3941 Olive trees - planting, pruning, harvesting, etc.

My copy of the book fell apart before I reached the end as well, Allan! It was an informative book and I agree with his conclusions, but it was a little prosaic and lacking in the fun element of cultivating olives.

I wouldn't worry about pruning olives at all. They are very forgiving, in the sense that if you make an ill-advised cut, they will always sprout new growth from which you can start again. In my experience, Italians love olive trees so much, that they will be delighted to help you prune and give you any other advice when you're a newbie. If you are planning to grow olives for your own consumption, you have the freedom to be totally organic; they really need no pesticides or fertilisation, as long as you are not going for super yields.

[QUOTE=Marc]In my experience, Italians love olive trees so much, that they will be delighted to help you prune and give you any other advice when you're a newbie.[/QUOTE]

Hmmm....

Yes, I suspect they will be generous with their advice. But I have two areas of concern:

First, what do you do when the advice is not consistent?

Second, while I am happy to acknowledge the fact that farmers are the repositories of generations of experience, I also know that some of their techniques are suspect and others are very obviously wrong.

As you know, the book we've read mentions a couple of destructive farming techniques. One is obvious to anyone who has ever looked at the hillsides in Umbria, Abruzzo and other areas of Italy and wondered about the huge canyons worn into hillsides. I had assumed that the soil erosion we see today was the result of rain slowly dissolving hillsides over centuries, but the author states quite categorically that almost all the damage we now see has been done in the last 50 years.

Another area where I'm certain that conventional Italian farming practice is just plain wrong is the habit of burning agricultural waste. Burning has a place in agriculture when you need to get rid of diseased material, but it's generally a Bad Thing. Apart from the smog-like haze that bonfires produce being generally anti-social, it's fundamentally stupid to convert nutrients in organic material into smoke and then go out and buy more synthetic fertiliser to dump on your land.

Sorry, two of my hobby-horses.

Yes, I take your point about olives being incredibly robust and able to bounce back from ill-advised hacking by a wannabe contadino. Still, I like to have some idea of what I'm supposed to be doing so I can at least berate myself soundly when I fail to accomplish it. And, having read one of those books and tried my best to puzzle out the other, I can at least now nod with some degree of understanding when one of the local farmers shows me what I'm supposed to be doing with the trees.

Al

[LEFT][FONT=Tahoma]We have been posturing the same and have a similar scenario, albeit we have some 140 olive trees and 60 other fruits. We purchased our place a year ago and were happy to allow the previous owner to continue to farm it as it appeared he was doing a reasonable job. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]The agents through whom we bought introduced another ‘farmer’ and encouraged us to believe that the trees could look after themselves and that the farmer would prune them as necessary. Fortunately I have a friend in the UK who for many years managed a large fruit growing farm and has much expertise, albeit British fruit based. Following extensive research he recently visited our site and we analysed the farming practices. He was clear that the olive crop could be significantly increased by changing husbandry practices.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]Research shows that pruning has the biggest impact on the crop, far greater than irrigation, feeding and so forth. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]There seems to be two practices we have encountered, one as followed by our previous owner of providing only relatively light pruning year on year resulting in the trees becoming very crowded, letting inadequate light through for a good crop and allowing infestation. The other approach is for a drastic four yearly pruning which will shock the trees into a complete year of non-harvest and a further year of recovery, again not providing optimum yield – but perhaps optimum logging for the pruning parties concerned.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]We are being encouraged to develop an intermediary route and in the long term try to prune the trees every year or two to maintain an ‘open’ branch structure and a manageable tree height.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]Our friend has also pointed out a number of other husbandry tips which we could adopt such as using suckers to strengthen weak branches – again a technique which appears not to be used by the locals. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]The next area we are posturing is how we can physically contribute to the harvesting and pruning activities when we are only there on an occasional basis. Again, there are a number of techniques used in the UK and used by the larger Italian growers which can significantly reduce the labour and increase the harvest. However, in general these require capital expenditure for equipment. We are therefore wondering how viable it is to establish a local co-operative between like-minded small growers to jointly fund and develop these ideas.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]We are based in the Ostuni region and thus the co-operative idea may not be very convenient to you. However, you may find some of our ideas on farming helpful.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]Our friend is out visiting us during our July holiday break in Ostuni to show us how to do a crop count and teach us a few other tricks. He is keen to offer his services to others in some form in return for some form of remuneration and if you are interested, please PM us.[/FONT]
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Brian and Lynne Chatterton, the Australian authors of the book I mentioned above, are very clear that pruning of olives is necessary if you want good crops of quality fruit. Olive trees left to their own devices will survive and they will continue to produce fruit, but it will be all but impossible for that fruit to be harvested by people.

They are also certain that a programme of annual pruning is the best. They don’t refer to the four year regime you mention, but I doubt very much if this would find favour with them. They do acknowledge that olives were traditionally pruned every other year and they say -- as you suggest -- that this was mainly so that the prunings were large enough to be useful as firewood.

Their experience is that olives almost always respond well to a drastic cut, so one need not be too concerned about taking radical action to deal with a neglected tree. Nor do you need to worry much about missing the annual pruning in an occasional year.

They agree with your statement that there are two main reasons for pruning: to keep the tree open and so allow more light through and to keep the trees small enough so that picking the fruits is easy.

They are very clear that light is the crucial factor and say that experiments have shown that shaded fruit does not develop flavour as well as fruit exposed to direct sunlight and that sunlight also increases the production of oil in the fruit.

In the book, they talk at some length about how they prune, but the fundamental aim is to have a tree with three or four stems forming the classic wineglass shape with little vegetation in the centre. They mention the old saying about how a bird should be able to fly through a well-pruned olive tree.

However -- and this is something they did not immediately notice when they first looked at their neighbours’ trees -- they are careful to leave “straggly bits” around the outside of the tree. These “skirts” of hanging growth produce a lot of fruit and are easy to pick.

They say that suckering is a real problem following a major prune since the vigour of the tree has to go somewhere, but they suggest that suckers more than a metre up the trunk can be used to replenish the “skirt” that has died due to shading. Suckering is, they say, much reduced after a few years methodical pruning.

They say that they were taught that there are three types of olive wood:

First, vertical growth which produces very little fruit. Trees clearly want to grow up and so many people are reluctant to interfere with these shoots, but most of the verticals must be removed. A few should be left to produce lateral shoots in the future, but these must be pruned so that they grow upwards in a zig-zag direction. Each year, the upward growth is clipped so that a lateral will provide the upward direction for the following year.

The second type of wood is shoots that are between horizontal and no more that 45 degrees above horizontal. These are good fruiting wood and they are left alone.

The third type of wood hangs below the horizontal. This was probably horizontal the previous year and has sagged under the weight of fruit. It needs to be trimmed and thinned carefully, but not completely removed because it will bear fruit again. Over time, it becomes exhausted from heavy cropping and full of dead twigs. It then needs to be removed completely.

General maintenance pruning consists of taking out excess verticals and cleaning up the exhausted fruiting wood. From time to time, you need to make big cuts to keep the trees from getting too tall or too wide. This results in new shoots being forced out of dormant buds and the pattern of pruning for laterals and downward growth starts again.

Which all sounds simple enough.

But, as they go on to say, when one is confronted with a tree that has bits of wood growing in all directions that aren’t all neatly labelled 1, 2 or 3, it is difficult to know when one has pruned enough and yet not so much that production will be impaired.

In the book they go into some detail about their conclusions on how it should be possible to scientifically measure the amount of light getting through a tree and therefore to know when the pruning regime is correct. But they then (thankfully) go on to give some rules of thumb about how a tree will respond to over- or under-pruning.

They say that it’s easy for under-pruning to creep up on an olive grower, but one early sign is a change in the straggly wood in the skirt. If it is long and particularly straggly with sparse leaves of darker green than normal at the tips, action must be taken to increase the light getting through. Over shading will also be indicated by there being few new horizontal or 45 degree shoots. Both mean that more thinning is required above the skirt.

Another sign of not enough pruning is the length of shoots from the previous year. An unpruned or very lightly pruned tree will produce shoots 2 to 5 cm long. In the following year when they bear fruit, they will produce one olive. The result will be a tree with lots of widely-scattered fruit that is difficult to pick.

A well-pruned tree will produce shoots 20 to 40 cm long. These will bear fruit in clusters that can be more easily harvested.

Over pruning results in shoots 50 cm or more in length.

The book goes into things in much more detail, but I hope this summary might be of some interest.

Al

I watched my neighbours prune their olives earlier this year and as Allan says, the trees were definitely open and airy in the centre when they had finished.. a bit like umbrella spokes with a hole in the middle.

I had a birds eye view from the terrace. I'm there again at the end of this week and will try to remember to take some photos.. which may help. :)

Jeezus! You should see our olive trees, they haven't been touched for about 15yrs! When we asked the ex Italian owner how do we prune the trees, he say 'I don no they jus look preeety' :D

[QUOTE=trullomartinafranca]Jeezus! You should see our olive trees, they haven't been touched for about 15yrs![/QUOTE]

All this pruning stuff is about maximising the quantity and quality of olives harvested. I stand to be corrected, I can't recall reading anything suggesting that unpruned trees have shorter lives, loose limbs, are prone to disease or anything like that.

It seems to me that just letting your olives get on with it is sensible if all you're asking of the trees is that they look like a tree.

On the other hand, if you are interested in the harvest and you would like to take them down to a more manageable size, it seems clear that you don't need to worry that your trees have been left alone too long. You could do some serious hacking and they'd happily bounce back.

By the way, something many people don't realise is that the natural shape of an olive is a bush. They only become trees because a trunk is formed by the repeated clipping of all side shoots when they're wee.

Al

The thing about olive trees is that there are so many different varieties that produce different types of fruit and that each variety has its own specific requirements regarding the zones you plant it in,

Hence there are trees here where we live in abruzzo on the coastal plain that the land below is rotovated and kept weed free, heavily fertilised and heavily watered in the summer to produce those lives we all like eating which are stuffed with various ingredients.

However where we live at around 400 m asl you find olive plantations where you just strim the grass below the trees and the olives are much smaller in general, although we have three different types, the large ones which you eat and two smaller fruit producing varieties green and black which you process into oil

Luckily olives need alkaline soils and indeed like a high level of salt, so abruzzo and I guess most of Italy is suitable in that respect, the other thing is they like poor soil, not a lot of nutrients.

However to produce high yielding trees you do need to add a bit of help… ie if you are commercially minded, around 1 kg of nitrogen a year when the trees are in full growth, not all at once but two or three doses, however its your choice how you provide this , there are various nitrogen rich plants that you could use…ie broad beans grow well here and fix nitrogen especially in their root nodules …so you get the benefit of the beans…if you like them and then compost the plants and mulch around the trees with that….. in fact mulching is very beneficial anyway, cuts down on water loss and maybe is why where we are you strim rather than till the areas under the tree, although green compost does have a habit of drawing off the nitrogen at the start…. Oh yes they do like a bit of potassium too

Best thing I would suggest is a load of good old fashioned muck….

To produce fruit the trees need to be pollinated by insects, so sterile areas with no wild flowers or wild growth around are less likely to produce good amounts of fruit from the flowers… so a suggestion would be to have a wild area close by, again I know someone that is thinking of having bees around so the suitable habitat for bees will generally coincide well with the better pollination of your olives.

The other thing that helps is wind in the pollination process, hence open trees that not only sun can get to , so as to ripen the fruit but before that the cross pollination required by air moving freely around the flowers…

That’s one of the things about planting distances, if you get them too close together you reduce air flow, hence fruit…

As to pruning , apart from the basic shape which has been discussed and seems to be quite clear the main thing to note is that olives are produced on one year old growth so the idea is to get a reasonable amount of new shoots available and as has been said the main fruit bearing area is on the edge of the tree canopy on these shoots….

The only two things that in general get to plants are scale insects or root knot nematodes, but again the well managed grove will allow free circulation of air and reduce the scale insect risk, and the nematodes are generally more of a problem with newly planted groves…neither of them are serious worries and I would think you would have to be unlucky to be affected….

In general olives are forgiving of the worst pruning in the world, and I have chain sawed mine and various neighbours to get abandoned trees back into shape, if you have enough trees a balanced approach is best… say with 60 plants do it 20 at a time, massacre the first twenty back to almost the trunk …leaving the four branches or so that stretch off to the compass points to start the new shape .. another twenty prune hard getting rid of a lot of the older wood …the last twenty lightly prune out old wood and let some air in…. as the years progress work through the whole lot getting them back into shape ….

However one effect of pruning is the amount of new growth the tree will produce, wherever you cut back hard you will get hundreds of new branches…. Get rid of most…don’t cut them …break them off where they join into the trunk, if you cut they will produce more new shoots…if you break them off that will be the end of the re-growth

Remember a principle of pruning that applies to all plants is that the more you cut back the more they will grow from that cut point… ie to balance a plant you trim lightly where you want little or no new growth and much harder where you want the plant to grow…..

With suckers the same applies as with new growth…cutting produces more suckers… so break them off where you can…. The other thing with tilling earth around an olive tree is that you run the risk of pruning the roots, which then produces even more suckers….

One other thing here about pruning is that there does seem to be two courses to follow…straight after harvest or in the late winter/spring … I would say the early removal of the weaker branches is good to do in area where you get snow…. That is one thing that damages the trees a lot here….

There is another thing too about the harvesting…. Here in abruzzo they harvest when the fruit is quite green which means manually pulling the fruit off… they used to leave it later until the fruit was riper, it came off easier, but there are areas… camapnia/calabria…most probably Puglia…where they beat the trees with sticks when the fruit is ripe… so that’s another pruning thought, where you can use long sticks to whack the trees they don’t have to be quite as well managed in the sense you don’t have to use ladders to climb into them

Anyway a bit more info to ingest on your olive producing hopes… the one other thing is that grants are or have been reduced, costs of the mills are higher… there is virtually no money to be made at the producer level out of olive growing here… the money is made at the added value stage… ie the specialist doc producers , organic or flavoured oils…. And if you do not get first cold pressed oil then there is really nothing in it at all in the money sense.. just your own satifaction

As we don't live in our Trullo and little money is to be made from the olives, maybe we will just leave them.

Haven't got any really good pics of our trees but here's a couple, big and over grown but pretty all the same. :)

[QUOTE=adriatica]The thing about olive trees is that there are so many different varieties that produce different types of fruit and that each variety has its own specific requirements regarding the zones you plant it in.[/QUOTE]
The Chatterton book talks about varieties and how confusing it is because there are hundreds of varieties and many of them are actually the same variety known by different local names. I was amused to see that, of the four varieties they say are "major classic varieties of central Italy", only two are actually in the long list of important varieties in the Giunti book.

For most people, you get what you get when you buy land with olives. But my impression is that if you are looking to plant new trees, you're probably wise to go with whatever the neighbours have. At least you can be fairly confident that the trees will cope with the local climate, even if it's possible that other varieties might be better in one way or another.

[QUOTE=adriatica]However to produce high yielding trees you do need to add a bit of help… ie if you are commercially minded, around 1 kg of nitrogen a year when the trees are in full growth, not all at once but two or three doses, however its your choice how you provide this , there are various nitrogen rich plants that you could use…ie broad beans grow well here and fix nitrogen especially in their root nodules …so you get the benefit of the beans…if you like them and then compost the plants and mulch around the trees with that….. in fact mulching is very beneficial anyway, cuts down on water loss and maybe is why where we are you strim rather than till the areas under the tree, although green compost does have a habit of drawing off the nitrogen at the start…. Oh yes they do like a bit of potassium too[/QUOTE]
That's pretty much in line with the Chatterton conclusions. They encourage native grasses and legumes (nitrogen fixing plants) by applying a fairly low dose of phosphate and mowing a couple of times a year. They are big on mulching and use some sort of tractor-pulled mower and shredder under the trees.

[QUOTE=adriatica]Best thing I would suggest is a load of good old fashioned muck….[/QUOTE]
Again, the Chattertons agree. They actually considered the possibility of grazing sheep in the olive grove during the winter since this would produce the best pasture, but this turned out to be impractical for them. They didn't want to actually own a flock of sheep, and it was impossible to find anyone in their area who still does open grazing with an itinerant flock.

[QUOTE=adriatica]To produce fruit the trees need to be pollinated by insects, so sterile areas with no wild flowers or wild growth around are less likely to produce good amounts of fruit from the flowers… so a suggestion would be to have a wild area close by, again I know someone that is thinking of having bees[/QUOTE]
Hmmm... Wonder who you could be talking about... :D

A point the Chattertons make is that some varieties are better at producing pollen than others and that self-polination should not be relied on.

In other words, the current advice is that it is not a good idea to have an olive grove consisting entire of one variety; you should have a few trees of a different variety scattered around so that all trees are within 30 metres of a good pollinator. Apparently, [I]Maurino[/I] is a particularly good pollinator since it flowers for a long period.

[QUOTE=adriatica]Anyway a bit more info to ingest on your olive producing hopes… the one other thing is that grants are or have been reduced, costs of the mills are higher… there is virtually no money to be made at the producer level out of olive growing here… the money is made at the added value stage… ie the specialist doc producers , organic or flavoured oils…. And if you do not get first cold pressed oil then there is really nothing in it at all in the money sense.. just your own satifaction[/QUOTE]
Yes, I think it's pretty clear that unless you're seriously into large-scale growing or the marketing of high-priced [I]boutique[/I] olive oil, you're not going to make a living off olive trees. Personally, I'd just like my trees to produce enough oil for my own use over the following year and a few bottles more to make Christmas presents for friends.

Al

[QUOTE=trullomartinafranca]As we don't live in our Trullo and little money is to be made from the olives, maybe we will just leave them.

Haven't got any really good pics of our trees but here's a couple, big and over grown but pretty all the same. :)[/QUOTE]

They are very attractive trees. But I certainly wouldn't want to be the one trying to get them to let go of their fruit.

A member not a million miles from here has a real-life horror story about how dreadful things can happen when you're clambering around in an olive tree's wet, slippery branches on a winter's day.

It certainly made me pleased that the trees on the place I'm buying have been cared for by someone who's a shorty and apparently likes to pick his olives while standing on the ground.

Al

Well Alan has got some information flowing and here is my three pennyworth. I am the fruit grower FlyingPigs aluded to above.

According to EC declarations Alan should get around 1250kg of Olives from his trees assuming only half crop this year and he should get 14-15% of that weight as oil when pressed - according to the EC.

I will make my comments under specific heading that refer to others informaiton and statements.

Burning prunings. This can be good and has to be judged on the site and material. If there is any disease present it is always better to burn close to site in small fires and not spread the disease it around.

Soil erosion
There were comments that this has got worse over the last 50 years. I suggest this is due to the invention and excessive use of the rotovator. All the olive plantations I have seen could easily be either cultivated or weedkilled right across. The latter option would be my preference as it makes movement about the trees easier, reduces water loss and root damage.

Light
This is the key to fruit size, quantity, tree health and vigour. It should be possible to see mottled sunlight all over the ground below every tree when the sun is high.

Pruning
Gives light where needed, removes dead, diseased and crossing wood. It controls the number of fruit in any one year and thereby the size of that fruit. The wine-glass shape referred to above is how all UK fruit trees were pruned till 20 or so years ago because it gets light and air into the middle of the tree.
By and large an olive tree can sustain a heavy pruning but I would not advise it as this can cause it to go bi-annual and if it already is you could loose two years crop. A sensitive yet forceful prune is the way to go. Remember that olives do not crop in the same place twice. They need fresh growth but it should not be verticle.

Nitrogen or fertilizer
When I checked out a number of different research reports on this there was no scientific support for adding more nitrogen in an artificial form, the only support was for adding FYM (farm yard manure) to all mediterranean olive plantations in order to increase the humus in the soil which in turn will help water retention.

Pollination
Olives are wind pollinated, insects including bees may help but they are wind pollinated and a 20ha olive farm near Ostuni has one pollinator tree - or so the farm owner told me.

Insects
I made a note of insect damage, this is increased with trees that get more dense, hense the need to keep the centre open. I saw damage similar to that caused by the Leopard Moth in the UK; a caterpillar eats its way into the branch and then up inside the branch emerging some two years later as a moth. If you see pussy, damp areas on the underside of branches check it out, this is where disease can enter and rot the branch.

Well thats the comments for now I think. Oh by the way according to the EC the smallest area that can be claime for a grant is an 'are', this is 100 sq m. - but the local area can increase this minimum and is the reason why they are encouraging collective applications.

[QUOTE=Keith]According to EC declarations Alan should get around 1250kg of Olives from his trees assuming only half crop this year and he should get 14-15% of that weight as oil when pressed - according to the EC.[/QUOTE]
...And I'll give that about as much credence as I give any information coming from Brussels. :rolleyes:

My main reaction to those numbers is that 175 kg of oil should just about keep me going until next year. :)

[QUOTE=Keith]Burning prunings. This can be good and has to be judged on the site and material. If there is any disease present it is always better to burn close to site in small fires and not spread the disease it around.[/QUOTE] This makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me is the tradition of burning [I]everything[/I]. Reminds me of the long gone days when arable farmers in the UK habitually burned stubble because the conventional wisdom was that There Was No Alternative.

[QUOTE=Keith]There were comments that this has got worse over the last 50 years. I suggest this is due to the invention and excessive use of the rotovator. All the olive plantations I have seen could easily be either cultivated or weedkilled right across. The latter option would be my preference as it makes movement about the trees easier, reduces water loss and root damage.[/QUOTE]
Why is it necessary to either cultivate or weedkill?

I'm not a farmer. I work from first principles and book learning, so I'm very willing to admit that maybe I'm missing something fundamental here, but I do not understand why it is not possible to have hay meadow under olive trees and to do nothing more drastic than mow periodically.

The Chatterton book says that the often given justification for cultivating under olives is that this gets rid of surface plants that would take moisture the olives could use.

The downside of cultivating is likely erosion. What's more, repeated cultivation will eventually deplete the seed reserves of whatever plants have seeded themselves and you then end up with soil that is unprotected during the heavy rains of autumn and winter. It seems to me that unless one was careful with the timing of weedkilling, it would be possible to produce the same effect by chemically -- rather than mechanically -- killing native plants before they could set seed.

As for the idea of a plant-free soil surface helping the olives to obtain moisture, the Chatterton's riposte is that this benefit is unpredictable at best. Their view is that in the areas of Italy where rainfall is higher (their region - Umbria - and most of central Italy), there is almost always a completely wet soil profile by the end of winter. Removing ground cover will increase absorption of the reasonably certain spring rains, but the amount of moisture already in the soil means this doesn't make much difference. In the drier parts of Italy, the amount of moisture gained is rarely significant.

While the benefits of cultivation are, in the Chattertons' estimation, dubious, the problems caused by exposing cultivated soil are absolutely clear to them (and anyone who has looked at the colour of Italian rivers after rain).

Apparently, the current official advice from olive experts is that farmers should cultivate to a depth of no more than 8 cm. Since farmers use ploughs and not scarifiers, putting the experts' advice into practice is difficult.

I find it interesting that I have encountered the same dispute about whether or not to cultivate when looking into grape growing. My feeling is that, really, the main reason farmers cultivate both vinyards and olive groves is because they [I]can[/I], not because it provides any tangible, measurable benefit. Both vines and olives are incredibly hardy plants that can extract nourishment and moisture from soils that hardly merit the title since they consist mainly of rocks. How does a farmer roaring around on his tractor and ripping up the top 8cm (or 18cm or 80cm) of soil help them to do that? I appreciate that it gives the farmer something to do and helps him justify the money he's spent on the equipment, but I have difficulty understanding how it's actually helping the plants.

[QUOTE=Keith]Olives are wind pollinated, insects including bees may help but they are wind pollinated and a 20ha olive farm near Ostuni has one pollinator tree - or so the farm owner told me.[/QUOTE]
Interesting. What the grower told you is not inconsistent with what the Chatterton's say, but the figures they cite suggest the farmer may not fully appreciate what's going on.

The Chatterton's state that olives are self-fertile; it is possible to have, for example, a grove planted with trees that are all the [I]Frantoio[/I] variety and for the trees to produce a crop. However, in this case only about 1% of flowers are actually being fertilised. If a single pollinator is planted in a grove, this should result in about 3% of flowers being fertilised, which should produce a good crop in an average year. With more varieties, the fertilisation rate can increase to 5% and this would make a difference in years when there are serious problems with the weather.

The Chattertons point out that it was traditional for olive groves to be planted with several varieties.

Concerning the Ostuni farmer, it seems that the Chattertons would agree with you being a bit sceptical about his one pollinator statement.

Thank you for taking the time to join and post your comments, Keith. All very interesting and useful.

Al

If you are ever passing by Imperia in Liguria do visit the Olive oil Museum. It is in the grounds of the Carli olive oil factory and is a magnificent overview of the history of olives and oil production. There is also an EEC funded guide to olive cultivation in Italian with detailed pruning diagrams, especially for the medium and drastic cut. I think this was produced as part of the resurgence of olive oil production in Liguria. It may be referenced via the Imperia provincia website. I'm sorry I don't have the title and mine is in Italy. I obtained it from our local tourist information office gratis. I will post its title when I have it. It is possible that similar publications are produced in all the oil producing areas of Italy.

Al, you have picked up on a number of interesting points.

Burning everything is probably because it has always been so, no one stopped to ask is it all necessary. Some undoubtably will be but not all.

Cultivation v weedkiller v tumbledown grass is one of those things that has been argued over for time immoral! I was a student at East Malling Research Station in Kent in the 60's when they did all the root lab experiments and rooting area stuff. What came out of that was that the bulk of the roots in the top 4-10cm were the fine ones that took up nutrients and moisture quickly; where the grass was present it formed competition and the roots went deeper to seek water; where the ground was cultivated they did not exist; but where the ground was weedkilled and not cultivated all the roots existed and moisture and mineral uptake were maximised. So if you are looking at the maximum benefit for the tree - weedkill. However (and there are always some) different soils react differently. On a heavy clay soil such as many areas in Kent and Sussex this is not a good idea so two options prevail, strip weedkilling along the tree rows thus giving the trees good nutrient and moisture uptake and strips of grass between rows to give the machinery something to hold it up on the unstable soil; and using a shallow tine cultivator (a bit like a hoe), this produces lumps not a fine tilth like a rotovator and weathers better.

Having many varieties in a plantation is standard practice (or traditional) to defray any problems with bad pollination due to temperature and spread harvest times; while there will be a pollination effect the main benefit is not having to harvest everything at once.

Unfortunately too many things get done because they have always been done like that. I have and still do question why? Changes for changes sake without proven track records of benefit are equally questionable.

Check out research papers on these areas, books while useful seldom have comparative trial data under differing conditions and this is where I draw much of my information from and supplement it with half a working life in the industry.

cannot argue with all the rights and wrongs presented by keith but as far as i can see here... there are essential reasons for some of the practices....

a lot of the groves here are on hillsides and when it rains here its generally in large amounts for quite short periods... ok you do get the odd three or so days of wet steady rain... so the rough grass areas despite taking up water from the soil also are the only practical way of stopping the rain when it does come of running straight down the hill past all the trees

the other point you rightly make is the type of soil here, this is most probably the heaviest sticky soil that you will ever come across.... if there is not a weed mat surface for wheels to cling to just bare mud ... it takes just the slightest shower to turn the whole place into a skating rink and all types of tractor just sit stuck or by themselves start sliding down hill...

i have always thought regarding edible plant growth is that if the plant will accept life growing hard then allowing the plant to search out its own food supply with all the undisturbed minerals deep down in the ground provides a healthier plant and a better tasting fruit... an obvious example is the greenhouse well nurtured well fed tomatoe which tastes of very little and the outside tomatoes grown here which i only water in the first couple of weeks and when ripe are sweet and full of flavour... too much care and protection will detroy the essence of essentially in these hills a sort of cottage garden industry which produces a very flavoured oil

my final point as regards local olive production here is that the picking times are controlled more or less by the local mills.... of course they wait until the fruit are in general ready... but then its a mad rush over quite a limited period to pick all the fruit and get it into the mills... virtually all the mills in this area still do cold pressing.. and very little has changed in the machinery sense of things... the wafers from these mills are sent off to the factory type mills to be squeezed again... the point being you harvest everything at almost once... ripe or not it all goes off because if the mill decides to close... you are left with pretty useless olives... so its rush rush and more rushing to get everything picked in little more than a couple of weeks

so i am not arguing the theories put forward... they are fairly sound... and most probably good commercial practice... though with italy having one of the highest organic food production and fruit and veg here .....having some of the lowest chemical content the weedkilling option would not be considered reasonable... indeed if you are trying to make money the only option is organic so it wouldnt be allowed...

This thread has aroused my curiousity - not hard to do, but I am interested. I love eating olives and cook with olive oil, but I have never really thought very much about how they are produced.

OK so we prune the trees and get tons of fab olives and then take them to the mill to press them into oil - I guess this is the extra virgin first cold pressed costabomb per litre stuff that everybody dies for.
I see John has said the wafers are then sent to be pressed again so I suppose the second pressing produces the lesser quality oil. All clearly understood.. but what happens then to the squashed olives that are left after every drop of oil has been extracted? Does the leftover 'mush' get used for anything?

I'd also like to know what you have to do once you have picked your olives and you want to keep some for eating - how do you treat them? I made a terrible mistake once of picking an olive off a tree and eating it just like that - never again! :eek:

So how are they processed for eating? Is it just bung them in a jar and cover with salt water for a certain time or fling them out in the sun or is there a some secret way to do it? :)

The left over part - after all the pressing and extraction is called sansa is highly prized for bio mass boilers. Hence why so many of the biomass boilers for heating are manufactured in olive growing areas such as Calabria and Sicily. Not as efficient as wood pellets and produces a smell.

It is also made into briquets which can be used on fires. There are probably other uses too.

[QUOTE=Anastasia]I see John has said the wafers are then sent to be pressed again so I suppose the second pressing produces the lesser quality oil. All clearly understood.. but what happens then to the squashed olives that are left after every drop of oil has been extracted? Does the leftover 'mush' get used for anything?[/QUOTE]

Cassini is, of course, right about the sansa being used as fuel. I think I've also heard that it can be used as animal fodder. I'm sure it would make wonderful compost.

[QUOTE=Anastasia]I'd also like to know what you have to do once you have picked your olives and you want to keep some for eating - how do you treat them?[/QUOTE]

There are various ways to cure olives. My contact in Abruzzo says that you just need to leave them out in the weather for a few months and let the sun, frost, bugs and birds all do their thing. I'm a little sceptical.

The modern commercial method is, as you might imagine, a bit more technical and controlled. It involves caustic soda (known as lye in the States) in solution to leach the bitter substances from the fruit. Once this is has been done, they are thoroughly rinsed and basically pickled.

If you're not keen on the idea of using stuff that will cause serious damage if you're not careful, the traditional method uses salt..

[URL="http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/olive.html"]This[/URL] is a page with lots of details about olives from a botanical point of view.

[URL="http://beadcreation.tripod.com/homemade_olives_raw_olive_curing_curing_olives_olive_recipies_curring_recipies.htm"]This[/URL] is a page with olive curing recipes from various parts of the world.

[URL="http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Olives.html"]This[/URL] page is a little more technical with a focus on olive curing as an industrial process.

Finally, [URL="http://www.cookeryonline.com/olives/Olive%20Pickling.html"]this[/URL] page has a couple of recipes which are interesting.

Al

As you have seen we have these olive trees and yes I did the picking one of the tree and trying to eat it! Yuk! The thing is how do I know if they are oil producing olives or eating olives? I guess look in the books suggested but do the trees and olives look that much different, would I actually be able to tell?

Trulli..

I'm sure you can eat all the olive varieties and its just that some produce better oil than others and some taste nicer than others etc. As for the leaching in lye to cure the olives.. no, no.. I'll just stick to the bung them in a jar and cover with salt water or fling them out in the sun method - thank you! :D

[QUOTE=trullomartinafranca]As you have seen we have these olive trees and yes I did the picking one of the tree and trying to eat it! Yuk! The thing is how do I know if they are oil producing olives or eating olives? I guess look in the books suggested but do the trees and olives look that much different, would I actually be able to tell?[/QUOTE]

To be honest, I'm not sure, but what my books say (not the ones I mentioned at the start of this thread) is that there are varieties grown for oil and others grown for eating. But since there are so many varieties, I suspect it might be difficult to get an unequivocal identification of your trees. Therefore, I suspect it will be a case of "suck it and see".

Even though you've tried the fruit off your tree and you were not impressed, that does not mean they aren't eating olives. [I]All[/I] olives need to be processed (cured) to remove the bitter compounds in the flesh.

The pages I linked to have a number of recipes for curing olives, but the simplest one I've found in one of my books calls for immersing green olives in cold water for ten days and changing the water every day. Then make a brine solution strong enough to float an egg and leave the olives in this for three or four weeks. From that point, they are ready to eat.

The same book suggests dealing with black (i.e. ripe) olives by mixing them with an equal weight of salt, putting them in a container which will allow juices to flow out, weighing them down and leaving them for a month.

Maybe you could try an experiment next winter: every few weeks take a few olives off the trees at the different stages of ripeness and cure them separately. Then, next spring, you can do a comparative tasting to see which -- if any -- are to your taste.

Al

Ah well, experiments it will have to be then with plenty of nice things to eat in case they all still taste yuk!
Thanks everyone very helpful thread this! :)

I should like to take up a point on soils that Adriatica made. Yes it can rain, and rain seriously in that area as it can in many parts of the world. Grass will reduce run-off and soil loss as well as taking up moisture.

There are two options here that a grower can use and they will depend on site and soil type.

1) If the site has a lack of water problem or the grower wants to boost the size of the fruit by increasing the moisture available to the trees the grass can be left during the period when the rains fall then burnt off during the dry spell. This does two things, it gives the ground a cover so that machinery and people can travel over it, it also introduces grass roots to the soil structure and these are an important aspect of keeping the soil open and retentative of moisture.

2) If the soil is heavy and movement over it is not critical, say with young trees or at times other than pruning or harvest, the ground could be spring-tine cultivated (not rotovated) across the slope to leave ridges similar to ploughing which catch the rainfall and hinder its movement down the slope.

Adriatica goes on to mention harvesting over a very short period. All the information I have suggests a harvest period that can span October to January with a peak in late October early November. Picking too early will produce many small and unripe fruit also a side affect of not pruning regularly.

In an earlier posting I mentioned an 'are' as the minimum size of plot that could be used for grant purposes, this was wrong. Technically, according to EC regs, a maximum of 10 are (1000 sq m) is the largest minimum area that can be used with no minimum minimum if you can understand that!

No wonder people give up on these grants!

keith ... i understand everything you are saying and basically agree to differ ... my point is that there is a lot of history in this...

back whenevr the eu introduced grants...large grants for anyone deciding to plant olive groves...not only were the grants attractive the water company loved it too...they could get grants for introducing massive pipelines down from the hills mountains to the coast and suppluying water at below cost to the groves....

consequence was that landowners with good accountants set up these groves along the adriatic coastline... and hence ( i alk about abruzzo mainly)... gebnerations of farmers with hillside groves and traditional farming methods found that the coastal well waterd cultivated much as you suggest groves with high nutrient inputs were dropping the prices of oil produced from labour intensive hard worked traditional plots.... it destroyed a way of life here...much like all eu intervention which nevers seems to ne thought through beyond the end of seemingly very small noses...

so in essence what you say is right from the studies ...because again the studies are eu based/funded.. people get payed to say the obvious... the consequence in puglia at least is that houses might not have a mains connection but untreated water is run down from the hills to these olive groves, they produce nice big olives, the land around the tree is strilised...water poured on in the heat of the day because it costs virtually nothing ... factories opened that produce lower grade heat processed oil...

a consequence here in abruzzo is that the hill groves, the traditional olive producers of abruzzo cannot compete, the mills, are closing or closed ...so the number limited and the cost of the milling has gone up... the plants grown in a way that did not pamper them produced one of the best tasting oils in italy...much the same as the hill groves all along the adriaticis... so mills here ..the traditional family run labour intensive cold press open for a very limited period... often hardly more than six weeks....

so i agree with you, the commercial groves neare the coast operate in a far different way and they will be the ones that are following all the eu reports you might care to read... in a sense to justify an inefficient overproductio system of intensive farming.... with grant aid available to make it even less commercially competitive...

i wouuld happily agree with you over the way forward if these people payed the same rate for water that i had to , payed for their trees and the work on their groves and sold the product at the cost of producing it... not at a subsidised level which makes people that do not have the accountants, regional farming unions and sterilised growing areas at their disposal

adriatica, I think I understand where you are coming from. You are very aware of the big commercial against the small grower issues. This will always exist. I come from what I consider to be a middle ground.

Big growers using irrigation, lots of machinery including tree shakers are one thing; they will always produce lots of oil but there is no scientific proof that all that effort gets a better product, often the reverse.

Small growers using traditional methods will always get a better product at the end of the day but struggle to get the costs below the income because of the economy of scale introduced by the big growers. Yet they have an intrinsically better product, and this has been scientifically proven.

You may tell that part of me is a scientist while part of me is an old time grower and my empathy is with the traditional grower but using the benefits of SOME of the methods of the larger commercial growers.

Olive growers have two main crunch times, harvest and pruning, other cultivations etc can be spread around the year but not these two. Grants such as they are can contribute to defraying some of this pressure by covering some of the costs and improving the marketing.

Bigger commercial growers will always win out whatever they grow because they represent a lot of hectares and crop. A single grower with one hectare or less does not stand a chance against them and may not even be taken seriously by the authorities when they apply for a grant.

The only way that a small grower can impact the system is to form an association of growers where the aggregate of the land and crop is submitted for grant and that way you can be taken seriously. This works well where it has been introduced and there is no reason why it should work in Puglia and the association could incorporate or take over one of the closing presses you mention.

keith

your right... a balance is required in all things.... including old and new

[QUOTE=trullomartinafranca]Jeezus! You should see our olive trees, they haven't been touched for about 15yrs! When we asked the ex Italian owner how do we prune the trees, he say 'I don no they jus look preeety' :D[/QUOTE]

I'm now on my second year of learning how to prune my olive trees simply by watching how the neighbours do it and learning from my mistakes. Firstly I would point out that an unpruned tree will start to look pretty thin in terms of leaf and new growth production although I don't yet know how that will affect fruit production......ask me next year. Unpruned trees will also carry a noticable amount of dead wood which needs to be gotten rid of.

Secondly it would seem to me that there is no right or wrong way to go about your pruning as most pruners seem to have different techniques and prune their trees in different styles, and as long as you don't go cutting the whole thing down to ground level it will bounce back fairly well. For myself I'm not yet too bothered about olive production as we don't have the facility to store or use the amount of oil we would get from our trees ( I think about 60 litres a year) and we are currently there only twice or 3 times a year for a week or two. The one consistent thing I have noticed about pruning is that the trees benefit most from being pruned hard. My first attempts were a bit half hearted and the trees are fine but haven't responded with the re-growth that I hoped for. The second lot I pruned were done much harder and they seem to be coming back pretty quickly. The general consensus also seems to be take more off rather than less.

I still have half of my trees to do this winter so will no doubt learn some more as I go but I'm having fun......I love being up in the trees and I get a feeling of satisfaction out of what I'm doing and I haven't yet killed a tree.

[QUOTE=trullomartinafranca]As we don't live in our Trullo and little money is to be made from the olives, maybe we will just leave them.

Haven't got any really good pics of our trees but here's a couple, big and over grown but pretty all the same. :)[/QUOTE]

Nice trees Trullo but they definately need a little prune !!

You have identified two key points that many miss.

Trees always grow bigger, some quicker than others, the lack of newer leaf and loosing leaf on the insides of the tree are directly related to the canopy density and encourage the growth to go out and up. Only by careful balanced pruning can this action be controlled.

Everyone in growing will have their own slant on what is appropriate to do, exactly like the different way we bake a cake etc. What will be clear is that some actions can cause excessive reactions by the tree, others impact less. The trick of the fruitman/grower is to learn to read the trees and balance their actions to the story the tree is giving them. After a few years you can read the tree like a book!

Enjoy growing - look, try to understand, and learn from the trees reactions.

[quote=Flyingveepixie]Nice trees Trullo but they definately need a little prune !![/quote]

Are you offering??? As I said the Italian who owned the Trullo before us never touched them since 1993! So guess they will not harm, just don't expect to get any oil from them. We are hoping to strike up a deal with neighbour, maybe, but will see. So much to do in so little time when we are over but love it all the same as I'm sure you do, we will catch up sometime but hopefully miss your raised garden wall this time! :eek: :) :D

Many of the trees in Puglia have not been touched for a long time and will need a stern talking to. Pruning should be spaced out over two or three seasons to get them back into a more acceptable height and shape otherwise they will react excessively.

I am more than willing to have a look and see what the size of your problem is and suggest ways forward when I come over next.

[QUOTE=trullomartinafranca]Are you offering??? As I said the Italian who owned the Trullo before us never touched them since 1993! So guess they will not harm, just don't expect to get any oil from them. We are hoping to strike up a deal with neighbour, maybe, but will see. So much to do in so little time when we are over but love it all the same as I'm sure you do, we will catch up sometime but hopefully miss your raised garden wall this time! :eek: :) :D[/QUOTE]

Hey, I fixed that wall........stuck all the bits back together with silicone this easter and it was still ok last week when I went over so no probs there....just hope daves driving is a bit better the next time you come round (chuckle) As for doing your trees.........well if you lived next door maybe, but Martina Franca is a way off for me. Happy to pass on tips or advice from my so far limited experience though.

By the way, how do you do that thing with the photos?........I mean about getting them loaded on to your posts.

[QUOTE=Flyingveepixie]Hey, I fixed that wall........stuck all the bits back together with silicone[/QUOTE]
Novel building technique. Does the wall wobble like a jelly in high winds?

To get back OT, here's another book on olive growing: [URL="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0643064435/202-5250485-8535857?v=glance&n=266239"]Pruning and Training Systems for Modern Olive Growin[/URL] by R.Gucci.

I started this thread to recommend a different book. And I still think it is very interesting for its tips on olive culture as well as for other information I didn't mention earlier.

But the one I've mentioned here seems to me much more comprehensive and more firmly based on long-term research. It is, in fact, an Italian book which has been translated into English and aimed at Australian olive growers. It is fairly expensive, but it's got lots of nice pictures!

I'll mention another book I've seen cited when looking into olive culture: the Olive Production Manual published by the University of California. As far as I know, this is out of print; I got my copy used via ABEBooks.com. The book is extremely academic and basically a collection of papers that each address a very narrow topic. The authors all seem to approach the subject with a typical commercial grower's willingness to cultivate, spray, irrigate and fertilise as much as is necessary in order to wring the maximum possible yield from each tree. I really don't know how relevant this book is to olive growers in Italy, not even those who aspire to be commercial olive growers since it seems - reasonably enough - to be exclusively concerned with addressing the growing conditions one finds in California.

[QUOTE=Flyingveepixie]I still have half of my trees to do this winter so will no doubt learn some more as I go but I'm having fun......I love being up in the trees and I get a feeling of satisfaction out of what I'm doing and I haven't yet killed a tree.[/QUOTE]
I think that's an important point. I doubt if any of us here have any illusions about making a fortune or even a living out of our little olive groves. So while it makes sense for us to investigate enough to at least know what we need to know in order not to kill the trees, we're not going to be doing cost-benefit analyses of different cultivation techniques and striving to maximise yield.

Some people view gardening as an end in itself. I'm not one of them; I'm inclined to think that the perfect garden is one that takes care of itself and demands only of me that I wander around periodically telling everything how well its doing. But I fully understand why you enjoy tending your trees. So if they're giving you that pleasure and you're learning something from them [I]and[/I] you're getting more oil than you can use, well, it sounds like you're doing something right!

Al

How many ways are there to kill a cat?

Nobody has yet talked about a (no doubt historic and discredited) method of "ring barking" undesirable (ie growing too high) branches, and "starving" those branches into fruit production for the following year. I coped with a load of very old "reclaimed" (after a five year pruning programme) olives, and we practised this technique with considerable success, increasing every year the vigour of the plants. Believe me, tasking the crop off a big 3m branch when it is lying on the collecting net is a lot easier than doing it 5m above ground!

I'm a bit disappointed by some slightly arrogant comments in this thread - which I will offensively sum up as "those contadini know nothing, trust an Australian". The neighbour who helped me most - a "thick contadino" - when I asked him for his opinion on whether leaving the ground below the olives grassed (mowed), grassed (cropped by sheep), or worked with a disc-harrow, he responded with "Yes, I too am interested in this, so a couple of years ago I did an experiment" (he had about 40ha of olives, and 200 sheep) "Sheep are not a good idea, mowing and leaving the cut stuff to rot down gives the same crop as using the disc harrow. Mowing uses more diesel, so I use the disc harrow."
End of story - but if you have a small olive grove, and want to cut the grass for aesthetic reasons (and to make laying the collection nets easier), you are unlikely to lose crop yield by leaving the ground undisturbed.
Harvesting olives by hand is a lovely job - they are silky (and not sticky like grapes) - and on a nice bright almost alpine day in November...........fun :)

[QUOTE=Relaxed]I'm a bit disappointed by some slightly arrogant comments in this thread - which I will offensively sum up as "those contadini know nothing, trust an Australian".[/QUOTE]
Well, I for one would be absolutely devastated if I should ever disappoint you.

I'd never say that Italian farmers know nothing. And perhaps the ones around you have so impressed you that you've concluded they're all geniuses who know absolutely everything there is to know about farming. But I suspect that omniscience is no more common amongst Italian farmers than it is amongst, say, British farmers.

Being generally cynical, I don't have high expectations of farmers whether they be British, Italian, French or whatever. But then I also apply that attitude to just about everybody else: from lawyers and neurosurgeons to the girl who delivers my papers of a morning.

Some might see that as arrogance. The opinion would not disappoint me.

I'm rarely disappointed. I am occasionally pleasantly surprised.

I still maintain that there are very obvious signs of farmers' gross mismanagement of the land in Abruzzo and other parts of central Italy. The reasons for that are debatable, but the evidence is very clear that Italian farmers as a group do not know everything and they do make mistakes. What's more, they [I]keep making mistakes[/I] even though they can see that what they're doing is causing their land to disappear from beneath their feet. Perhaps it's arrogant of me - a mere Brit and not a farmer at that - to have the audacity to notice and comment on such things, but the fact remains.

And if they make mistakes that big, it seems reasonable to assume there are probably other things they do which are wrong or short-sighted.

I started this thread because I suspected that others might feel - as I have - a bit apprehensive about taking on responsibility for olive trees; I believed it would be a good idea to lump a few book references and advice from forum members in one place. I cited the book by the Australian who had settled in Italy because it was the first one I'd come across that was in English and actually addressed the topic in some detail. In case anyone misread my most recent comment, the other book I cited as being targetted at Australian olive farmers was written by Italian academics about growing olives in Italy.

As far as ringbarking, I don't have the book to hand since I've already packed it, but I'm sure that the Australian (who, I am sure, would be the first to admit he knows less than many contadini about being a farmer in Italy) mentioned the technique. I believe it might also be referred to in the Pruning and Training Systems book I mentioned in my last post.

Concerning your neighbour, kudos to him for experimenting. Interesting conclusions, although I'm slightly curious why he decided grazing sheep "are not a good idea". But, since I don't want to run sheep, it's an academic question for me.

So he decided, based solely on the fact that it uses less fuel, that harrowing is a better option than mowing. But - and here I go again having the gall to question the wisdom of an Italian farmer - it seems to me that decision based on that criteria could either be very sensible or very short-sighted, all depending upon how much of his top soil is getting washed away after he harrows.

Then, of course, there is the question of whether either harrowing or mowing is really necessary. I wonder if he's ever gone far enough outside the box to investigate what happens to his yields if he doesn't do either? Or, to take a half-way house solution, what happens if he mows just once a year in order to make things tidy enough for the nets? I assume the reason mowing used more fuel was because he had to do it more than once? Or is it because the number of passes he has to make with the tractor is fewer with the harrow even though pulling a disc harrow will - I again assume - require more power and therefore more fuel than pulling a grass cutter?

As you say, there are various ways of doing most tasks. As always, finding the most sensible approach to any problem requires an objective assessment of all the factors involved.

Al

Oh, it's all very harrowing!

My neighbours grow angurie e zucchini under their olive trees - I guess by the time they have finished their fruiting season that all the old plant growth gets cleared away in plently of time to lay nets and harvest the olives..

[CENTER][ATTACH]837[/ATTACH][/CENTER]
This was part of the beautiful feast that awaited me 2 weeks ago.. we ate the cherries before I got a chance to photograph them. I can hardly wait for the juicy watermelons on Wednesday.. or the next batch of mosquito bites as I keep my eye on the peaches.. and the developing uva fragola! :D

In my experience mowing (or strimming) once a year is not an option because of both the fire risk, and the fact that many weeds grow to about five foot high before collapsing - so start to take the light from the trees. I would say that five full "mowings" would be necessary.

I had a good small book in Italian, I think it was called ulivicoltura moderna, or perhaps ulivicoltura intensiva, talking about the "modern" method of growing olives almost as hedges - to ease mechanical harvesting. This way you start off with young plants and keep them brached down almost to ground level. The often use Pendololino, and having seen some ten or so year old groves planted on this method they look spectacular (though odd!) but incredibly healthy.

My farmer reckoned that running the sheep under the trees reduced the crop - that was his only objection!

What you are describing is delightfully known as promiscuous cultivation... :)

Like station wagons are described as promiscous cars.....:)

I'll have you know none of my neighbours are promiscuous.. although in the case of one of them.. that's rather unfortunate! :D

All this information about olive trees is a bit mind blowing!! All we want to know is where do we get the nets from and how much does it cost at the cooperative cantina to press the olives? do you take your own bottles etc. etc. We are coming over in November to harvest our olives for the first time and want to be prepared, su

[QUOTE=suephilj]All this information about olive trees is a bit mind blowing!! All we want to know is where do we get the nets from and how much does it cost at the cooperative cantina to press the olives? do you take your own bottles etc. etc. We are coming over in November to harvest our olives for the first time and want to be prepared, su[/QUOTE]

According to my Italian friend here in the UK who fell about laughing when I mentioned nets, he said all you need is some dust sheets and could not believe we would spend money on nets! After all they are only there to catch the falling fruit, they could then either be washed (?) or dumped.

Someone local to you will know a press but you will need to arrange this before hand as the olives need to be pressed quickly once picked. Check the cost once you find someone as they can all charge different rates.

Keith..

Having nets to catch olives is de rigueur.. just like green wellies. :D

[QUOTE=Anastasia]Keith..

Having nets to catch olives is de rigueur.. just like green wellies. :D[/QUOTE]

Perhaps unfortunately I was a real farmer, not a Chelsea tractor type. Inexpensive practical solutions for practical problems! But I do have green wellies because they are less expensive!

HUNTER CLASSIC DK OLIVE 4 £49.50!! Black wellies are only £4.99 at Woolies! :D

[QUOTE=Anastasia]HUNTER CLASSIC DK OLIVE 4 £49.50!! Black wellies are only £4.99 at Woolies! :D[/QUOTE]

Ah well, there you go, the farm shop brand x in green is better than Woolies!

surely plastic(?)dust sheets will just make the olives all sweaty..the nets allow the air to circulate-I would think the italians have a fair bit of experience in all this by now!!
shas

You can get cotton dust sheets well in England anyway.

Dust sheet with black wellies - v - Olive nets with green wellies.

Is there anything we wont argue over? :D :D