Tissue culture Jujube

General Fruit Growing
1

I found someone selling tissue culture jujube trees. The ga-866 variety. Will these grow well without a proper rootstock?

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No idea how it is on its own roots, but isn’t that the variety that needs a very long hot growing season?

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There’s no reason to believe any particular variety of jujube would not do well on its own roots if they’re well developed. They are never grafted for superior roots, but rather because till now, that’s been the only reliable way to propagate them (unless you had access to an ortet to dig own-root suckers).

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Is there any jujube that you know of that is non suckering? That is what would appeal to me as a preferred rootstock.

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5

There aren’t any coloal jujube rootstocks to my knowledge, just random seedlings.

Just air layer your jujubes to get them on their own roots

I sunk a 1G grafted Li into the bottom of a 5G pot and scratched above the root union and applied rooting hormone, it worked perfectly after a couple months

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6

Yes. Is it cheaper and smaller than field grown stock though? A lot TC plants are sold as plugs. they can also take a bit longer to start vigorously growing than plants who have been in natural soil and light conditions.

Plenty of tissue culture labs make mass quantities of clonal rootstock. Tissue culture starts just come out of the lab tiny and thats after being grown indoors in media to size up slightly. Usually they will go into a greenhouse when they are ready and will be taken out of the media (agar/gel). The TC plugs/pots you usually get are from a greenhouse after they are large enough to be removed from TC media and planted in dirt/soil etc. The acclimation period for TC starts can just be slightly longer depending on how recently they were removed from TC

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Tissue culture stuff usually takes way longer to fruit. Maybe not with Jujube, but that’s been my experience with other fruits.

There are a number of nurseries that sell jujube on their own roots from layers.

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8

Yes, I’d like to have such a rootstock also.

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9

Ive bought a few tissue cultured plants over the years. Figs never did well. A black velvet gooseberry tissue culture took 5 years to flower and fruit. However I had a Kiowa blackberry outgrow a full grown in two years from a tissue culture. The only difference is the tissue culture Kiowa is in full sun, while the one I bought ad a two year old cane is mostly shaded.

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One of my mulberries was a tissue culture and took 5-6 years to fruit. Mulberry normally come out the box fruiting.

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