Canary Island Date - success & failure details

[TheMadScientist]

Please refer to the Pygmy Date Palm posting to see the incubator and general procedures used also in this project. The following picture is my donor palm. I got permission to harvest some of these seeds prior to all dropping onto the lawn and being thrown away by landscapers. I cut enough strands of seeds to fill (3) 5 gallon buckets, got home and stripped them (with gloves) off the strands which filled (1) 5 gallon bucket with just seeds. All of this was done on 12-1-2011.




Spent 6 hours with a pearing knife and cleaned 900 seeds. Based on those numbers, I have approximately 5,000 seeds in the bucket and approx. 250,000 seeds still left on the donor palm. These seeds look exactly like a Pygmy Date seed but 5-7 times larger.






If you consider the attach point as the north pole, remove the polar cap without cutting the seed, then start the tip of the knife at the north pole down to the south pole and around back up to the opposite side of the north pole. This allows the skin to peel off with ease. Be careful to lay large quantities out on a cookie sheet to dry for about a day. If they are fresh and put into a plastic butter tub, they will turn to mold very quick on the bottom. I put my first batch immediately into the water soak for only 2 days as they turned from the light tan color to a dark brown in that time. I would think that if they were left dry for a period of time, perhaps 4 days would be necessary. Next, I quickly added the 10% bleach and made my first mistake....only a few minutes of soaking and not the 10-15 minutes in the bleach solution. Within 1 week, I HAD MOLD. By that time, 1 lone seed had sprouted. But now I had to RESTERILIZE THIS BATCH IN THE BLEACH SOLUTION WHICH KILLED THE LONE SPROUTER. I am starting a new batch each week and trying to keep only about 100-150 seeds in a baggy. Most of these have sprouted within 3 weeks with a 2 inch tap root. It is now 12-27-2011.

[TheMadScientist]

It's 1-17-2012, this appears to be the right time to start taking the most advanced seeds and move them into a small community pot. You can see that the tap root on some is 3-4 inches with vertical green growth appearing. These larger tap roots are really brittle and can snap off. I have premixed my dry soil blend; 1/3 rich top soil, 1/3 potting soil, 1/3 sand. I am going to put these into 3 liter soda bottles that have had the tops removed and drain holes put into the bottom supports. I have taken a sauce pan full of water and raised it's temperature to around 150-170 degrees...not boiling. I've put 2 batches of soil blend into a bucket and poured enough water to create a hand mixed 'slurry'...not clumpy and not standing water. The temperature is now about the incubator temperature of around 90 degrees. I am suspending 4 sprouts inside the 3 liter soda bottle and having help dropping the slurry down into the bottle. It fills all voids without injuring the tap roots up to where the green starts. All bottles are being put into the heater room, hot water heater top and bookshelves near air vents. I have all bottles sitting on lids to catch any draining water.

[TheMadScientist]

It's 2-2-2012 around 10:30 am....I've taken an assortment of community pots to show the growth progress. It is obvious as to which ones are the oldest. I am about to take the community pot seen at 3 o'clock (oldest and tallest palms) and transfer them into their individual 3 liter containers as the roots are about to get so entangled that damage could easily occur. MY BAD AGAIN, started to move another batch of sprouted babies into a community pot. A HONEY DO came up, I set the cloth wrapped sprouters back into the incubator (NOT THE SEALED BAGGY) and within 3 hours, cloth was dry from the heat and all 50 sprouters were dry, dead and 4 weeks of work gone. Don't get distracted or keep them always in the sealed baggy.

[TheMadScientist]

Transplanted 2 community pots into individual 3 liter containers. The roots at this stage are around 6 inches, touching the bottom of the container with most diving straight down. No entanglement had occurred at this point. My soil blend must have a little more clay or less sand than it should as I took a screw driver to pry each root with soil still attached. I think this was a benefit as the block could be put into the middle of the new container, slurry of soil blend dropped around the perimeter without disturbing the root structure.

Here is the start of my Canary Island Date FOREST.