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Date Palms are unique
in that they are either a male tree or a female tree. The male trees produce
pollen, and the female trees produce flowers.
Unfortunately, neither birds
nor bees are attracted to the flowers, so the females have to be hand pollinated. During
the later part of February we begin to watch for the sheaths on the male trees
to begin splitting open. We check each tree every single day. As soon as a sheath
on a male tree begins to open, it is tied with string to hold it together, and
removed from the tree. |  | |
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Here you get a much better view of the pollen because the sheath is split wide
open. Once the sheath on the male tree opens, we will cut the whole sheath out
of the tree, and then hang it upside down to dry. Once the pollen has dried to
a very fine powder, we sift it into a large air-tight container for storage.
A male sheath that has been removed from the tree. Notice
the small split where it is starting to break open. This sheath probably weighs
close to 10 pounds. | |
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The female trees have the same kind of sheath, and as
they begin to flower, we will remove the sheath and separate each strand. We then
tie the strands together and hand pollinates the flowers using the fresh pollen
that we have collected from the male trees. We use a small ketchup squirt bottle
for this process. We pollinate each female tree at least three times.
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| | Around
April or May, as the fruit begins to "bud" on the strands, we will begin
the thinning process. | |
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| | First,
we open up each bunch of strands that we have tied together, and cut out the middle,
leaving only the outside strands. Then we remove about 90% of the dates from each
strand. This allows better air flow and the chance for each individual date to
grow to its optimum size. It
is not unusual for the temperatures to be above 100 degrees during May when we
are thinning and closer to 120 degrees during the date harvest, so most of our
date workers will wear long sleeved shirts and long pants, and cover their faces
with bandannas to protect themselves from both the sun and the heat. |  | |
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This is a strand of Midol Dates before being thinned. By removing the majority
of the dates, the ones that are left will have enough room to grow to a March
larger size.
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