Secrets of Successfully Growing Ziziphus: From Planting to Harvest

Increasingly, on personal plots next to traditional fruit trees, you can find unusual neighbors, originating from distant warm lands. Summer residents who value the combination of exotic decorativeness with usefulness and unpretentiousness will certainly be attracted by the planting and cultivation of a Chinese date, or ziziphus. He is also known as unabi, chulon, jujuba, chili-on, ilan djida and jojoba.

This culture comes from Northern China. Due to its high yield and beneficial properties of the fruits, ziziphus quickly won the love of gardeners around the world. Unabis are successfully cultivated in areas with hot summers and mild winters: America, northern Africa, southern Europe, Asia. There, the height of Chinese dates reaches 9 m. If desired, they can be grown in central Russia. But here unabis give a more compact form of a bush or a low (no more than 3 m) tree.

Where to place?

For full development, ziziphus needs a lot of light. In the shade, the tree practically does not grow, and one cannot count on the harvest. Even if the unabi blooms in low light conditions, the fruits will not set. Therefore, for planting a tree, you should choose the sunniest area. Moreover, it must be reliably protected from cold winds and drafts.

The southern and southwestern slopes are ideal for growing ziziphus. It is better to plant it closer to their top or at the base. A good solution would be to place the Chinese date on flat areas near buildings that will shelter it from the cold air currents. But the lowlands are completely unsuitable for planting it.

Soil quality is the most important condition for uniform growth and fruiting of unabi. The culture prefers moderately moist loamy soils, fertile, but without an excess of nutrients. In a poor and dry land, Ziziphus will bring a meager harvest. If you overdo it with fertilization, the tree will be completely covered with green leaves, and few fruits are formed on it.

Landing time and scheme

Southerner by nature, Ziziphus is highly dependent on heat. In the middle lane, it is usually planted in the spring. Plants placed in the ground in autumn often do not have time to take root before the onset of cold weather and freeze slightly. If the winter turns out to be harsh, they may not survive it at all. Spring planting starts in March, autumn planting in October-November. Here you need to focus on the features of the local climate.

A pit for unabi seedlings is prepared in advance. Its depth and diameter is 1 m. The soil is enriched with minerals and manure. Having placed a seedling in a hole and covered it with earth, they compact the soil. Young trees should not be deeply buried, 10 cm is enough. Watering the hole abundantly, the soil around the planted ziziphus is mulched with any organic matter. So the plant will take root faster.

The crown of the unabi is spreading, so planting pits are made at a distance of 3-4 m from each other. Planting one tree makes sense only for the sake of decorativeness: the Chinese date is cross-pollinated. For it to bear fruit, several plants must be placed nearby. The ideal option is to use different varieties of seedlings. In the middle lane, it is more productive to breed ziziphus with early ripening and increased frost resistance.

Seed reproduction

You can grow unabi from a bone. But gardeners rarely resort to this method of reproduction of culture, and there are several reasons for this. The Chinese dates obtained from seeds have less decorative and lower medicinal properties compared to those grown from seedlings.Usually they are prickly, and small fruits ripen on them. You will have to spend a lot of time and labor to care for such a plant, but there are no guarantees that the result will satisfy the gardener.

The seeds for planting are taken from the ripe fruits of ziziphus. Before sowing, they must be stratified. You can use sand or sawdust for this.

Having well moistened the material and placing the seeds in it, the container with them is placed in a cool place (usually in the lower compartment of the refrigerator), where they are kept at a temperature of 0 to + 5 ° C for 3 months. They are planted in early spring. You can place the seeds directly in open ground, but they germinate only in warm, warmed up to at least 15 ° C soil. When planting on the beds, the seeds of the ziziphus are buried 3-4 cm, watered well and covered with a film that will help to retain heat and moisture.

The emergence of seedlings of unabi will have to wait 40-60 days. When the seedlings get stronger, they are thinned out, leaving 25 cm of free space between neighboring plants. Ziziphus can be transplanted to a permanent place next year. Seedlings should be insulated before winter. The soil at the roots is covered with a layer of humus mixed with wood chips. Do not sound the alarm if young unabis do not bloom for a long time in spring. This is a feature of their vegetation.

In order for seedlings to appear at home faster, they are exposed to high temperatures after planting on ziziphus seeds. A box with crops is watered with boiling water, and then covered with foil or glass. The procedure is repeated daily for a week. When watering, moderation is important, since Ziziphus does not tolerate excess moisture.

Such pre-sowing treatment of unabi seeds also gives a good result:

1. they are slightly punctured with a hammer;
2. for a day placed in water heated to 17-24 ° C.

The seeds extracted from it are planted in warm soil, deepening by 1-2 cm. After 2-3 weeks they will hatch together. When 2-3 true leaves appear on the shoots, the seedlings are planted in the ground. At first, the ziziphus will need shelter from direct sunlight, but there should not be too much shade. You can use gauze. They remove it after about 2 weeks. Seedlings grow quickly, and start bearing fruit early.

Advice

A Chinese date is also grown at home, you just need to put a pot with it on the lightest windowsill.

Care rules

Zizyphus does not care about extreme heat and drought. The characteristics of the root system allow an adult tree to easily tolerate the absence of watering and rain. But while the seedling is rooting in a new place, it needs periodic moisture, especially on hot days. Unabi are watered rarely and in moderation, without going to extremes. Excess moisture can destroy the plant, and drying out of the soil will cause a decrease in yield. At the stage of fruit formation (in June), the ziziphus does not need watering.

Planting care also provides for the timely removal of weeds, the neighborhood of which the Chinese date does not like, and top dressing. The plants are nourished 2 times per season using complex mineral fertilizers. "Kristalon" has proved itself well. The drug is dissolved in 10 liters of water at a dosage of 15-20 g. When unabi begins to bear fruit, feeding is carried out more often. To facilitate the wintering of trees, it is recommended to introduce nitrogen-containing compounds into the soil in the spring, and phosphorus-potassium compounds in the fall. Both are used in small quantities.

In the first year of life on the site, the ziziphus will grow slowly. Do not be afraid of this. Because of this developmental feature, the crown of the Chinese date begins to form only in the next season. Most often, you can see the unabi with a bowl-shaped crown. It is formed by 4-5 main branches going around the trunk. The main shoot is shortened to 15-20 cm. The length of the remaining branches is the same. An open crown, in which the tree does not have a leading shoot, allows you to increase the quantity and quality of the ziziphus crop.

You can also form a crown in the form of a bush.In this case, the root shoots are cut or dug out for transplantation. Along with the forming ziziphus, sanitary pruning is also required, in which weak, diseased and improperly growing shoots are removed.

Features of fruiting and preparation for winter

To improve the fruiting of the Chinese date will help to provide it with a special microclimate. In spring, 3-6 supports are installed around the tree and a transparent film is pulled to a height of 3 m. Ziziphus begins to bear fruit at the age of 4-5 years. But it will take much longer to wait for a full harvest - about 10 years. Most of the ovaries are formed on the lateral branches, and the most generous harvest is brought by small-fruited varieties of ziziphus.

Unabi is a fairly frost-resistant crop. The tree tolerates a drop in temperature down to -25 ° C without loss. Even if the winter turns out to be harsh and some of the shoots freeze, the decorative effect of the crown will quickly recover. Spring frosts will not affect the zizyphus - it blooms late.

Young plants need special care in autumn. Before the onset of cold weather, the unabi need to be hilled, and the tops of the shoots should be wrapped with covering material. For mature trees, winter preparation is necessary only in areas where the thermometer can drop below -35 ° C.

Growing Chinese dates will be a joy to any gardener. It is not burdensome, because the tree needs almost no maintenance. Unabi is not affected by diseases and does not attract pests. He is a real long-liver, capable of delighting with his beauty and useful fruits for a whole century.

Ziziphus is especially decorative in summer, when its branches are completely covered with flowers, filling the garden with a light sweetish aroma and inviting insects. They will fade only after 2 months, and in their place a lot of fruits are formed that can be eaten fresh, dried, dried, frozen, used for making compotes, mashed potatoes, marmalade. With proper care, one tree can yield up to 60 kg of harvest. Leave all doubts, planting a Chinese date on the site is worthwhile!