How I Grew Date palm in my Backyard in Philippines

Before I was hesitant to buy the tree from the supplier from Nueva Ecija since I am not sure if Palm Date can actually grow here although it should because the Philippines is a tropical country. I have seen a lot of Date palm trees in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in United Arab Emirates and the fruit when ripe has a great sweet taste.

I need to buy two plants since the date palm is dioecious, having separate male and female plants. They can be easily grown from seed, but only 50% of seedlings will be female and hence fruit-bearing, and dates from seedling plants are often smaller and of poorer quality. Most commercial plantations thus use cuttings of heavily cropping cultivars. Plants grown from cuttings will fruit 2–3 years earlier than seedling plants. 

Now as you can see in the photos below, my Date palm is only 3 ft in height but it already bears fruits. This is a grafted tree (draft version) which I bought for Php 1500 for each plant.

Date trees reach up to 30 meters (100 feet) in height, growing singly or forming a clump with several stems from a single root system. Slow-growing, they can reach over 100 years of age when maintained properly. The roots have pneumatodes. The leaves are 4–6 m (13–20 ft) long, with spines on the petiole, and pinnate, with about 150 leaflets. The leaflets are 30 centimeters (12 inches) long and 2 cm (1 in) wide. The full span of the crown ranges from 6–10 m (20–33 ft). Watering shoul be once or twice a week only depending on the weather. The plant needs a lot of direct sunlight to thrive.