Chinese jujube is notorious for not striking from cuttings - as are Japanese maples!

Of course I had to try, and did, and have, becoming less and less interested and more and more uncaring about it as the years rolled by. But still kept giving it a shot with different approaches. Rooting gel, rooting powder, different media, lengths of cutting, with and without heels, all never going anywhere. I’m talking scores of attempts at a time by the way.

They always start off well, drawing on energy stored in the cutting to leaf up, looking glossy green, very healthy and ever so promising. And then they run out of puff, and the leaves die and fall off. The ones that stay green by end of season never make it through winter. The sticks come straight out of the medium with zero resistance to the gentlest of tugs, after giving them every chance to show signs of life by mid spring. There is no green sap and there are never any roots, or maybe you might see the thinnest hair of a root that tried to develop.

Last August 2024 I found a few pots I had forgotten about, with the remains of at least sixty from the previous year’s efforts. The usual story, except, what??! What was that very green-looking thing??! Dear Lord one of the cuttings was alive! And…double what?! A second one??

I didn’t dare touch them in case I damaged any fragile roots that may have been growing! And still haven’t. I just let them be. One at time of writing looks like this five months later:

While the other just gets stronger, and stronger, and I will swear blind I saw the teensiest unmistakable shape of a Silverhill jujube fruit developing the past few weeks. Except I can’t find it anymore, so maybe the bad storm we had last week knocked it off.

It still has flower buds and flowers though - it is a Silverhill after all, one of the latest varieties to fruit and ripen.

And, incredibly, suckers coming through!

Bully Boy here approves!

You’re thinking I’m onto some amazing secret right? Not really. There were easily 58+ treated exactly the same way which never made it. But for what it’s worth, I dipped the cuttings into a plant cutting powder containing 0.5 g /kg indole butyric acid and 0.5 g/kg naphthalene acetic acid, then placed them in a mix of fine coir and commercial seed-raising mix. Naturally I repeated this treatment last August 2024 with scores more new cuttings, and naturally they are all dead.