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The single most common jujube question is whether a tree that is still bare, gray and stick-like in late spring has died over winter. It almost certainly has not. Jujube breaks dormancy later than practically any other fruit tree. Apples, plums and cherries will be in full leaf, the mulberry will have started, and the jujube will still be showing nothing at all. Depending on climate it may not push a leaf until early summer, four to six weeks behind everything around it.
This lateness is a feature, not a fault. It is why jujubes are almost never caught by a late frost and why they crop reliably in places where apricots lose their blossom most years. It also means an owner's judgement about a dead tree is wrong far more often than it is right. Before you dig anything out, test it, and then wait longer than feels reasonable.
- Scratch the bark With a thumbnail or knife tip, scrape a coin-sized patch of bark from a pencil-thick shoot. Green or pale cream underneath means live tissue. Brown and dry means that shoot is dead; move down the branch and try again lower.
- Bend a twig A live jujube twig is springy and resists snapping. A dead one breaks cleanly with a dry click and shows brown throughout. Test three or four twigs from different parts of the tree, not just one.
- Look for the buds Jujube buds are small, flush to the shoot and easy to miss, unlike the fat obvious buds of an apple. Look along one-year-old wood in strong light for tiny raised points. Their presence is a good sign even when nothing has moved.
- Wait until midsummer before giving up A jujube that is truly dead will not fool you by then. If the trunk still scratches green in the middle of summer with no leaves at all, the top may have died back while the roots live, and shoots will appear from the base.
If shoots appear only from below the graft union while the trunk above stays bare, the grafted variety has died and what is growing is rootstock. That will grow into a thorny tree with small fruit. Decide deliberately whether you want it.
Water: less than you think
A jujube is one of the most drought-tolerant fruit trees you can grow. Established trees in ordinary ground survive and crop through summers that flatten everything else, sending roots deep and simply carrying on. Overwatering causes more trouble than drought: soft growth, delayed fruiting, more suckering and, in heavy soil, root problems.
There is one window where water genuinely pays. From fruit set through to the point where the fruit begins to lose its green, a deep soak every two or three weeks in a rainless spell will noticeably increase fruit size and reduce the shedding of small green fruit. Once the fruit begins to turn and the skin starts coloring, stop. Water at that stage dilutes sugar and can split the skins, which is the same mistake people make with figs and grapes.
| Stage | Watering | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| First two years after planting | Deep soak every one to two weeks in dry weather | Roots are still shallow and cannot reach moisture |
| Dormant, bare tree | None | No leaves, no transpiration, no demand |
| Leaf out to flowering | None in most climates | Tree is drawing on winter moisture |
| Fruit set to first color change | Deep soak every two to three weeks if rainless | Sizes the fruit and prevents green drop |
| Color change to harvest | Stop | Late water dilutes sugar and splits skins |
Feeding, or mostly not feeding
Jujubes evolved on poor ground and behave badly on rich diets. Nitrogen produces long whippy shoots, dense leaf cover, a flush of suckers and less fruit. If your tree is growing more than two or three feet (60 to 90 cm) of new shoot a year and cropping lightly, the fix is to feed it less, not more.
In genuinely poor or sandy ground a single light application of a balanced fertilizer as growth begins is enough for the year. Otherwise a couple of inches of coarse mulch over the root zone, renewed annually, covers everything the tree needs. Pale, small, uniformly yellowish leaves across the whole tree in midsummer are the only real signal that feeding is warranted.
Suckers are a maintenance job, not an event
Expect suckers every year for the life of the tree, and expect them at a distance from the trunk. They appear from roots running out under lawn, paths and beds, and on a grafted tree they are always rootstock, so letting one grow into a tree gives you a thorny plant with small fruit competing with the one you wanted.
Walk the area within about fifteen feet (5 m) of the trunk every few weeks through the growing season. Deal with each sucker while it is soft and green: scrape back the soil to where it joins the root and tear or cut it off flush. This removes the dormant buds at the base that a clean cut leaves behind. Suckering increases sharply after root damage, so avoid deep digging, rotavating or trenching anywhere near the tree.
What to record through the season
Three dates make next year easier, and the first one is the most valuable of all: the date the tree actually broke bud. Write it down and you will never panic again, because you will have your own tree's number instead of a general assurance that jujubes are late.
Add the date flowering started and the date the first fruit changed color. Then keep a simple sucker log: the date, roughly how far from the trunk, and in which direction. Over two or three years the pattern shows which side the roots have colonised, and that tells you where to mulch instead of mow, where a barrier would help, and where not to plant something you would hate to dig through.