10566 Sea Buckthorn

Just been reading that sea buckthorn is being grown in Italy to supply berries/oil for various health foods/alternative remedies. It may be an idea for people with land wanting to grow a saleable crop apart from olives??The fruits are pressed much in the same way as olives with 1 tonne of berries making 2.5 gallons of oil.

Weleda are selling oils and juice in the uk but I'm sure that other companies would be interested in buying the fruits/oil

Category
Gardening & Agriculture

Sounds interesting, never heard of it. Where do you get plants, how do you grow it?

i guess in Tuscany as thats where its being grown?

Easy to grow as far as I can see and doesnt need loads of sprays like olives.

[quote=myabruzzohome;98372]Just been reading that sea buckthorn is being grown in Italy to supply berries/oil for various health foods/alternative remedies. It may be an idea for people with land wanting to grow a saleable crop apart from olives??The fruits are pressed much in the same way as olives with 1 tonne of berries making 2.5 gallons of oil.

Weleda are selling oils and juice in the uk but I'm sure that other companies would be interested in buying the fruits/oil[/quote]
hello abruzzo home sounds interesting ,do you have a pic of this stuff? and seriously not being obtuse but could you give a metric appraisal of the "resa" per kg/ltr x metric ton

If you contact weleda theres a good 2 page article in their autumn /winter brochure it may also be on their web site?

[url=http://www.weleda.co.uk]Welcome to Weleda Online[/url]

It seems to me that sometimes people go for the obvious but not necassarily the most proftable crops when considering what to grow to sell.

I was looking at another site recently and discovered that there's a huge demand for dried flower petals to throw at weddings instead of confetti!!Another sideline business without much financial outlay

Did a bit of a search on the subject. It appears that sea buckthorn originates from Northern China and is more suitable for Northern climates. In Italy it is rare and mostly grown in pre-alpine areas or in altitudes above 600 metres. We're only 300 metres up so probably not for us. Thanks anyway for the idea.

The species growing in Toscana is alpine The area is San Mario.Cuttings come fro Switzerland (Buden).

A lot grows in cornwall and there are many varietis.As far as I can see its pretty tolerant of most climates/ positions.

Maybe Northern Tuscany Becky. Further south either much too hot or extremes of climate. I would test an area first with just a few plants. If it sounds obvious then please forgive me.

From what I read it's tolerant from minus 45 to plus 40 degrees celsius. We get over 40 + so probably not quite right.

|Only problem I can see is that health food fads come and go, just think of some recent ones whereas good old olives will never go out of fashion.