Jujube Branch Breakers.

[FruitForward]

I have a mature Thai jujube that has given me fruit for about 20 years. Last season I had seen a Fruitful Trees video about a commercial grower who radically prunes his jujube trees back to the trunk, promising improved fruit production. With a leap of faith I pruned my tree back to the trunk. I was rewarded this season with the largest crop of the largest fruit I have ever seen on my tree. The tree was carrying 2 to 3 times as much fruit (in weight) than in previous years. That's the good news. The bad news is that many of the fruit-laden branches broke, either because of the weight, the wind, animals in the tree or all 3. Close to half of my fruit bearing branches snapped.

This season after the fruit come off, I will probably prune the tree again back to the trunk. However, I will be more inclined to support the branches with bamboo poles in the fall, before they get too heavy. I went back and watched the video again. While Paul and the grower don't discuss supporting the heavy branches, I do see bamboo poles holding some of them up.

I'm curious.
1. Have any of you have the same experience?
2. What cultural practices do you use and/or would you suggest?

[roblack]

Same thing happened here. Tons of fruit, big ones too, and the quality has been nice. One of the bigger broken branches still held good fruit, after the break. Going to cut back again, probably next weekend. Still some fruit.

[Galatians522]

Sounds like I need to watch this. My Dad's Thai Jujube on produced a handful of fruit this year. Can't prune it too low, though because of deer pressure. Someone should be selling these to Florida hunters for food plots.

[FruitForward]

Same thing happened here. Tons of fruit, big ones too, and the quality has been nice. One of the bigger broken branches still held good fruit, after the break. Going to cut back again, probably next weekend. Still some fruit.

Did you prune back to the truck last season?

[roblack]

Left it about 7 - 8 feet tall, with a few side branches. Still had some leaves.

[70Malibu]

I bought a Thai jujube tree last year, it was about 7ft tall. When I went to the guys house to pickup this jujube tree, it has hundreds of fruits all hanging from every branch node. So the guys says to me, kaz, you can buy this tree for a good price ($150) but I don't know how you can move it with all these fruits hanging. The guy had small string/wires, anything he could use to hold up every little branch with fruits onto a PVP frame so it looked like a puppet.

I said, move over, cut off all the stings and branches back to 2ft, put the large tree (25gal pot) on my roller and put it up on the truck. That was an easy move.

So, what he did was as the fruits formed on the branches, he just tied every branch up before the fruits got to full size.

[buddy roo]

I would really like to see before and after photos of this pruning, it sounds like what people do to figs

[70Malibu]

Well, the difference with these branches is the fig branches are much stronger, not wimpy like the jujube trees. I dug up an 18ft jujube tree which had many fruits on it when I trimmed the tall branches. It doesn't matter where these branches are on the big trees either, they are thin (1/8-1/4" diameter) so it will not hold all the fruits hanging on its own. Any wind and those branches start to break if you don't thin out the tree.

I removed all the smaller branches first, then cut back more all branches before I dug out this 18ft jujube tree.

[Kevin Jones]

Kaz... With all these trees you keep digging up, how do you find the time to work on your Corvette?

Kevin

[70Malibu]

That's my problem. First my yard needs to be completely cleaned up of large in-ground trees (which is all of them), then I need to repair my 97 Eddie Bower Expedition (blown spark plug, heads), then I can work on my 69 vette before I'm too old to pull the engine and trans for a complete rebuild I will do myself.