How to Grow Your Own Medjool Dates

You are living your life wondering your own business, then suddenly when you least expected you are introduced to a medjool date. You say “what the hell is this ? It looks like a giant raisin.” You taste it and you are addicted. You ask your friend for more and eat the entire contents of her box. She looks at you in amazement a little confused, may be a little upset. “Don’t you have anymore you ?” you ask. She shakes her head as she quickly glances at the pantry door. You know she has more medjool dates in the pantry, but she is not sharing. You thank her and leave for a nearby supermarket. You enter and go for the fruit section and are disappointed to see that they don’t carry any medjool dates. You take out your cell and call your friend and ask where she got that delightful medjool date snack. She informs you that she got them at a natural foods store. Soon you are on your way to the local natural foods store. You go in and find your way to the dates. You are surprised that there are actually two types of dates, medjool dates and deglet noor dates. You grab a box of medjool dates and are surprised by the hefty $10 price tag for a small box. You grab the deglet noor and pleasantly surprised by the $3.50 price tag. You take one of each, you go home and open your box of deglet noor. Your mouth watering take a bite and are deeply disappointed it is as if all the flavor was sucked out. It is not horrible, it is just not nearly as tasty as the medjool date. You take a medjool date and wow! There is the great taste.

The next day you get the craving for your medjool dates and you finish yet another box. By the end of the week you discover you have spent $50 on medjool dates and begin to wonder how you can grow your own dates. “Well I have the seeds, why not plant the seeds and wait for the date palm trees to come out and bear some fruit.?” You plant the seeds, you wait a while by the end of the moth you have a dozen date palms coming out of your pots. You plant them and wait. Finally three years later it looks like you may be getting some dates any day now. Finally you retire and can devote your full time to tending your date palms and still no dates. You move to the desert where you are pleasantly surprised by all the medjool date orchards nearby, where you can now go shop for dates directly with the farmers and can purchase these dates for only $3.50 a pound. You then ask why did your date palms would not produce. You discover you did it all wrong. All those years wasted.

When you start a date palm from seed you may get a female or a male. You just don’t know until about a decade later. Secondly when you grown dates from seed you may or may not get medjool dates. Growing dates from seed is actually very exciting, because you can create your own variety of dates. You just don’t know what you are going to get from seed. Dates have to come from date palm shoots to get the same date. Medjool dates come from medjool date palm shoots and deglet noor from deglet noor date palm shoots. Last you have to have the right conditions to grow dates. You can only grow dates in areas that are hot and dry. Dates will not grow along the coast like most other palm fruit. Lastly the date palm has to get a lot of water year round. Even if all these conditions are present there are a lot of manual chores you have to do to successfully grown big jumbo medjool dates.