Date pits soaking in water, with their guardian frogs, in preparation for planting.
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I blame Pinterest, and one of those odd “You might like these new pins” emails I received earlier this week.
You see one of those pins they shared with me showed gorgeous baby green leaves growing out of a little pot of soil- holding a date pit.
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Fresh dates
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Do you eat dates? The people in my life either passionately love them or despise them with equal vehemence.
The true candy of the fruit world, they contain about 75% sugar, which makes them a great sugar substitute in baked goods, energy bars and bites, and smoothies. With their sweetness comes a great deal of fiber and other nutrients.
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I bought a box of fresh dates just before Thanksgiving for my first adventure in baking a vegan, ‘plant based’ birthday cake to my brother’s specs. It was good, well received, and the process opened my eyes to cooking with these luscious fresh dates!
Never wanting to throw useful things away, especially when I learn that they might grow, I am following the instructions I discovered on Pintrest to bring these date pits, or seeds, into growth.
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With a fresh box of dates from Trader Joes in hand, I sliced open a little more than half the dates in the box and dropped their seeds into a small jar of water yesterday afternoon. I didn’t wash or scrub the seeds in any way, and learned this morning that some of the fruit remaining on the seeds had soaked off overnight.
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This morning, I gently shook the jar a few times before pouring off most of the cloudy water and replacing it with fresh, slightly warm water. I’ll change the water daily for a few more days as the seeds wake up and prepare to grow.
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Every seed contains an embryo plant. Some seeds are able to completely dry out and wait for the conditions when a new plant may grow. Other seeds need to remain moist. Some seeds need a period of cold stratification before they will germinate, others will germinate immediately after they ripen.
I sometimes find seeds in my grapefruits already germinating, with tiny sprouts beginning to grow within the fruit. I will find a little pot and some soil and allow these to grow on, hating to throw them away when already in growth.
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But I’d never given much thought to date seeds before this week. These are another grocery store treasure, from the produce department, that one can grow into a new, productive plant!
Most fruit bearing date palms are hardy from Zone 9 south. That means that I won’t be able to leave any trees that grow from these seeds outside during a Virginia winter. They will always grow in pots and won’t reach maturity here.
Date palms are true trees, growing to about 75″ tall. Although palms are grown here as houseplants, they require a good deal of sun and so a sunny spot is required to keep them happy through winter.
But I’m always interested in learning how things grow, and so I’m going to give these little seeds a try. Like our holly trees, date palms are dioecious. Each tree has its own gender, and a male tree is required nearby to fertilize the fruit-bearing female trees. Growers who produce dates commercially must have a mix of male and female trees.
Since there is no way to determine a tree’s gender until it produces its first flowers, it is wise to start a group of seeds and grow them on to maturity, if one wants to eventually enjoy fresh, home-grown dates.
It may take nearly 10 years from seed to maturity, so growing dates requires a bit of commitment if this project is to come to ‘fruition’. Commercial growers tend to propagate new trees from divisions of particularly heavy producing trees already in their care. I won’t be starting up any fruit production in this area, so I’ll grow these as long as I can, as a beautiful novelty.
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There isn’t a great deal of agreement among those who have written about growing dates, about how long to soak the seeds or how to care for them as they germinate. Some instruct one to soak the seeds for two days, others for as much as two weeks. I’m sure that the length of time needed is directly related to how fresh the seeds may be.
My seeds were exceedingly fresh and I can see some of the embryos beginning to stretch beyond the seed coast today, after soaking for a little more than 12 hours.
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These seeds soaked overnight before I removed them from the jar just long enough to photograph them. see how the embryo has begun to extend beyond the seed coat?
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One point all agree on is that the seeds need warmth and moisture to germinate and grow. One writer suggests moving the seeds into damp paper towel, sealed in a zip-lock bag, kept in a warm spot after soaking. This would be an intermediate step to encourage the embryo to further develop in optimal conditions before setting it into a pot of soil. Other writers move the sprouting seeds directly from their jar of water into soil, planted very shallowly, and covered with damp sand.
This is a great little activity to do with kids (and the young at heart) this winter. The large seeds allow children to see the stages of a sprouting seed clearly. All sorts of questions will arise, and many teachable moments will come as you watch the miracle of a sprouting seed together.
When I move my seeds out of the water and into a bag or pots, I’ll try to remember to snap a few photos to share. I believe I’ll try a few both ways, since I have about a dozen seeds already soaking. We’ll see which way leads us to green leaves faster!
In the meantime, you may wonder what I did with those gorgeous date fruits after I harvested their seeds yesterday. I’ll share the recipe, which is another fun thing to do with any kids in your life.
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Yes, one is missing. I’m sure you know what may have happened to it…
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Save these little treasures for yourself or share them with friends over a cup of coffee or tea. I’ll warn you they are rich and satisfying, and at the same time might qualify as a ‘healthy snack’ if those things matter to you. They certainly are making this wintery day a bit brighter for me!
These measures are guesses, and this recipe doesn’t require exact measures. Relax and enjoy the process…
Date-Nut Energy Bites
A dozen or so fresh dates, pits removed
A cup of dried, unsweetened flake coconut
A cup of ground almonds (I used Trader Joe’s ‘almond flour,’ which contains nothing but finely ground almonds.
1/2 cup of raw pecans
3 TB ground flax seeds
A few grinds of sea salt
1.5 TB. powdered dark cocoa (I used Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
Combine the first five ingredients in the bowl of a food processor. Process in short pulses until the dates are cut into fine pieces. Continue to process for another 30 seconds or so as the material begins to come together in the bowl.
Scrape the sides of the bowl and add the salt, cocoa powder and extracts. Continue processing for another few seconds, and scrape the bowl again.
The mixture is ready to form into balls when it begins to hold together as a chunky paste. The extract provides enough liquid the help the mix hold together. You could probably use water or fruit juice to replace the extracts, if you wish.
Form the paste-like mixture into balls. I used a 1 TB measuring spoon to scoop the mix, pressing it lightly into the spoon, and then knocking it out of the spoon into my hand to round it slightly.
Place the finished date balls on waxed paper in a lidded container in a single layer. Cover and chill for at least an hour while the mixture sets up.
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Expect about 24-30 Date-Nut Bites from this recipe, depending on how large you make each one. These were better on the second day, once the flavors had melded and the fruit and nuts had set up together.
Enjoy!
Woodland Gnome 2019
Update 1: February 4, 2019
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I moved some of the seeds showing growth from the jar of water to a damp paper towel in a zip-lock. I have the seeds under a lamp in a warm spot, and am checking them daily for growth.
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Of course, I could have planted these directly into pots of soil. But it’s more interesting to keep them out where we can watch them grow a while longer!
Forest Garden 
Dates looks so fresh!
Freshest I have found 😊
I have a lovely little date palm grown from a Medjool date stone. It is about 2 foot tall. I think it must be about 3 years old now. I didn’t soak the stone, I just put it in a pot of compost in the propagator.
Cool! No one writes about these! I have saved the seed too but have no place for big palms; and even if I did, they look silly among redwoods. If I were to grow them, and I intend to eventually do so, I would just sow them directly where I want them to grow. They should go out in autumn, so that they get a bit of winter chill, and a good rinsing through with the winter rain. I would put a few seed in each location, and then pull up the weaker ones as they grow. There is no advantage to soaking them. I think I would probably plant too many in a tight grove, and then thin them out as they mature. That way, I could identify one or two males, and then cut out other superfluous males, as well as crowded females. Ideally, I would get just one of each, but I do not know yet.
Date palms became trendy for a while as old orchard trees were recycled from orchards around Las Vegas. The orchards needed to be removed for more urban development. Only the fluffier females were recycled. The males were either disposed of, or given to other orchards that could use them. Without the males in urban landscapes, the females do not produce messy and ‘undesirable’ fruit. However, if anyone in the neighborhood installs a male tree, the females could get messy. (for some reason, the pollen does not seem to get very far.)
Fascinating! I hope you get to plant your dates one day. Maybe the instructions to soak came from those who started with dry figs- or maybe the seeds look so large and gnarly folks assume they need soaking! I’m going to move some that are obviously growing out of the water later today. A shame that we can’t plant them directly out where we want them to grow, here. Alas, like the olive trees I tried growing a few years back, they are doomed to grow in large pots..
Enjoy the weekend!
Well, at least olives can be happy in pots. They will need to be pruned down, and eventually get their roots pruned. Palms can be happy for many years in big pots, but will be stunted. I kept my desert fan palm in a big tub for many years. My windmill palm can stay quite happy in a big tub because it is a small palm. Date palms will eventually need a very big container, although you would probably prefer to give them a good home.
My olive pots got too large to bring them indoors for winter and so I left them outside in a sheltered spot, with good sun, and took my chances last year. One of the three survived, but I had to cut it back almost to the ground. They were a bit rangy looking, even at their best, and I decided to care for the one survivor as long as it chooses to grow, but not replace the others. Our winter temps have dipped unusually low the last few years, and keeping marginal plants alive has been problematic. We don’t have large enough space indoors to bring everything into shelter for the coldest winter nights. One must eventually be reasonable, I’m told….. Have a great weekend, Tony!