannot be trusted. I trust yours.
Fortunately, I did all my jujube grafts for the year. I use a Victorinox. Need to have my right hand man re-sharpened it before grafting peaches and nectarines next. Temp will be in the high 60ās to low 70 for several days starting this coming sun.!!.
Your grafted tree looks nice. What did you put on it?
From the top of my head, Ant Admire, Bok Jo, Dae So Jo, Hetian Jade, Texas Chainsaw, I mean, Sawmill , Vegas Glitzy, A few have 2 grafts of the same varieties.
The 1/10 isnāt far off, as my total for the month stands at 173. But, I checked and I grafted on 18 different days. So I average a bit less than 10 per grafting day. So I took a lot more time than you did. We likely went at similar speeds.
I was doing potted rootstocks today and noticed the same. Even with my standard practice of stripping any nearby thorns before I start (like Scott mentioned above). The rootstocks have so many that it is easy to miss one. In fact, when I came inside and was about to wash my hands, I noticed that I had a big thorn hanging from my hand by the tip. Iām sure if I brushed against something in the wrong way I would have really felt it.
At least you didnāt get yourself with the grafting knife- that pain takes a lot longer to healā¦
A couple notes from the picture:
You may want to put more long lasting labels on. Or note down where each graft is with a coordinate system (4.7ā high, SE, 50 deg above horizontal, etc), so that you can look it up later when those fall or fade.
From the pic, it doesnāt look like you are parafilming (a verb?) over the Temflex at the graft union. Iām not sure it is necessary, but Iāve been doing it to make sure that the union doesnāt dry out (more likely to happen if the Temflex doesnāt cover the entire cleft or cut part of the scion, which can easily occurā¦).
Iāve had the opposite problem. Jujube have been 80%+ of what I grafted this year, so they are the norm. When I was grafting mulberry the other day, the knife went through with so little pressure that I almost cut myself a few times.
Always a good idea when working with a sharp knife. I have been sharpening my knife every few dozen grafts (more than in the past), so maybe that has helped with my jujube grafting. I used to go as far as wearing a leather work glove on my non-knife hand. Iāll probably go back to that if I have any more close calls, as I hate bleeding all over a graftā¦
jujube sapwood seems to be harder than persimmon sapwood. But when it comes to heartwood, most persimmons(especially asian and african ebony) are harder. Just so happens that all grafting materials wonāt have much heartwood.
while ebony is harder, it is also more brittle. Below is a violin chin rest made of jujube heartwood. Neither dyed nor varnished-- merely sanded. Has a really nice sheen with a pleasing velvety texture, like finest-grained walnut heartwood. Jujus arenāt just superfruits, but also super trees