Hello Hive
It's been over months now that we have been expecting this homegrown date fruit to ripen so that we can see the final product if it will be edible as food. I was quite impressed that we can grow date palm fruits in this part of the world and how easy it is to grow them. It only takes a lot of time to germinate, but dates are easy to grow and very important as food.
Some important health benefits of dates have been the reason for massive consumption of the fruits around here. Being providers of natural sugars, we eat a lot of dates to provide our bodies with some needed amount of sugar, especially during the fasting period. We often add dates and tiger nuts to our food because of their health benefits at such a period.
Dates are an excellent source of fiber that aids digestion; it aids good brain and heart function. Dates are also rich in most of the essential vitamins and minerals needed for both quality bone and body health.
Today I will be taking us through the process of how to grow date fruits.
We can plant dates here in the nursery, and when they are germinated from the seeds and even up to the age of 2 years, they can still be moved to our specific and desired location.
I want to grow some date fruit from the seeds, and today I begin the general planting process.
Seed viability and preparation process
Here we pick up date seeds from the fruit pod and soak it in water for 48 hours. It is advisable for us to use the freshly ripped date fruits.
For instance, these are some date fruits that are ripening already. After this has ripened very well and before the fruit pods begin to dry up, I can extract the seeds, which would be really fresh by then.
In the absence of that, I got these dry seeds, which I would be soaking for 48 hrs or more until they softened, consistently changing the water to determine if the seeds would be viable or not. Nonviable seeds will float on the water after the soaking period, and then next I can proceed to the germination stage.
Soaking the seeds will determine which ones will be viable or not. Once you soak and the seeds float in water, that seed is bad and cannot be planted. Today I have marked the calendar and soaked my seeds, waiting to see which will be viable before I move to the germination phase.
So we have firstly the