Can Dates grow in Nigeria? My little experiment...

[demola]

Good day my fellow farm gang. I love eating dates a lot. Especially the fresh ones. Oh my god the taste is something else, I personally can eat a bag of dates. I'm only able to get these delicious fruits from my local hausa friends. I have also had the privilege of eating a really fresh one from Saudi Arabia and I can say that the taste of the fresh one is far better than the dried ones. So for the past few days I have been doing a lot of googling and research on dates and how to grow them. I've had some very encouraging discovery that dates can actually grow in Nigeria. So I will be using the next few months to try out what I've learnt and show you my progress. So friends let's get into it.

[demola]

So I bought a handful of dates from my local hausa sellers. I took my time to enjoy the nice taste of the fruit and this is where is my journey begins.

[demola]

After eating the juicy flesh of the fruit I removed the seeds and placed it aside for the process to begin.

[demola]

So on to the next step. I got a kitchen tissue napkin, I placed the seeds on the napkin and sprinkled some water on the seeds and the napkin. I covered the napkin with another layer. Find the picture below.

[demola]

After all this is said and done, I placed the wrapped tissue in a bowl and tucked it away in a cool dark cupboard. I'll be leaving it in the cupboard for about two weeks. And let's see what becomes of it after 2 weeks. I'll be back here after 2 weeks for a review of what happened to the seeds.

[Olufemisamuel]

Wow.
I love dates too. It would be so nice to know if and how it can grow here.

[demola]

It's been just over a week I started my experiment to see if this can work. I'm really skeptical about this because I don't know what you expect. I have been doing some reading online and I must say that I have learned a lot. You cannot overemphasize the place of learning. OK so this is what I have learned so far while reading different articles online.

• There are male and female date plants. so when you plant your seeds you can either have a male or a female plant the chance is 50:50.

• It takes between 8 to 12 years before it beet plant reaches full maturity. This is actually really really long in my own opinion. So I have to wait for about 8 years? Anyway let us see how it goes.

• It is better to grow the date from the pup than growing it from the seeds. with this method, you are sure of the right the right variety and taste of the fruit.

• Dates are hardly pollinated by insects or bees, they are hand pollinated which means you need to take the pollen from the male plant and manually pollinate the female plant.

So these are my observations and what I have learned so far I will keep updating this thread with more information.