ASU's Arboretum is preparing for its Devil Date Packing Party, scheduled for Saturday as part of ASU's Family Weekend.
At the event, volunteers and participants will take dates harvested from the Tempe campus and pack them into boxes to be sold at the Tempe campus bookstore starting next week, said Deborah Thirkhill, program coordinator for the Arboretum and Grounds Services.
There are more than 50 different varieties of date palms in ASU's collection, most of which are located on the Polytechnic campus. The Arboretum also harvests dates from the ASU Research Park in southern Tempe, Thirkhill said.
Because there isn't enough kitchen space to store the dates from the different campuses all in one place, they are harvested in batches.
The Arboretum has already collected between 1,800 and 1,900 pounds of dates from the Tempe campus and the research park, about half of the expected harvest, Thirkhill said.
Because many of the date palms on the Tempe campus have matured to heights of 18 feet or more, those dates have to be collected by Head Arborist Dana Pomploon using a boom truck.
However, dates from the Polytechnic campus palms, which are younger and shorter, are within reach to be collected by volunteers, Thirkhill said.
Volunteers on the Tempe campus spend much of their time washing and sorting the dates that have been collected during the harvest, she said.
Sustainability junior Matt McCoy started volunteering Tuesday.
“It's a good stress reliever,” he said. “It's almost like meditation.”
McCoy said he likes knowing that he's helping out.
“I like just being able to use stuff. … Stuff that might not otherwise have been made use of,” he said.
Lana Idriss, a gardener for the Arboretum and a recent environmental design graduate, also helps out with washing and sorting the dates.
“[ASU] was really an agricultural school, and now it's not so much,” Idriss said.
She said the arboretum hopes to return the school to its roots as an “edible campus” - where many of the plants and trees on campus can also provide food - through volunteer work and internships.
Proceeds from the dates sold at the Tempe bookstore, which will cost $12.50 for a two-pound box, will go to a fund to benefit the Arboretum, Thirkhill said. The Arboretum funds, in part, different types of landscaping on the four campuses.
Some of the most recent landscapes being showcased at the Tempe campus include a rock stacking garden and a Zen garden, both located on the north end of campus, Thirkhill said.
Many of the dates harvested will also be used in Tempe and Polytechnic campus kitchens by Aramark in exchange for the use of their refrigerators to store the dates, Thirkhill said.
“[Dates are] a very healthy natural form of sugar that doesn't need much to go with it,” said Andrew Lucyshyn, one of the chefs at Hassayampa Academic Village.
Lucyshyn said his kitchens are planning to make several dishes out of the dates, including cheese-and-date combination salads with date-and-apple vinaigrette, date-nut muffins and date bars.
The Devil Date Packing Party will meet from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday at the northeast walkway of Gammage Auditorium on the Tempe campus.
The party is one of many events scheduled at all four campuses to mark Family Weekend. Transition and Parent Programs will host a variety of activities for students and their families to participate in from Oct. 24 to 26, Community Service Program Coordinator Mina Ahmad said.
Reach the reporter at deborah.bevers@asu.edu.
