Raccoon……
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I don’t know much about animals’ poop except for rabbits’ which is easy to identify. Like @k8tpayaso said, my guess is either raccoon or opossum esp. if it happened durung the night.
My Vegas Glitzy graft died. So far, this is the 2nd year of Vegas Baby. Fruit are too small, the same size as fruit from root suckers. Taste was subpar. I will give Baby and Spicy another year.
I have fruit from a variety labeled Dong Zao. They tasted ok, the middle of the road.
Here is a size comparison.
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Well, I wasn’t there, or I would have asked it to go somewhere else 
But, it could have been at night, and there are some broken branches in a few trees, so I suspect raccoons. Maybe I’ll try marshmallows, though it isn’t like the last bait didn’t get eaten- it just didn’t trigger the trap somehow.
That doesn’t look like the Dong I am growing, which is more like a ball and has texture similar to Sugar Cane (pic is the last one in post 2874). Also, mine wasn’t ripe as of ~5 days ago, while yours all look pretty ripe.
@BobVance I can always count on you to verify a variety. I hope this one will improve its eating quality. I will give it 3 years. N
Shanxi Li’s eating quality has improved but it is not consistent. Some fruit tasted very nice. Others stil” tasted similar to cardboard.
Bob,
I just let the Li fruits dried on the tree as long as possible then I do the final drying in the dehydrator.
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Li and lang are very good here but some say they are not good elsewhere. Kansas and Nebraska have similar climate so are they good there?
Yes, Li is good this hot and dry year. But Honey Jar jujube ruled here rain or shine.
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Yes i thought honeyjar was a shade better than others as well. Li was nice and big and i liked it.
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My grafting knife and tape came today. I did 4 grafts, 3 jujube and one Asian pear. They were difficult, not easy because they were poking me and the tape felt off. I think I cut the pear scion a bit too long.
Anyway, do you see anything wrong with these pictures. I’m going to go to my brother’s house and practice more grafting, he doesn’t have anything yet.
Asian pear is much easier but I think I cut it a bit too long and the cut is a bit deep. I hope I didn’t kill anything.
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I usually graft all my trees in the spring when the understock leafed out and all the sap are flowing to feed the graft. At this point I hope your grafts will calloused and go into dormant. If they don’t take then try again in early spring. Good luck.
Tony
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Do you have snow where you are?
I’m practicing, but I’m trimming some of my trees, so I will use the cuttings for grafting. Maybe I’ll do some again in Spring. Cliff will send me 4 scions in Spring.
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Yes. Lots of snow in the Winter here in Nebraska and the temp will go down to -30F once in a long while but most of the time down to -15F.
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Thanks Clark. I didn’t pick much jujubes today, as most are done either from being ripe, or from the critters. But, I did pick something even nearer to your heart- about 60 pounds of Korean Giant Asian pears.
Right now, I’ve been sitting and eating a bag of So from the rental. Crunchy, and acid kick. Of all the jujubes I have in the fridge, Honey Jar is probably the #1. But, it isn’t better by enough that I felt like continuing to look, once I found the top-quality So. I would have kept looking if I only found the So from my tree at home…the one that made 50+ pounds of OK fruit.
I would have been looking forward to some more late season Dong fruit at home, but it looks like a critter (likely Raccoon, based on the size) broke the branch and ate the fruit. I did find one fruit it missed, which had some brown and was quite tasty.
I don’t think it is the location, so much as the tastes/goals of the person who is eating it. If you are looking to dry the fruit, then Li and Lang are both good varieties- Lang starts half dried and Li is very large, so it makes it quicker to pick a lot. But, if you want crisp, crunchy fruit with a bit of juice to it, then neither is a great choice. Li is better for that than Lang, but there are many others which beat them. Now, which others beat them may be location dependent, but here, Honey Jar, Sugar Cane, Black Sea, and Fuicuimi are all good choices.
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Here are a few other late season jujube which I’ve been picking this week.
All 3 of the above are OK, but not all that great to me. It really highlights how good Dong and Sandia could be for extending the season in late October.
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A few notes:
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The scions you grafted look pretty long. People often think that the more buds the better, and while you could damage one accidentally while grafting, so having a 2nd isn’t a bad idea, having 7 or more is definite overkill. Especially for jujubes where the buds tend to be more sturdy (at least when dormant), than peaches or some other fruit trees.
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I don’t see any parafilm on the scions. Not required, but it does help keep the moisture in, giving the graft more time to take
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As Tony noted, grafting is generally done in the spring. That enables it to be done while the tree is dormant, yet ensure that there is the least amount of time that the graft needs to sit around before active growth can resume.
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Looks like you used something close to cellophane to structurally hold the graft together. I’ve found rubber (not vinyl) electrical tape to be very good for this part.
All of that said, there are a lot of ways to make grafts work. I once grafted some apples in the dark (before I had a head-lamp) and without parafilm and still had about 50% success just doing it by feel. Jujubes are slightly more difficult than apples, but not by much- nothing like peaches, where the timing is tighter and weather can make or break you.
If you are looking for more feedback, you may want to take a pic of the graft union before putting the tape on. Once the tape is on, I can’t even tell if you are doing a splice, whip and tongue, or cleft graft. I think that cleft is easiest and prefer it, but opinions vary.
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It’s paraffin that came with the package. This is what I bought.
I will check the graft everyday to see if anything is wrong. It’s a bit windy today, maybe all the graft will die.
It’s difficult to do the grafting, it’s hard to hold the scion and put on the tape, so I didn’t have time to take any picture.
Thanks for the feedback.
You go on to youtube and watch Dr Yao jujube grafting. It is simple.
Tony
I should have said why more buds is bad- it puts more mechanical pressure on the grafting point, which is easy to break during the first year. Either wind (especially when it gets leaves) or birds landing on it can break it, or at least dislodge it a bit.
That isn’t parafilm- the description says it is budding/grafting tape. I’ve never tried it to compare it with rubber electrical tape. It is still a good idea to get parafilm, to coat the entire scion with.
I’d suggest treating the early grafts as practice- once you are confidant that you can make them is when you start to invest a lot of hope into their survival
I know early on I got a lot of scionwood that wasn’t used to the best of its potential because I was still learning. One thing I’d suggest is taking branches that you have pruned off and practice grafting it to itself. It’s good to have a few repetitions.
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Thanks @BobVance, it’s hard to deal with a smaller scion, in fact I dropped the long scion couple times. Even my husband was helping too. I was really clumsy. One thing I’m glad is that the knife is not sharp, otherwise I might cut myself.
But my question is Cliff is sending me 8 inch scions, why does he send me a large scion if you need a smaller one. That’s my confusion.