The Sex Life of a Date

During the last weeks of February, we begin to watch for the sheaths on the male trees to begin splitting open. We check each tree daily. 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.

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.

When we remove a male sheath, you can notice the small split where it is starting to break open. This sheath probably weighs close to 5 kg.

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. We pollinate each female tree at least three times.

Date Palm Trees Fruiting Process

Around April or May, as the fruit begins to “bud” on the strands, we will begin the thinning process.

First, we open up each bunch of strands that we have tied together. Next, we cut out the middle, leaving only the outside strands. Then we remove about 90% of the dates from each strand. This allows better airflow and the chance for each date to grow to its optimum size.

The temperature is usually to be between 40 to 50 Celsius during May. This is the time when, we are thinning and closer to 50 degrees during the date harvest, so most of our date workers will wear cover themselves fully to protect themselves from the heat.