Re: Propagating Palms
- Subject: Re: Propagating Palms
- From: B* D*
- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 13:25:57 +0200
Date seeds germinate very easily in warm weather - I just stick them in a
pot of our clayey soil, and keep it watered.
They send a long, thick root out first, then stay that way for a while. The
ideal pot for this process is one of those tall juice cans, or a milk
carton. I now use sapling trays. This gives the root room to grow. I guess
this is a drought-tolerance mechanism.
However.... it will take you a while to grow a large specimen, and until
they get tall enough for the fronds to clear human height, they are very
spiny plants to be around.
You also have no way of knowing if your plant is male or female - they are
separate in date palms - or what the fruit will be like.
It may be worth your while to buy a known specimen, then propagate from the
offsets that are produced around the base of a happy plant. The natural
growth pattern is a clump of trunks. This can save you several years in
growing a mature specimen.
This is done by carefully digging to expose the root of the offset, and then
fitting a burlap sack or plastic pot around the roots so they develop
separately and can be removed. It's sort of an in-ground air layer.
When supplied with water and nutrient, date palms can survive with very
little root mass - so it may be possible to root freshly removed offsets in
a root-misting or aeroponic system, although I have not seen this myself.
Joshua
----- Original Message -----
From: laythss <laythss@yahoo.com>
To: <propagation@hort.net>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 6:21 AM
Subject: Propagating Palms
> How do I germinate a date seed (a palm seed?)
>
> Layth
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
> message text UNSUBSCRIBE PROPAGATION
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PROPAGATION
