Hi Bob,
Thanks for the report.
Are these seedling rootstocks?
I believe that they are wild/seedlings in terms of their genetics. But they are gathered as suckers which are thrown off by Roger’s existing trees. Per a Youtube video of his, if you grow them out without grafting them, they quickly produce (first year) small sour fruit which is used in Asia as medicine.
Good to know that they produce fruits early. I can try jujube grafting as my next project. Thanks.
I believe the small sour fruit is what they sometimes refer to the rootstock as “sour jujube”.
The sour jujube seeds are viable. The sour jujube fruits are small, round and really sour taste. The seeds are also round and larger.
The seeds from most of the names variety jujube trees are not viable. They are narrow and sharp and mostly hollow inside.
The scion wood looks thick, or just the photos. This will limit the grafting choices.
The scionwood is actually on the thin side, at least for some of the rootstocks. For scale, the tape is about 0.5" wide. I’ve been using the wood from Bob Hawkins for the larger rootstocks. One thing to mention on jujube grafting is that the wood is very hard. It’s tough to work with the bigger scions- it really gives you a workout. The thinner stuff isn’t bad.
I planted 26 jujube trees yesterday (Sunday), 14 at home and 12 at a friend’s house down the road. None of the rootstocks have that much root system, so it isn’t too much work to plant them.
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With commercial planting, jujube is grafted very early, with both rootstock and scion wood about pencil size. This also has the best success rate.
Earlier in the thread I mentioned that I would post pics of the rootstocks. I remembered just in time, as I opened the 5th and last bag.
Here is how it came in:
Inside the bag (~4 layers of news paper wrapped around the roots and some moss):
Actual Rootstocks (note that the bottom two have two stems from one set of roots):
Earlier I remarked that I had extras. It turned out that there were no extras. In fact, I may have been one short- I need to do an all in count again to verify. There were several double stems and a few single stems with Y’s at the end.
In my yard I’m using as many rows as possible, with relatively tight spacing. For the people I’m giving these to, they often have more space. So, I’m making the doubles into multi-grafts to give out as gifts.
They look like root suckers, not the sour jujube seedlings… I do not think there is much difference.
It is a mystery to me as to what the “root stock” is. Some other jujube plants are also used as rootstocks. Some of jujube escaped to the “wild” in Texas, Lousiana and Oklahoma, and become American “wild” jujube.
Some kind soul in California sent me a small bag of jujube fruits as “seeds”. He is a Vietnamese Chinese and he says that is the common jujube he grows. The fruits are small, large seeds and taste just ok. They are like sour jujube, but sweeter than sour jujube. So the fruit must come from some of the rootstock or “wild” jujube.
It is fruitless trying to track the American jujube… Just hope the scion wood come true to the names.
That “escape” is what worries me given my application. The root suckers from that sour jujube that is often used for rootstock really tend to put out root suckers very prolifically and if not mowed they tend to thicket.
To mitigate this, I’m trying to grow them on their own roots or at least grafting to named variety roots (Tigertooth in this case) which don’t seem to root sucker nearly as much and even if they do, I should get the same quality fruit as from a Tigertooth.
My next experiment is to try to graft named varieties to the root suckers I got from Roger and grow them in containers. Once the graft is well established, I plan to score the scion above the graft, apply rooting hormone, raise the sides of the container, insert some air and water permeable landscape material, and raise the level of mix above the graft…
My hope is that the rootstock will keep the tree alive but the landscape material barrier will reduce water and fertility compared to the mix above which I hope will encourage rooting above the graft.
Right now, I’m just trying to let the root stock re-establish in the containers before trying to graft.
The point about root sucker diameter is applicable to me. I want to graft close to the soil line and I won’t find scions nearly as thick as the root suckers. I’m considering trying to bark graft them. I was able to do that successfully on a tree in the field that was about 3/4" in diameter.
not sure if this has been brought up before, but re: jujubes which ‘refuse’ to grow(or take forever to get bigger), it is likely that the scions used were from secondary shoots, and not primary shoots. Secondary shoots are stems from which most(if not all) of the fruiting branchlets are borne(fruiting spurs). And these secondary shoots are generally static in linear growth(after its first year), and only get thicker with time, but will rarely increase in length. Relatively rare varieties such as shanxi li, chico, and honey jar are usually propagated using secondary shoots, to max out propagation with little waste of material. I have seen secondary shoots ultimately convert to primary shoots, but you’re set back at least a couple of years of waiting.
most reliable way of telling if your jujube scionwood was taken from secondary shoot is if it has prominent fruiting spurs.
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The scions Roger sends out may not be big enough for grafting near the base of the larger rootstocks, but I bet that some of the ones I got from Bob Hawkins would be. He sent some wonderful wood, with a wide variety of sizes. What caliper are you looking for?
I’m guessing that it is too late (in Tx) for him to cut more, but I could send you a few of the larger ones. I’m almost done with the first pass of grafting and still have plenty of extras for re-grafts of anything which doesn’t take.
I hadn’t heard of that before. I wonder if it is what happened with the Honey Jar I mentioned in the first post, where it looks like the graft healed, but there was no new growth.
Yes, this is true. Actually there are 4-5 types of distinctive jujube growths. Only the main growing branch should be used as scion wood. This is why normal jujube scion woods only have one set of buds, or one node, to save the wood. You can’t use any wood as scion woods…
honey jar propagation is unfortunately still a puppy-mill business model, due to rarity and high demand. Secondary shoots are generally shed after a several years, but some thick ones will ultimately send primary shoots from fruiting spurs near its base, and convert its temporary status to one of permanence.
two of my hon jars from roger meyer took two years to convert, while two are just now converting, on its third year… Shanxi li had a structural height of less than 10 inches for two growing seasons, and only now deciding to grow up, instead of just growing old… Before converting, all they sent out the past couple years were fruiting branchlets. And yes, they will provide you with mature fruits at less than 8 inches tall, which to me is a world record for any species of fruit tree, lol!
as you’re probably aware, fruitng branchlets are always shed during winter.
apparently the stunted scions ‘realize’ they must ‘do something else’ as i have been promptly destroying every bud below the graft/rootstock.
here’s a pic from my cheesy juju weblog two growing seasons ago
http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/photo/tigertooth-jujube-and-honey-jar?context=album&albumId=2008067%3AAlbum%3A398903
I think your trees need to talk to my trees, my jujubes just grow straight up with tons of vigorous wood. I never had any jujube graft stunt on me and I have done quite a few with all kinds of wood. My guess it is related to our different climates which are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Bob,
Thanks for the generous offer. I’m out of town right now, but when I get back, I’ll take a caliper to the larger sprouts roger sent.
good for you! Which zone are you at? thus said, i am green with envy, if there’s a better figure of speech 
quite curious though, do your jujube’s secondary shoots actually grow vegetatively? In las vegas, they only reach a certain length and then stop growing linearly. They will get thicker every year, and have more prominent fruiting spurs and grow more deciduous fruiting branchlets, but will never grow primary shoots on any of their rungs/fruiting spurs for a protracted period. And once they finally do , it never occurs on the same year the secondary shoots were borne. Those which convert apparently need to be a certain thickness(i have received my honey jars as <0.25" in caliper), and may be stimulated to do so when trimmed close to the main trunk(they will only grow from the lowest rungs, and never from the apices of the secondary shoots). There is even this old chinese saying mentioned by the jujube expert in NMSU http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/H-330/welcome.html indicated in the ‘Pruning’ section which tells of the growth-inhibitory effects of secondary branches where ‘one cut stunts, and two cuts, sprouts’.
not sure if that saying actually has some scientific basis, but couldn’t help but blame it for the ‘shortcomings’ of my jujube runts, which may well be further hindered by the soil and weather conditions we have here.
I confess I have not paid enough attention, but I think I have too many primary shoots going straight up, I don’t get enough secondary side shoots. When I graft I have not noticed any difference, it always grows straight up. Note that I have many mature stocks I have been grafting to so they have a large amount of vigor in the rootstock. So maybe a secondary scion quickly decides it had better convert to primary if its the only thing budding on the whole big tree…
PS I am in zone 7A. One other aspect of my planting is its too close and doesn’t get enough sun; I just thinned it out heavily this spring, I removed 5 8-year old trees and have only three left.