Crop Plans / Orchards & fruit / Date Palm
Crop programme · per acreDate Palm
The full stage-by-stage programme is below and in the PDF: what to put on, at which stage, by which method, and the pack it comes in.
When did your season start?
Answer this and the page follows your season, or skip it. Every rate, quantity and method below stays the same.
Every band, every stage.
Every band at every stage, per acre. Grey names are not VAN products, and each VAN product is shown in its real pack.
| Band | Year 1–2 · newly planted | Year 3–4 · establishing | Year 5–6 · first bearing | Year 7–8 · building yield | Year 9+ · mature bearing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phosphorus |  | | | | |
| Nitrogen |  | | | | |
| Potash |   | | | | |
| Soil Amendment |  |
What to buy for your acres.
Pick the age of your orchard, set your acres, and this is the date palm programme turned into bags. A palm's requirement rises as it matures, so 1 age band applies at a time. The bands are not added together.
How old is the orchard? Set your acres. Send the list.
Pick 1 age band; bands are not added together. Counts are that band’s published per-acre rates multiplied by your acres. VAN confirms the final price, availability and delivery on WhatsApp.
Type the number from your soil report, or pick its band, for any of these. The plan above adds product where your land is short. For phosphorus, potash and zinc it cuts the rate by 1/4 where your reading is healthy. Nitrogen is not cut. Leave a row blank if you have no reading for it. This adjustment is a pilot.
- Green Phosphate50 kg bag · Year 9+ · mature bearing4½bags · 220 kgYour choice:
Same bag size, different bag. Fusion Phosphate is TSP at 46% P₂O₅. About 44% more phosphate per bag than Green Phosphate’s 6:32:0, and no nitrogen with it. Green Phosphate is the humic-coated acidic grade, built for alkaline ground. The plan’s number of bags does not change if you switch; what you put on the field does. At 50 kg a bag: Green Phosphate 16.0 kg P₂O₅ + 3.0 kg N, Fusion Phosphate 23.0 kg P₂O₅ and no nitrogen.
- Vital Urea25 kg bag · Year 9+ · mature bearing11¼bags · 282.5 kg
- Fusion Potash25 kg bag · Year 9+ · mature bearing2½bags · 60 kg
- Vital Potash20 kg bag · Year 9+ · mature bearing3bags · 60 kg
The message carries the list above. Add your district and VAN replies with price and the nearest dealer.
The list above reads your soil test, not just the crop.
Enter your soil report in the list above, or pick your district and it fills from the Punjab survey’s own median across 770,160 samples, and the quantities move with what your ground actually shows. On date palm it uses 4 readings: Phosphorus (P₂O₅), Potash (K₂O), pH, EC (salinity).
Not used on this crop: zinc, boron, iron, copper, manganese, organic matter. The published date palm programme carries no product that supplies them.
What the date palm programme puts on your field.
Per acre, across the whole programme. Published rate × the analysis on each row.
Crop removal figures for date palm are not available. No published removal figure was found. The programme is also set by orchard age, so a season balance would need the orchard’s age and tree count.
How much water the date palm season needs.
A nutrition plan only works if the crop gets its water. Here is what the season needs, what rain normally gives, and what must come from irrigation.
No sowing date given, so this counts from mid-February, the start of VAN’s published window. Give your sowing date at the top and it uses your date instead.
Pick your district and the figures appear. They come from the nearest weather station with published normals; the station and its distance are shown.
- It is not measured with the full equation. FAO’s standard method needs humidity, wind and solar radiation. The Pakistan Meteorological Department normals this tool uses give only temperature and rain, so the reference figure uses Hargreaves, the method FAO gives for this case. It is an estimate.
- It is probably on the low side for Punjab. FAO’s crop coefficients are published for a sub-humid climate. Its own caption says relative humidity around 45% and light wind. Punjab in the dry season is drier and windier than that, and FAO’s own correction for arid climates raises the coefficient. Without humidity and wind data that correction cannot be applied, so the real need is likely higher than the figure above.
- It is what the crop uses, not what you have to pump. Nothing here allows for what a watercourse loses on the way, for water running past the roots, or for the extra needed to leach a salty soil. And the rain shown is all the rain. How much of a July downpour a field actually keeps depends on your soil and your slope.
Method: FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56. Crop evapotranspiration, Table 11 (lengths of crop development stages) and Table 12 (single crop coefficients). Temperature and rainfall: WMO Climatological Standard Normals 1991–2020, Pakistan Meteorological Department. Normals, not this season. What a month is usually like, averaged over 30 years.
Nutrition decides about 1/4 of the yield. Sowing, seed, water, weeds and pests decide the rest. The farm discipline simulator scores a whole season across 10 levers. It covers wheat and potato for now, each with its own levers and its own weights. The tools still coming →
About 1/4 of the nitrogen in the bag feeds the crop. The rest leaves as gas or drains past the root.
Why it goes, what VAN builds against each loss, and the 17 nutrients and the barrel that show where your own season leaks.
The plan names a method for every row.
Broadcasting, placement, side dressing, fertigation and spray are 5 different things. Read what each one means before you open the PDF.
▸ Tap a method to read it
Spread evenly over the soil surface, before or at sowing, and worked in by tillage or by the first irrigation. For a basal granule it is the last choice: drill it if you can.
A separate rule applies to Vital Urea. Vital Urea is a coated slow-release urea and is applied by drilling at sowing (beside and below the seed, never touching it), by side dressing, or by broadcasting, never by fertigation. The fertigation rows in the nitrogen band are commodity urea, which is a different material.
VAN’s micronutrients and secondary nutrients products.
Programme focus: P-K-S. The PDF names which products go on, at which stage. These are the VAN products in those nutrient groups.
These are per-acre programmes, not a prescription for your field.
A nutrition plan is built on a typical crop and a typical soil. It is not a substitute for a soil test. VAN prepares farm-specific plans against a grower's own soil analysis, yield target and the other variables that decide a rate. Ask for one on WhatsApp or at kisan@van.com.pk.