1872 Pruning Olive Trees

Not sure if you live here or in UK, but we have enjoyed learning how to prune our own olives. with the help of locals and a book we can recommend. Coltivare L'Olivo e utilizzarne i frutti by Adriano Del Fabro, published by Giunti Demetra, [url]www.gunti.it[/url] ISBN 88-440-2866-2 Lots of pictures and diagrams if your Italian is not up to speed.

Sorry to hear your yield was not great. Pleased to say our first harvest was very successful and we were pleasantly surprised with the quantities of oil when we collected it from the mill! Good luck on Thursday.

[QUOTE=DavidandLinda]Not sure if you live here or in UK, but we have enjoyed learning how to prune our own olives. with the help of locals and a book we can recommend. Coltivare L'Olivo e utilizzarne i frutti by Adriano Del Fabro, published by Giunti Demetra, [url]www.gunti.it[/url] ISBN 88-440-2866-2 Lots of pictures and diagrams if your Italian is not up to speed.

Sorry to hear your yield was not great. Pleased to say our first harvest was very successful and we were pleasantly surprised with the quantities of oil when we collected it from the mill! Good luck on Thursday.[/QUOTE]

Sorry if this is a daft question but it's something that's always puzzled me.

How do you know that the oil you are getting back from the 'press' is from the olives you gave them?

Also I'd be interested to know what kind of yield you can expect from 55 olive trees just planted.They are about 1.5m tall. I know it won't be much but I certainly will enjoy it.
And roughly how does the yield increase in the first few years?

In answer to your questions.
Susan - Olives are weighed,stored, pressed etc for you as an individual, boxes and containers etc are marked with your name. The actual process is very quick, how long you wait for your oil just depends on how busy the mill is. Each customers olives are dealt with seperately, nothing to gain by giving you someone else's. Anyway every one has a different quantity!
It was our first experience of the Olive Harvest this year and it was fascinating.

Robert - If you can get hold of a copy of the book we suggested earlier in thread, think you will find it very useful. It will be a few years before you get any noticeable yield from your young olive trees.

If you are looking for another way to generate income off your olive trees, take a leaf from this book:

[url]http://www.casadelsole.co.uk/olive_adopt.html[/url]

[QUOTE=Sano]If you are looking for another way to generate income off your olive trees, take a leaf from this book:

[url]http://www.casadelsole.co.uk/olive_adopt.html[/url][/QUOTE]

Yep, I think she's quite clever! Read her book & found it quite interesting, not just the usual 'tutto bello' stuff.

I like her gift ideas as well. She sold some of them on ebay.

Stephanie

[QUOTE=Iona]Yep, I think she's quite clever! Read her book & found it quite interesting, not just the usual 'tutto bello' stuff.

I like her gift ideas as well. She sold some of them on ebay.

Stephanie[/QUOTE]

I caught a repeat of 'A Year in Tuscany' yesterday, the first episode that I had not seen before and I quite liked their attitude - not the usual whingers these - they took most things in their stride and there was none of the complaints and refusal to adapt that seems so common in this type of programme.

Hi Russ. It can happen that crops are low one year and high the next. The factors involved are late frosts or rain, when the trees are in blossom or setting fruit, pruning and the trees just 'taking a rest'.

You really have nothing to lose by pruning your trees yourself. A local person will probably help you with the first one or two, if you ask. Bear in mind that olive trees have a prodigious capacity to grow new shoots from the oldest of wood, so you will never kill a tree by over-pruning. Advice on pruning is rather sparse on the internet (I keep meaning to make a web page myself) but as a rule, you should favour branches that grow at about 45 degrees and prune vertical, downward, inward-growing and crossing branches to get a 'wine glass' shape -open in the middle, to let air through. In the UK there's an old adage that you should be able to throw your hat through an apple tree that is properly pruned. The Italian equivalent is that a bird should be able to fly through the middle of an olive tree.

Olives tend to set fruit on branches 2 or more years old, so even though new shoots will grow on a heavily pruned tree, they won't fruit in the first year. You should try pruning stems that seem old and brittle and leaving the new ones, or you could try pruning every other tree, or pruning once every 2 or three years.

As far as young trees are concerned; they won't start yeilding worthwhile quantities of olives until they are 7 - 10 years old. My advice is to prune them for shape, selecting 3 or four fairly horizontal branches, evenly spaced around the central stem at a height of about 3 feet from the ground. That way you end up with a usefull 'step' to stand on when they are mature.

One of the most satisfying events of our olive-growing year is making a bonfire of the pruned wood at sunset and sitting around it in the cold winter air with a bottle of beer, occasionally tossing on some more twigs. Experiences like that, money just can't buy. ('For everything else', as the ad says 'there is Visa')

Has anyone had any experience of transplanting an olive tree. If so, what special care did you give it - did it need lots of watering or did the rain do it for you etc.?

Russ, where are you based?
If it's anywhere near Ostuni we know of an excellent local guy who could prune your trees for you.
Wouldn't advise anyone to prune their own. They're too precious to risk ruining. Even locals who quite happily prune all other trees call in the experts for their olives.

[QUOTE=DavidandLinda]In answer to your questions.
Susan - Olives are weighed,stored, pressed etc for you as an individual, boxes and containers etc are marked with your name. The actual process is very quick, how long you wait for your oil just depends on how busy the mill is. Each customers olives are dealt with seperately, nothing to gain by giving you someone else's. Anyway every one has a different quantity!
It was our first experience of the Olive Harvest this year and it was fascinating.

Robert - If you can get hold of a copy of the book we suggested earlier in thread, think you will find it very useful. It will be a few years before you get any noticeable yield from your young olive trees.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for that David and Linda. I didn't realize it was quite so personal a service. Just sort of had a vision of tons of olives being bunged in a huge press together and the oil being given out according to weight of olives contributed.

That was a bit naive of me wasn't it :o

Thanks to everyone who responded to my post and I find it so upliftling that everyone here takes such an interest in matters so basic in nature, but nonetheless fascinating.

Our house is near Teramo, Abruzzo and if I have the right place I think Ostuno is down in Puglia, so not practical really. Thanks anyway.

[QUOTE=The Smiths in Puglia]Has anyone had any experience of transplanting an olive tree. If so, what special care did you give it - did it need lots of watering or did the rain do it for you etc.?[/QUOTE]

Just make sure you take enough of the rootball out with the tree and prune back some of the top growth before replanting. Keep mulched and water well in the first year - you will know by the end of the year if it has taken or not.

and thanks from me to all who replied to my questions
I have some more,this time a bit frivolous:
when gives olive oil "virginity" and what gives it "extra virginity" and why is only olive oil described as virgin?! Potatoes and tomatoes aren't sold as "virgin"

[QUOTE=Robert]and thanks from me to all who replied to my questions
I have some more,this time a bit frivolous:
when gives olive oil "virginity" and what gives it "extra virginity" and why is only olive oil described as virgin?! Potatoes and tomatoes aren't sold as "virgin"[/QUOTE]

Has to do with acidity levels. I think extra virgin is 0.05% acid to oil content or some such thing. Also has to do with the treatment the olive pulp goes through to extract the different grades of oil.

[QUOTE=Aliena]Have you ever tried to have sex with an olive? Slippery little buggars!

:) :)[/QUOTE]
Aliena, you have a great Liverpuglian sense of humour, I find you quite hilarious, because i bet that really answered Roberts question :D

Hi Robert, sent you an email, hope it helps, too much to put on here, would be here all day, with that info, :)

Susan not niave at all! you still have your first rip to an olive mill to look forward to.

Robert, think you have been sent an email explaining all! Our olives were harvested as soon as ripe, so we got less oil(still loads and loads!!)but of a better quality
Early Harvest Extra Virgin Olive Oil!!!!!!!! It is the most expensive type to buy, amazed at current prices in UK when we did some research!!!

[QUOTE=Susan P]Just sort of had a vision of tons of olives being bunged in a huge press together and the oil being given out according to weight of olives contributed.
[/QUOTE]

Most of the presses near us offer a personal service, but others are communal and the olives do just get chucked in all together and you get your fair share. I think there is a minimum amount for the personal service so if you have a low yield you have to go down the communal route.

[QUOTE=anne2]Most of the presses near us offer a personal service, but others are communal and the olives do just get chucked in all together and you get your fair share. I think there is a minimum amount for the personal service so if you have a low yield you have to go down the communal route.[/QUOTE]

350kg on the personal service - learnt from recent rerun of 'A Year in Italy'

Telly has to be good for something...

Linda & David, how is your new oil? Did you have some on bruschetta, as tradition demands, the first night?
We also just finished the harvest with Piero and Milena as "commanders" and Fulvio & me on the ground working the "balloni" as the green nets are called here. Ruud and Susanna helped too so they get their share of oil. We picked 1250 kgs. of olives, had some great lunches and lots of laughs. Tomorrow we pick up our second lot of oil.

Ciao Mary Jane. Yes we did have some on bruschetta the first night! Our yield was 12.2%, do you know what yours was yet? We produced 865kgs off our trees(50ish)not bad for first effort? Thanks again for all your help and guidance, much appreciated.

I have recently bought a book called 'Discovering Oil - tales from an Olive Grove in Umbria' by Brian and Lynne Chatterton. They are Australian farmers who have lived in Umbria for 10 years or more . The book is serious and factual and very informative about all aspects of growing and harvesting olives, but written in an accessible style. Having read it, they seem pretty well informed , but I have not yet had the chance to put any of it into practice as we have not yet taken possession of our 80 olive trees . The book can be obtained from Amazon, about £12 I think .

after pruning our olives (quite drastically but it means I can still harvest the olives myself with a few lazy teenagers as they are lower) we decided to light the hearth and burn the wood - it took ages to light and then produced loads of smoke (or maybe the chimney needed cleaning) - what's your secret on getting the wood to light? Incidentally we also have experienced one year good one year bad with an experienced Italian gardener - best crop was the year we bought the place and the olives hadn't been pruned for years ( and my dad's apple trees in Cambridgeshire were the same)Old old trees though.Fiona B.

Did you allow the wood to dry out Fiona? It really needs 6 months to a year to season. The thin twiggy prunings usually catch fire very easily once the leaves are dry -actually, they can be quite dangerous, so don't set fire to too many at a time.

Slight divert here - how many olive trees do you need to produce a viable (marketable) quantity of olive oil?

[QUOTE=Sano]Slight divert here - how many olive trees do you need to produce a viable (marketable) quantity of olive oil?[/QUOTE]

Sano if this is any help we harvested 50 trees this year and produced 115litres of oil.

[QUOTE=The Smiths in Puglia]Has anyone had any experience of transplanting an olive tree. If so, what special care did you give it - did it need lots of watering or did the rain do it for you etc.?[/QUOTE]

i've moved quite a number.if they're young there's no real problem if they're old/big you may even need an excavator.
just take care to dig a large circle and attempt to extract the entire root ball with as little damage as possible.
The most important thing is the replanting,dig a much deeper and wider hole than you would think necessary,use a lot of fertilizer preferably natural and some good soil mixed well in with the surrounding soil type plant it very well better to stake it if it's young leave a depression around it olives require especially when young more water than people imagine so water abundantly in puglia this could be critical.