Phoenix Tropicals Gardening

[Fozz01]

Looking to purchase Madjool Date Palms in 5 to 15 gallon size. Please reply to this post if you are or know of a good source.
Thank you,
Kevin

[phoenixtropicals]

Good question. Generally people don't grow them from seed because you don't know if you will get a male or female from seed (date plants have genders), and you want a female because males don't produce fruit. So, what they do is separate the offshoots from the base of the female tree and grow a new tree from that. There are some people in the AZRFG www.azrfg.org that invite people to come to their homes to get the offshoots every now and then. So, you could go that route.

I would guess there are some nurseries that could sell you a female Medjool but I don't know of any offhand. Indio California (near Palm Springs) is a big commercial growing area for date palms, so maybe some nuseries in that area can help you out. I think transporting a date palm across state lines is not problem, but just don't transport any citrus.

Maybe some people on the forum can help you locate tree. Anyone?

[MKIVRYAN]

Treeland in mesa usually has them.

[Fozz01]

That's great advice. Just to clarify, the only way to tell if you have a female is while the tree is fruiting? Do you need a male tree to produce edibles from a female?
Do people sell male trees when buyer is not interested in the fruit? (Assuming the tree is cleaner and would drop less junk. But maybe the males are dirty as well?)
I know that's a lot of questions...

[phoenixtropicals]

Hi Fozz,

Yes, you need males around to get fruit from the females. In the orchards they actually take the male flowers and dust the female flowers with them to maximize yield. However, I think there should generally be enough male date palms around for you to get some fruit from a female date palm in the Phoenix area, without you doing anything special. A nursery should know a young palm tree's gender because it will match the gender of the tree they hacked it away from. Yes, the males would be less messy. Let us know if you find a nursery that sells them.

[Dauntless]

Whitfill Nursery has them. They are $150 for a 15 gallon. That is for a small female tree that is 5 years or so from producing.
For a producing size, it is $800. (Ouch) These are Medjools.

[phoenixtropicals]

Great. Thanks for the info. I always wondered where you could buy them. Medjools are one of my favorites. No room in my yard for one though.

[johnvic21]

First time I listened that date palms have gender woooo. And I've got so many great ideas from this post.