CHAPTER VI 



CULTURE OF THE PALM 



Irrigation is the principal item in the culture 

 of the date palm. For Arabs it is practically the only 

 item, for in most gardens the palms get no cultivation 

 whatever, unless incidentally through the presence of 

 a secondary crop, or, once in a year or two, when a 

 little manure is worked around the roots. It is there- 

 fore irrigation that the scientific date planter must 

 first of all consider, and to which he must constantly 

 give his attention. 



I have already mentioned that a water supply of 

 one miner's inch to the acre is desirable except on 

 land which holds water particularly well, but there is 

 some difference of opinion as to the way in which this 

 should be applied, and every grower will have to 

 decide for himself by watching the condition of the 

 ground. One plantation, on very sandy soil in 

 Coachella Valley, gets twenty -four hours of irrigation 

 twice a week and thrives on it; another, in loam, gets 

 water only once in eight or ten days and seems to 

 be in equally good condition. As most date growing 

 countries are characterized by a relative scarcity of 

 water, the grower may naturally like to give more than 

 is necessary, but I may say at the outset that it is 

 easy to give too little, but almost impossible to give 

 too much. It has already been mentioned that the 

 plantations of Busreh are irrigated every twelve 

 hours. The experimental garden at Tempe, Ariz., 

 is in a locality where the level of the ground water 

 is near the surface, and often above, but the palms 



