. Date culture in Southern California. Date palm. 22 A Profitable Side Line. In addition to the fruit, a very profit- able feature of the industry here will be the offshoots, which the palm pro- duces until it reaches the age of fifteen years or more. It cannot, of course, bear a heavy crop and carry a full load of offshoots at the same time, and as the offshoots are so valuable, growers now limit the tree to only a few bunches of fruit each year, letting it devote most of its energy to reproduction by the offshoots. In this way one might take off two offshoots each year, from the fifth to the
. Date culture in Southern California. Date palm. 22 A Profitable Side Line. In addition to the fruit, a very profit- able feature of the industry here will be the offshoots, which the palm pro- duces until it reaches the age of fifteen years or more. It cannot, of course, bear a heavy crop and carry a full load of offshoots at the same time, and as the offshoots are so valuable, growers now limit the tree to only a few bunches of fruit each year, letting it devote most of its energy to reproduction by the offshoots. In this way one might take off two offshoots each year, from the fifth to the fifteenth or longer, and at the same It will probably take a number of years to work out these problems, if indeed they are capable of solution. Yield. The yield of a palm in full bearing varies widely with the variety, but in no case should it be allowed to pro- duce more than ten or twelve clusters. and for a younger palm, four to eight is enough. If it is allowed to retain the full number of clusters it sends out, often fifteen or twenty, it will probably bear nothing the following year. Yields as high as 500 or 600 pounds for a single palm have been recorded, and it is not unusual to find a tree bearing half that. Imported offshoots being time get a profitable crop of fruit. By the time the palm has ceased to produce offshoots, it would be in the full vigor of maturity, and could devote its at- tention to producing nothing but fruit. Those more interested in selling the fruit should remove the offshoots as fast as they appear, in order not to take the palm's vitality unnecessarily. As long as offshoots sell at $ apiece, few will care to extirpate them in this way. Experiments are now under way at the Indio station with a view to making the palm produce offshoots more abund- antly, and of finding methods to propa- gate the offshoots when they are very small—only a few pounds in weight. rooted in nursery rows. much in California or Arizona; but in such cases it will be
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