Jujubes- Our New Adventure

To be fair with a HOA you are just a renter who pays all the landlords bills for them. You do not really own the land, they do.

Richard,
All due respect, living under HOA rules never interests me. I like where I live and most of my neighbors like me :grin:

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That has happened a lot to me over the years. According to my spreadsheet, Iā€™ve done just under 150 jujube grafts (not counting the debacle where I bought 50 rootstocks and none grewā€¦). Itā€™s hard to follow each graft over the years to see when it dies, but I think that if they were going to fail, they did it in the first winter. Or, they limped along, putting on zero growth, then died in the 2nd. Once they start growing well, I donā€™t normally see that issue.

Agreed. Weā€™ve also avoided rental properties with HOA or associations, ever since we had to sell our first rental (which we used to live in) when they changed the rules to disallow renting. Much better to avoid having another layer of people which can make problems.

Working in an area where less is known (or at least that knowledge isnā€™t commonly available outside of China) adds a bit of Challenge. But, in addition to the satisfaction of solving puzzles, I think the potential rewards of jujube are worth it.

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Bob,
You do have a lot of varieties that rival England Nursery. Hopefully, they will be more productive for you. I have ask my husband to order me GA3. Need to remind him again.

I do like jujubes a lot for its taste and texture (of the sweet, crunchy kind) and its easy care. I plan to remove some tradition fruit trees like peaches and plums next spring. I would replace them with jujubes if I could find very sunny spots. That is hard to find in my small yard.

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I am already in the process of doing that. Just to many trees to fight brown rot. Also replacing with jujubes and now have li and honey jar. What would you say is the largest size jujube that fruits on the east coast? GA866 is large, but many said it took forever to start fruiting.

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I only have a few varieties. @bobvance grows a ton more varieties. Hope he can chime in.

My Shanxi Li has large fruit. It has two strikes against it:

  • subpar taste with spongy texture
  • unproductive.
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This is exactly 30 days after I noticed my jujube grafts breaking bud. The graft has grown over a foot and is flowering. Also, donā€™t forgot to remove those grafting rubber bands! This graft was getting girdled.

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What variety is the graft and what is the mother tree?

I let my jujube grafts set fruit if they want to.

This is Hetian Jade on a Honey Jar I planted 2 years ago. The mother tree is very vigorous and is about 10 feet tall. This probably helps push a lot of growth out of the graft.

The Honey Jar and Black Sea a few feet away have been flowering profusely with many pollinators buzzing around. However, I see no fruit set! Temps have been in the 90ā€™s practically everyday all month with rain once in a while. They get at least 10 hours of sunlight a day. Not sure whatā€™s wrong.

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Sugar Cane, Bok Jo, and So are mid-sized varieties that have had at least some production. None are really large, but it is hard enough to get them producing here.

Yes, I planted one in March 2016, and five years later, it still only produces a few flowers. Where other varieties may have 10, it has 1. And Iā€™ve never seen a single fruit on it. I did graft a few other varieties onto it, which have been flowering a lot more and at least one of them has fruit on it.

Iā€™ve had the same experience with it so far (2 trees planted in 2016), but this year one of them has a decent amount of fruit (it has made 1 fruit in the first 4 years) and the other one has a few (none in the past). Iā€™m hoping that the quality and size also improve (the initial fruit from that tree and another graft havenā€™t been all that large so far).

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Bob,
Our Shanxi Li were planted at the same time, 2016. Mine fruited about 10 jujubes in 2017, only a few in 2018 and none in 2019. It has flowered well every year but the fruit set has been poor. The fruit size were inconsistent but most were larger than Sugar Cane ( my SC size has been good, too).

It is only 8ā€™ away from Sugar Cane and 15ā€™ from Honey Jar. Last year, I had enough of Shanxi Li so I did at least 12 grafts on it. This year I grafted 4 more on it. Several grafts from last year have flowered this year

To my surprise, when I was ready to spray GA 3 on it this evening, I saw several fruit on Shanxi Li. My guess is that HJ and SC may not be Shanxi Liā€™s good pollination partners. Some of the 10+ varieties I grafted on it must be.

@PharmerDrewee - my guess is that, HJ and Black Sea may not be good pollination partner (besides the trees being young). Graft more varieties to both of them will probably help.

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I mixed a bottle of GA3 spray (a Windex/Home Depot spray bottle). and sprayed it this evening after the sun set.

The instruction said not to spray on the fruit. I checked my trees and found that HJ, SC and Shanxi Li all have some fruit set so I have to skip 95% of them and only sprayed a few lower branches that seem to have no fruit.

I sprayed the whole tree of So (4ā€™ tall) and Massandra (barely 3ā€™ ) as they donā€™t seem to have any fruit. In the end, I have lot of spray left. It wonā€™t be good after 7 hours. I ordered GA3 too late this year. I will be more prepared next year,

Thatā€™s possible, but I think age could be an important factor as well. My Shanxi Li has been 5 feet from Li and Sugar Cane/Bok Jo/Tae Sang Wang (and within 15 feet from another 4-5) for a while , but it hasnā€™t been productive so far. Though there was initial fruit formation on it 2 years ago that dropped off.

I think the major factors are (but have no idea which is most important):
1.) Age
2.) Weather
3.) Fertilization
4.) Pollination (though I donā€™t think this has been an issue for me, given how many types I have)

Iā€™ve been very attentive this year in terms of fertilizer. Maybe each month. In past years, Iā€™d do it maybe once or twice a year. I also added GA3 into the mix, though there was initial fruit on the Shanxi before that (maybe it also helps avoid drop?).

I suspect that all you need is one thing to not be good (bad weather? poor soil? too young for heavy crop?) and you donā€™t get much. A bit frustrating, but once I can get them consistently fruiting (knock on wood), maybe I can take away one thing (ie fertilizer or GA) from one or two trees and see which are the most important.

Did it say why to avoid the fruit? Hopefully it doesnā€™t cause it to dropā€¦I think high concentrations can cause fruit drop, but I didnā€™t think that was a problem at 10-20ppm. Of the ones I sprayed, some had small/tiny fruit, like the Shanxi. Others, like Sherwood, only had flowers (a week later, it now has a handful of small fruit).

Me too- it would have been great to start getting fruit-set back in June. Iā€™m a bit concerned with how long it will take the newly set fruit to ripen. I suspect that it will be well into October, so hopefully we have a warm autumn.

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I need to read the instruction again re. why it is not recommend spraying on fruit.

This made it near impossible for me to spray HJ, SC or Shanxi Li because each branch may have a couple of fruit and a bunch of flowers.

Spongy texture is probably cause by inadequate water.

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I donā€™t know about what is largest on the east coast, but these three were largest for me on the west coast - Shanxi Li, Li, Dae Sol Jo

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Thatā€™s not bad size. I have the li so nice to see they are decent size. How would you rate li for sugar and taste? Good enough to buy another?

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Huge!!!

Ahhh everyone here had some success with grafts,mine success is 0 :pensive: First time ever that I donā€™t have any success at all !! I dont count walnuts cause I tried them for fun.
I made 17 grafts in total. First I suspected that scions were dried, and they were but not completely, but now I think that mother tree is the problem. 3-4 grafts was from shanxi li, my other tree, and those scions was very fresh. Made a cut from one tree and grafted to another a minute later. And those grafts was the hardest for me, ever. That time I couldnā€™t stand without support cause my foot injury. You donā€™t know how disappointed I am.
So could it be that tigertooth is not good for grafting? Tigertooth is the mother tree.
But some good things happen.
I have 1 seedling of 4 varieties.


Also I fertilize my big ones, tigertooth and shanxi li, and they put enormous growth in very short time. Now I have a problem with branches.

This is the shanxi li. Finally I have more wood on it. Tried the method 1 cut stops, 2 cuts grow.
Tigertooth had already fair amount of branches but now looks like this.

Probably I had to support them or tie them but I thought is better to ask here. I dont have any experience with this situation and dont know who to ask.

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ā€œMade a cut from one tree and grafted it to another a minute laterā€

That probably was a reason your graft failed. What you did was using freshly cut green wood to graft. I donā€™t know if it would work with jujubes (it works with some fruit trees but not a popular method).

You need to collect wood for grafting (called scionwood) when your trees are dormant in the winter. Store scionwood in a sealed plastic bag in a fridge. The time to bring scionwood out to graft is when your tree start to have tiny leaves in spring.

There are many threads here about grafting. There are tons of good grafting videos. Here is Stephen Hayesā€™s. Please check them out.

https://www.google.com/search?q=grafting+video+by+Stephen+Hayes&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

Also, I think you over-fertilize your tree. Thatā€™s why the growth is excessive.

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