50 jujube trees are dying

I purchased a large number of jujube trees this year. I planted most in a sandy loam mix. These trees are doing fantastic. However, the local soil provider talked me into a container mix for the rest. Every one of these trees have stopped growing and the leaves have started to brown on the edge. Each tree is in a 7-10 gallon container. The mix is a very dark sandy loam loaded with pecan shells. Is anyone familiar with this mix? I am assuming that it is way too acidic. I plan on chaning out the soil on every container this weekend. Does anyone have any suggestions? Look at the pics and tell me if you think the trees are lost. Some of the trees arent even budding while the trees in the good mix are full of leaves.

This is one of the trees in the regular sandy loam mix.

Here is a picture of the soil creating the problems.

That soil is not fully composted. As it degrades it sucks nitrogen from the soil and deprives your tree. Is that the problem? Hard to say for sure; there could be some other nutrient or pH problem. What to do? Just leafed-out trees can easily die if you change the soil so I would do that as a last resort only. You could measure the pH and adjust if needed, and also fertilize with a balanced fertilizer. There could be some other problem with the dirt as well, such as salinity. Or maybe there was already too much fertilizer in the soil. My jujubes have never done anything like that.

Scott

How's your trees doing, jujubetexas?

It was all my fault. The soil is great. I was trying multiple types of soil and I wasnt fully soaking the pots when I watered this particular soil. The top half was wet and bottom half dry. Kinda bad for a bare-root tree. All of the trees recovered and 80 percent of my grafts took. I now have about 38 varieties of jujube and many of the first year grafts are fruiting. I am very excited. I hope to start going to farmers markets next year. My goji berries really took off this year too.

jujube

This message was edited May 15, 2008 10:44 PM

jujube, That's great I live not far from you. Hope to see some of your fruit at a market soon.

I have planted some it composted pine bark and they do very well. I have rooted some cuttings in this mix also with a rooting hormone and almost everyone rooted and are growning well

Love a happy ending! Sometimes you learn a completely different answer when you start repotting... :-)

Many of my jujube are fruiting now. The trees that I mistreated did bloom later than the rest but at least they did produce. Deer came into my yard and ate all the leaves and fruits off of my grafts but they grew new leaves and have fruited again. I used rooting hormone on some cuttings just like Dan7454 mentioned and many took and one even fruited. WOW!

The funniest thing was about one week ago my friend was trying to buy an old house and asked me along because I do restorations. I went into the back yard and there were 8-9 jujube trees growing by the house and up through the sidewalk. They all looked like suckers that grew up to 20 feet except one older tree. The strange thing is that the suckers dont have thorns like most wild jujube do. I dug up a few of the small 3 foot suckers that were just everywhere and planted them at home. I will do cuttings on the big tree this winter. We are in extreme drought right now and have had the hottest June in recorded history for this area but that jujube was just thriving with fruit with no water in over two months. What a tree!