Jujubes- Our New Adventure

Mulched, watered and fertilized all sound good. Though I don’t think there is a need to be light on the fertilizer, except maybe when first planted.

The only other thing I can think of is sun. My understanding is that you get a lot of clouds in Vancouver, so it is especially important to choose a spot that doesn’t have much shade. I’ve seen raspberries be productive with much more shade than jujubes.

Planting jujubes next to a driveway is a double benefit. Both runoff water and extra heat from the black asphalt. Husbands and tenants just don’t realize that the main purpose of driveways is to provide a good micro-climate for jujubes!

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@BobVance

I will tell my husband that he needs to be more understanding of jujubes’ needs :joy:.

@vitog while sunlight and water is good for jujubes all year round, fertilizer in early spring is helpful, too. The one thing @tonyOmahaz5 has suggested and it has worked for me is to use high nitrogen fertilizer in the spring. Apply fertilizer like urea (46-0-0) when leaves start to emerge is my suggestion.

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Got some fresh Jujube fruits from the local Asian store. Is the large one Li? It’s crunchy, dry, alittle sweet, and bland. The middle one was labelled Honey Jujube. It was sweet and crunchy but wasn’t very juicy. It wasn’t dry though. Would this be the same as Honey Jar or a different variety? The bottom ones are dried store bought ones.

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Planted my first 3 jujubes recently. Two root suckers that my dad brought from CA bare rooted early this year. These root suckers were planted in pots to make sure they rooted and leave out. I planted the larger one in ground in July and it’s already about 3.5’ tall now. The other one, I just planted 4 days ago. I should of planted this smaller also in July since it didn’t grow much since then. Are honey jar and sugar crane varieties the best two to graft to the big root sucker. They should get at least 6 hours of full sun. I’m in Zone 6B/A. Can I do 2 grafts on this large root sucker next spring?



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@BobVance and @mamuang, thanks for the helpful responses. But what about all of the flowers? Is this normal for jujubes, or just something that happens to young plants?

Yes, relatively small and newly transplanted jujubes often have flowers. Sometimes they produce, sometimes they just fall off. But I think you were probably right to knock them off, given you want it to keep growing, not make a couple fruit. In the first few years you want it to put on as much growth as possible, then start fruiting…

Maybe. One on the central leader and another on a side-branch? I think it is small enough that you may want to stick with one graft on each. If you have anyone local around with jujube trees, you may want to try budding now. It isn’t something I’ve done, but I think that is how many nurseries do it. I’ve tried budding peaches and plums with mixed results. I’m much better with cleft grafts, but summer isn’t an ideal time for them.

A different variety, but I’m not sure what. Honey Jar is much rounder, crisper and while not “juicy” like a peach or Asian pear, it has some juice.

Yes, that looks and sounds like Li.

Black Sea almost looks like more jujubes than leaves. Big chains of fruit…I think it is the same phenomena that gave Jinsi (Golden Wire) its name.

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I went to Edible Landscaping (Afton VA) two days ago (Aug 22nd). I got a sugarcane and honey jar jujube tree. I picked trees that were the tallest because I have a deer problem and you all mentioned these grow slowly! They were 68 dollars and 55 dollars (approx 5 feet and 6 feet tall though!)

They had some big trees in ground with jujube fruit which weren’t quite ripe yet that we could sample. We did sample some not quite ripe fruit. It was pleasant and crunchy but you couldn’t tell much from it. I assume they’ll ripen in a few weeks. That might be a better time to visit if anyone is looking to sample ripe jujube.

I didn’t manage to get my trees in the ground Sunday, so hopefully will be able to do so on some evening this week.

Here are some bad pictures of the two trees in the plant cage waiting to be planted:

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I got a 3gal HJ from them back in 2023 and it was $68 back then too. IME HJ are very precocious and it wouldn’t surprise me if you may get to taste a few fruits next year.

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Sounds like a fun trip there congrats on the new trees!
I got my Sugarcane earlier this year about the same height as yours it’s probably 11 foot tall last I checked and still has a bunch of jujubes on it. They love sun, heat and water! I put in a 20g for a 5g. Wish I could grow these in ground.

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I got 10 So from them for $50 each back in 2022. They were in 3 Gal pots and maybe 3’ tall.

Most got planted. Here are 3 which are planted behind the parking area at a rental, 4 years later.

All 3 trees are heavily grafted (about 20 varieties over the 3 trees) and have quite a few fruit on them.
The middle one has Black Sea over about half the tree and is very productive:

On the other hand, one tree was surplus and ended up remaining in the pot. After 4 years it is actually smaller than it started, having died to about 12” at one point and is now approaching 3’ tall again.

So, I’m very impressed that you’ve got a 11’ tall tree in a 20 gal pot (if I’m reading that correctly).

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Today is the earliest I’ve ever had jujubes ripen. Normally, it is during the 1st or 2nd week of September. So far, it is only one tree at one rental. And no branch girdling (which can speed things up) was done.

This is a sugar Cane which gets almost complete sun. The tree in the background is to the NE, so maybe it misses 7-8am sun, but gets sun until almost sunset.

And you can see the watermelon patch in the foreground and the corn in the background. Yes, my rental properties are mini-farms :slight_smile:

I don’t have brix readings on any of the fruit, as I ate it all long before getting home. Some was iffy (as the first to ripen often are), while others were quite good.

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Does jujube trees need winter dormancy or will the grow if they get heat and light?

Pretty sure they need a small period of dormancy, but I think almost all of WV is warm enough to grow them outdoors so it doesn’t matter for you

I have some small tree and was going to bring them in for the winter so they can get big for next year

I tried that once. When I took them out in the spring after last frost all the leaves fell off and I was devastated. In about six weeks the leaves had come back but they did enter a short dormancy.

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I tried that once as well on a tree I really wanted to size up (Early Golden Crisp). It survived the winter, but wasn’t that happy indoors, even under the lights. I thought it was dead for most of a year. Then another year recovering, but not growing much. I finally planted it outside this past spring and it is doing better.

I think indoors during the winter is a good time to get a start on seedlings, both jujube and tomatoes. But it isn’t good, at least in my limited experience, to size up a bigger plant.

Was your Grand Honey Jar bigger the whole growing season, or did it size up near the end? I have it grafted on top of a normal Honey Jar. So far, there are only about half a dozen fruit on a several foot long branch, while most of the rest of the tree has a heavy set. That isn’t so bad, as I expected that the larger fruit size would produce numerically fewer fruit. But, so far, they are the same size or smaller than the standard Honey Jar. The graft is about 9’ up in the tree, so it should be getting good sun exposure.

Similar to your pic, they do look slightly rounder than the standard Honey Jar, which has a bit boxier of a shape.

I was walking past a Chico tree and noticed some very large elongated oval shaped fruit. At first I thought it must be a graft of a new large-fruited variety. But when I dug through my spreadsheet, I found it was actually Bok Jo. This branch didn’t have a massive fruit load (like most Bok Jo), so it looks like the fruit instead got quite large. I guess this is an argument for fruit thinning , as this fruit is larger than the Bok Jo on other heavily laden grafts on other trees.

Speaking of the Chico, it’s normally a shy producer, but this year it has the largest crop I can remember. Still not super heavy, but a lot for a Chico.

And moving on to similar shaped fruit, here’s a Pan graft which hasn’t produced before. Looks to be the right shape! And pretty large. It’s grafted onto a Li, which I think is what is in the background for reference.

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My New improved large fruit Honey Jar is a lot bigger than the regular Honey jar. Maybe mine is a stand alone grafted tree. Yours Grand Honey Jar is the same as mine from Sophia. @BobVance

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But I don’t see any from the self-rooted Honey Jar, Sugar Cane, or So. Looks like I was too careful when transplanting those trees. I let one of the guys helping me do most of the digging with the Autumn Beauty.

How’d you get those on their own roots? I’m growing grafted jujubes in pots and it’s almost impossible to stay on top of the sucker situation. Constantly battling an absolute carpet of suckers.

I bought them from Just Fruits and Exotics. The So and Tigertooth in 2015 and the rest in 2019. They used to sell them self-rooted, but I don’t think I’ve seen them available for quite a while now. I’m not too surprised, as it isn’t easy to do, with a high failure rate and slow early growth. Grafting them is a lot easier, even if it isn’t as good from an end-user perspective.

OK, that’s good to hear. Maybe my graft is just slow getting started. It was also pretty high and all I had was a step-stool, so I had to really reach to get a good look/pic. I’ll bring a bigger ladder when they are ripe.

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I had success buying a 1G tree and, when up-potting to 5G, scratched above the graft union and applied rooting hormone, and placed the tree at the very bottom of the 5G pot before adding any soil such that the scratched portion was covered by soil.

When I put it into the ground a year later there were tons of roots from above the graft union

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