Guest Post: date harvesting (…abandoned) By Zaylie

me climbing a date palm

Climbing a palm tree is really quite easy there are little spiky things that you can use as hand holds and foot holds.

Patti adds:

Date trees have girl trees and boy trees.  In the spring, the boy trees have branches with pollen which the people harvest.  They take one branch and tie it into the middle of a bundle of girl tree branches with a palm leaf.  They leave it there for a month and then cut the palm leaf and let the fruit begin to develop.  This improves the rate of pollination from about 50% to 90%.

Date plantations are an irrigated crop which is why the trees are grown in the Tozeur Oasis.  In other date plantations we saw, they put plastic bags over the date bunches.  In Tozeur the didn’t, because it NEVER rains there.

this is all 3 of us climbing the date palm, and the date harvester, who goes to the top