Quit the movie industry
One day in early September, when the date palms were bearing golden fruit, Giao Thong Newspaper reporters had the opportunity to meet Mr. Nguyen Van Xuan, owner of Xuan Trang date palm garden.
He said that to have a 4,000m2 date palm garden like today is a long story.
In 1993 - 1994, the headquarters of Dong Thap province's state administrative agency moved from Sa Dec to Cao Lanh.
Mr. Xuan's date palm garden is bearing abundant golden fruit.
At this time, Mr. Xuan is an employee of Dong Thap Film Company. His main job is to be in charge of the company's technical department, with the task of turning on/off the movie projector.
Hesitating between pursuing a career that would mean being away from his family, and staying with his family that would mean giving up his film career. In the end, Mr. Xuan chose to stay with his family and give up his film career that he had been involved with for nearly ten years.
"The reason I stopped pursuing a career in film was because at that time the roads in Dong Thap were very difficult to travel on, and the salaries of company employees were not high. Meanwhile, growing ornamental flowers was a traditional job for my family in Sa Dec flower village," said Mr. Xuan.
Fall in love with the date palm tree
With the skillful hands and creative mind of a filmmaker, growing ornamental flowers is not difficult for Mr. Xuan. The most difficult thing is finding a market for the products he makes.
Thanks to his relationship with a former colleague, Mr. Xuan was introduced to a large ornamental flower trading source in Thailand.
After successful overseas shipments and market acceptance, he still yearned to enrich the varieties of ornamental flowers in his country and turned to date palms. He brought back 30 trees from 4 to 5 years old that were bearing fruit to test planting in Sa Dec flower village.
Date palms start to bear fruit after 2 years of planting, each tree produces about 100 kg of fresh fruit.
However, when brought back to Vietnam to plant for a while, the tree did not grow, only bore fruit once and then became "silent".
Undaunted, after a while Mr. Xuan continued to import date palms to plant and the following times the date palms adapted well, especially to sandy soil areas.
"Date palms love hot and humid climates and need to be watered regularly to grow well. The tree will bear fruit after about 3 years of growth and has very few pests or diseases, just be careful of coconut worms that damage the top of the tree," Mr. Xuan shared.
Mr. Xuan successfully grows Khonaizy dates originating from Iran.
Currently, Mr. Xuan's date palm garden has over 200 trees about 4 years old, of which more than 180 are Barhi date palms of Arabian origin.
Each year, date palms bear fruit once, from flowering to harvest taking 6 months. When ripe, the fruit turns from green to a beautiful yellow.
When planting, gardeners can self-pollinate the tree to increase the ability to bear fruit. The weight of each kilogram of dates ranges from 80 to 100 fruits, the price at the garden is 350,000 VND/kg.
Meanwhile, the rest are Khonaizy dates originating from Iran, which are red when ripe and cost 450,000 VND/kg at the garden.
"Each date palm tree like this produces about 100 kilos of fruit. With the current quantity, many people order but there are not enough to sell," said Mr. Xuan.
Khonaizy dates have a beautiful red color when ripe.
Date palm is very difficult to propagate by techniques such as layering, grafting, cuttings, or even growing from seeds, all of which do not produce fruit of the desired quality.
Only tissue culture method and currently only Thailand is successful, so this is also a difficulty when Mr. Xuan's seedlings also have to depend on the foreign market with a relatively small import quantity.
Therefore, the price of seedlings he supplies to the market is quite high, 2-year-old trees cost about 8 million, and fruit-bearing trees cost up to tens of millions of dong.
New tourism products in Sa Dec flower village
In recent years, Mr. Xuan's date palm garden has always been the choice of visitors when coming to Sa Dec flower village.
The garden is impressively arranged with straight rows of trees, each tree about 2-3 meters apart. This gives visitors the feeling of entering the Arabian world with a garden of ripe, bright yellow dates.
Visitors come to visit Mr. Xuan's date palm garden in Tan Khanh Dong commune, Sa Dec city (Dong Thap).
On average, Mr. Xuan's date palm garden welcomes about 100 visitors every day. On weekends or holidays, there are more than 1,000 visitors coming to experience and check-in.
Coming here, visitors do not need to pay for entrance tickets. That is also Mr. Xuan's way of branding and promoting the image of Sa Dec flower village to visitors from near and far.
Ms. Luong Kieu Diem - a tourist from Ho Chi Minh City said: "I came to Sa Dec flower village and also visited this date palm garden many times.
Every time I visit, I see that the garden is always carefully taken care of, so I feel very comfortable. Many photos taken with the date palm garden also make a difference compared to other attractions."
"Since the date palm garden was established, Sa Dec flower village has also had new tourism products. This creates diversity and attracts more visitors.
We always encourage households to innovate and find new types of plants to create diversity in ornamental flowers in the flower village," said Ms. Vo Thi Binh, Vice Chairwoman of Sa Dec City People's Committee.
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