Ok, anybody who's visited the Palm Springs/Coachella Valley area has visited or plans to visit Shield's Date Garden to have a date shake and see a video about the Sex Life of the Date!
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In case you haven't had the chance or you've forgotten, here's the skinny:
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A date orchard needs only 1 male to every 48 females. This palm does not self-pollinate so "artificial insemination" is required with a worker climbing to the top of the palm and spreading male pollen on the female blossoms (I told you this was going to get nasty!)
The Coachella Valley has very fertile soil and crops range from grapes to cotton and citrus to vegetables of all types. For a time even bananas and pineapples were grown in the Coachella Valley. Today 95% of the dates in the USA are grown here.
Again, like the navel orange cuttings, the US Department of Agriculture in the late 1800's sent out plant explorers around the world to find new food crops. Their explorers brought back 400+ date shoots from the Middle East to start the crop in this valley.
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Today the Middle East is still where most of the world's dates are grown. The dates are a subsistence crop in that area, but many date groves have been decimated with the wars.
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The US contribution to the date crop worldwide is minimal. The date orchards here used to span from just south of Palm Springs to the Salton Sea. Now the area with palms is less than half that. And why?
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Because the date is the most expensive crop to produce. A lot of manual effort year-round goes into the date growing and harvest.
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January – dethorn the fronds for picker protection when they hand pollinate later in the year
February – tree ladders are moved up palms to reach the current top of the tree
February – March – hand pollination of female date blooms
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| Tall ladders |
May-June – thinning for larger fruit
July-August – protective paper covers are put over date bunches to protect from rain and birds
September – December soft dates picked by hand, semi-dry dates are mechanically picked into large bins
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Palm shoots need to grow 5 years before their first crop of about 40 lbs of dates. When the palm is 10-15 years old each female tree will produce up to 300 lbs of dates per year.
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| YUMMY! I'm ready for one of these |
