Growing tips for jujubes

Any suggestions for growing jujubes?

Though I haven't seen any jujube trees in the area, the climate should work for them on my Bulgarian property. I've been trying to grow them from the seeds out of purchased jujubes, but with no success. I realised one batch had been irradiated, so the seeds were probably killed. The organic ones shouldn't have been irradiated, but maybe were just too old. Also, I read in a different thread here that the commercial varieties have been bred to have infertile seeds. I only planted the bigger seeds, in October, so they could cold stratify over winter. Nothing grew at all.

I did find a source selling young trees, but they were quite expensive, especially as I won't be there often enough to water them to get them established.

Any tips for success getting jujubes started?

I would recommend going to a good nursery and buying a tree or several trees from there.  The reason is, you'll get fruit much much much quicker that way.  And it's not just because the tree is already 2 years old.  It's mainly because good nurserys will graft their trees onto a base and be able to select for traits that encourage early fruiting.  Which means, you can get fruit in 2 years vs waiting 6 to 10 years for a non-grafted seed raised variety.  This advice generally also applies to other fruit trees as well.  this is why so many nurseries will graft their fruit trees.


Personally, I've purchased 2 jujubes from a nursery about 1 year ago and one of them already had over 1/2 lb of harvest here in zone 9b CA.  But jujubes can work in much colder climates as well!  I try to save money where-ever I can and don't really spend much money on anything.  But, the one thing I do spend lots of money on, is going to nurserys and getting high quality fruit trees (just getting a seed raised tree from you're average joe isn't going to cut it).  A good nursery can give your tree better disease resistance and much earlier fruiting.


I was recently at a jujube farm in brentwood where they had 8 year old jujube trees and everyone of them was loaded with more fruit than we could carry.  but it was expensive 9$/lb (organic) so it might be a great business to get into for growing jujube especially since they're so storable.  Jujube are very popular in the chinese community.

I hope that helps!

I second what Pascal said.
Also, regarding the supposed drought resistance of jujubes, I did not have good luck. I have planted two of them, rather small 40 cm tall. First one died quickly after producing some leaves. The second one was killed by the heatwave of 42 C every day for two weeks. Both were on regular irrigation.

Jujubes often are double dormant. Meaning they need two winters of stratification. Sometimes it can help to sow the seeds directly in the fruit when they are ripe (September-November), and leave outdoors in pots or nursery or whatever. People always want to clean their tree seeds, but I have found the germination is much better on many species to leave them in the fruit, or just mashed up some. I can attribute this to hormones in the fruit, starter nutrient and microbial relationships, or just plain allowing the plant to grow the way they have done for millennia.

Jujubes are awesome. I second what another person said about buying some grafted plants, but grow a bunch from seed too! You can order fresh jujube from named cultivars and get pretty good stock. Then when your seedlings are up to size you can graft from your named variety trees you purchased. I recommend finding them bareroot if at all possible, planting in the fall. They will appreciate a heavy feeding in the spring like any other fruit and good mulch. I don’t think you’ll have to worry much about water if you plant in the fall.