How to Plant Winter Jujube Pits? A Detailed Guide to the Planting Method

Winter jujube is a sweet and crisp food, and after eating the flesh, a very hard winter jujube pit is left behind, so how do you plant winter jujube pits? Let us take a look together!

1. Basic Introduction to Winter Jujube

Winter jujube is a fruit with a very high vitamin content, belonging to the Rhamnaceae family and the genus Ziziphus. Besides vitamins, winter jujube also contains various trace elements such as potassium, sodium, iron and copper, as well as anti-cancer substances such as cyclic adenosine monophosphate and cyclic guanosine monophosphate.

Winter jujube refers to late-maturing varieties with a fruit growth period of more than 120 days. In areas north of the Huaihe River and Qinling Mountains, the fruit matures in early to mid-October, and especially late-maturing varieties are delayed until late October. Because it matures late, it is called winter jujube.

The main varieties of winter jujube include Chengwu winter jujube, Lubei winter jujube, Changtiao jujube and others.

2. How to Plant Winter Jujube Pits?

Wash the winter jujube pits in water to remove the flesh on them, then bury them in soil and give them sufficient water and light.

If sowing in spring, the winter jujube pits also need to be soaked and pre-germinated; if sowing in autumn, simply wash them and bury them directly in soil. However, for jujubes eaten in daily life, the seeds inside the pits are mostly shriveled kernels and may not germinate successfully.

Among these, the detailed steps for soaking and pre-germination treatment are: soak the jujube pits in water for 1 to 2 days, take them out and mix them into three times their volume of moist sand to break dormancy, screen out the seeds about 5-7 days before sowing, sprinkle water over them and cover them to promote germination, and sow once one-third to one-half of the seeds have cracked open.

3. How to Choose Delicious Winter Jujubes?

1. Touch with your hand

Naturally ripened winter jujubes have smooth, hard skin, with the peel and flesh tightly attached, and feel relatively crisp and hard to the touch.

2. Look at the color

Naturally ripened winter jujubes gradually change from green to red, so they are mostly red showing through green, with no very obvious dividing line between the green and red parts; while winter jujubes soaked in saccharin are mostly dark red or dark yellow, with an obvious boundary from the green part.

However, if you can taste one when choosing, you should still taste it before buying, so that the winter jujubes you buy are of better quality.