Some people plant them in such a way to allow mowing. I only have a few fruit trees and bushes that produce suckers and dropped fruit so I pull them by hand.

Most of the trees have something growing under the canopy, except some huge trees or densely planted trees.

If you go to an orchard, you can see all the fruits on the ground. The workers do not bother to pick them up.

Typically in an orchard, they mow them along with the weeds and grass.

Jujube's are notorious for suckers popping up to 30' from the tree, but mowing works well; unless flower beds etc are close by in which hand pulling works

This is most likely not coming from fruit but as others have said from the root system. Most jujube are grafted on to a native Jujube rootstock. This rootstock tends to sucker and form thickets of low quality trees if the suckers are not mowed.

I'm trying to use Jujube for a wildlife application where mowing of suckers is not practical in the long term. So, I purchased Tigertooth grown on its own rootstock. This does not tend to sucker nearly as badly as the native rootstock that most Jujube are grafted on. In addition, if I do get additional trees from root suckers, they should be of the same quality of the original tree, not the low quality native rootstock.

I'm now propagating these from root cuttings. Given the relatively low success rates doing this, I'm not at all worried about suckering. My plan is to use this tigertooth as my rootstock and graft other varieties to it as well.

This doesn't help with an established tree, but if you are starting from scratch with Jujube, it is an approach to consider if you can't or won't be mowing long-term.

ForestAndFarm, I remember you grow jujube for the deer. Do the deer damage the jujube trees? This is what I'm concerned. I know deer really love apple and maybe sweet cherry too.

Since you grow own root tree, I believe you can do air layering. The success rate should be higher. This is how I propagate magnolia.

I caged my first few Jujube trees just to make sure, but they don't seem to interest deer from a browsing standpoint. They are well outside the cage now and not touched.

My field planted trees have not yet fruited, so I can't say for sure how deer will react once they do. However, I'm thinking that there are enough thorns to discourage deer from attacking the tree itself and simply eat the fruit when it falls to the ground.

It is funny that my root sucker propagated trees fruit in the first year on my deck in rootbuilder II pots yet their parents in the field still have no fruit.

I've considered air layering but I haven't found much documented success with jujube in the literature. The best success rates are root cuttings. Having said that, it may be possible based on what happened this year.

I took a bunch of Tigertooth cuttings for Tony. I sent him more than he could use and still had a bunch left over. Just for grins and giggles, I planted a bunch of them in roottrapper bags. They all leafed out as you would expect from dormant cuttings. Eventually the leaves all shriveled up and died. However, after that happened, I got busy and didn't have time to dispose of them. They got watered as overspray when watering other seedlings. One day this fall I noticed a new leaf on one of them. I don't know if it will leaf out again next spring or not, but this occurred well after the initial leaves had died, so I'm assuming there must be some rooting occurring with that cutting. I guess time will tell.

It is great that deer does not much interest in the tree itself. I do not think birds are interested in the fruits. I could be wrong.

From what I know, root cutting has not been very successful. Air layer may be feasible. But most are grafted.

As for the baby plant vs parent plant, it may be due to the temperature, light, winter chill hours, or even to the root boundness.

I understand birds are a problem in orchards. Roger Meyer sells some Mylar deterrent.

Root cuttings are giving me about a 25% success rate over all so far but that my be due to inexperience.

I asked a university professor specializing in Jujube about the fruiting discrepancy. He credited it to the rootbuilder II air pruning containers. He said it is forcing them from a vegetative state to a fruiting state and that they would likely revert to a vegetative state for a while once field planted.

The other possibility is water. The field grown trees get no supplemental water.

I'm not sure if there is such "vegetative" vs "fruiting" state or stage.

Jujube has low chilling requirement. It loves heat. With your rootbuilder container on the patio, it heats very quickly. So it it under optimal growing condition. The field grown one may have competition from the grass/weeds and it does not receive irrigation. So its growing condition was not optimal.

Again, a lot of plants or flowers would fruit or bloom when root bound.

RedSun,

When most fruit trees are young seedlings, they are in a vegetative state. The energy collected is dedicated to establishing the tree. At some point in a trees life after it is well established, it become more important for the tree to reproduce and it changes to a fruiting state. At this point it is still growing but at a slower rate is a lot of energy focused at propagation. This is just a normal part of development.

The field grown trees are getting full sun and have weed barriers and are caged. My deck gets good early morning sun but is filtered in the late morning and is in full shade in the afternoon. The field grown trees have a weed barrier in place that extends beyond the drip line. They only thing they don't get is supplemental water.

Keep in mind that these Rootbuilder II grown Jujubes in the on the deck are only a few months old. They were well less than a pencil in diameter and not large enough to graft yet, but still produced fruit. This was so unusual, I asked the experts what was going on since the 5 year old trees in the field had not yet fruited.

The container and supplemental watering were their explanation. Here are some pics:

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I don't think you find Jujube fruiting in the first growing season they produce top growth even in optimal managed field conditions. There has to be more going on here.

Some fruit trees are notorious for fruiting when root bound. One good example is fig. I rooted two cuttings in the fall of 2013 from my neighbor's fig tree. I kept then outside my garage in one gallon pots. This summer, both new plants set 3 fruits each. But the mother plant has been in ground for several years, about 6 feet tall, still no fruits.

You can say vegetative or fruiting state. But there have to be some reasons for them to be at that state. I figure when plant has enough roots, then they start normal fruiting. But if the plant is not balanced, then it may want to put more energy to grow top...