8504 treeless in Abruzzo

Yes, sadly on our hill we have only one, sorry two trees. One a walnut producing buckets of walnuts...yes any suggestions for recipes with walnuts? The other a mighty oak. We dream of making our hill a little less bald. We want to put in olives. We have asked our local neighbour and friend Domenico, and he says the hill was once covered in fruit trees and olives and vines.Sob His father pulled them all out so he could plough and plant the land with fodder for his animals (I think). He had lots of land so did'nt need our land to produce more olives,grapes and fruit so out it came.Sob! So, now, What olive trees do we put in, there are so many types.. We want eaters and oil producing ones. Domenico says that the land must be ploughed deeply before you put in any trees especially olives, to do with the roots of the new trees and water up take. The soil needs to be dug deeply so it can absorb more water to feed the tree later, many make the mistake of just digging a hole and putting thr new olive tree in (we would have too) So he's going to plough our land and then we hope to put in young olive trees.
Vines..which ones and where do you buy them? I know you may say ask your local neighbours, and we do, they are very helpful and always promise that when the time comes we will be taken to the best place to buy..Unfortunately they are very busy and sometimes it gets forgotten and we don't like to keep asking so..anyone know where to buy good vines cheaply.
Sprat

Category

Gardening & Agriculture

Pilch/Sprat.

Contact "piedmont_phil" for info on vines and possibly "Allan Mason" for info about olives.

Those are the two members here that spring to mind as probably having the most knowledge about this type of stuff, but I'd still drag the neighbours off for a day of shopping when the time comes.

For olives you need to plant to a regular grid. I'm not a fan of the deep ploughing theory, we plant using an excavator and dig a cubic hole 1 metre on each side then put the soil back into the hole. My mate down the valley has a big excavator and can dig a hole like that in one scoop.

Spacing is important and neds to be based on local knowledge, but as a rule of thumb rows should be about 4 metres apart and unless you're going for some high density system trees should be spaced 4 metres apart along the row.

It's a good idea to plant more trees, the lack of them in Abruzzo really annoys me.

As to varieties, the usual mix of trees are Leccino, Pendolino, Dritta, Frantoio, if you're near Teramo then you may find Tortiglione. Most of our trees are Tortiglione and it produces excellent oil, but it's hard work beign a real thug of a tree that grows large and vertical and needs heavy pruning to keep it under control.

It will take at least four years for your trees to become establish and if you're on a hill in Abruzzo and get strong winds then you will need to stake the trees. However flexing in the wind is what gives trees strength, so it's best to stake low down to prevent roots moving but permitting the upper tunk to move. Major shaping of the tree is done at four years, but over the years you will need to train the tree. Training and pruning is something you need advice on and it's not easy to do it over the interweb.

Ricetta Pasta con Noci (Pasta with Walnuts)
This is a recipe from Elena our neighbour who is a superb cook.

100g Mascarpone
100g Gorgonzola (I prefer piccante)
Shelled walnuts to your taste, at least a cupfull
320g cooked pasta (chitarra, farfalle and penne work well)

Blend the gorgonzola into the mascarpone. It's actually easier to do this by hand than to use a blender. Cut the gorgonzola into small cubes and blend using a wooden spoon.

While you're doing that cook the pasta for 4-5 minutes in boiling water.

Toast a cupful of shelled walnuts in a dry pan over the gas. Takes a bit of practice but it's essential. You must use good, fresh walnuts. Any trace of rancidity will ruin the dish.

Drain the pasta and dress with a thread of good extra-virgin olive oil. Don't use Berio, Carapelli or other mass market rubbish.

Add the mascarpone and gorgonzola to the hot, drained pasta and mix together, sprinkle with the toasted walnuts, season with black pepper and salt to your taste, mix and serve.

It's also nice to add small cubes of fresh pear as well as the walnuts.

Iotaresco, that sounds exquisite! Although I'm not qualified to advise on the olives, Pilch and Sprat, I will say that, as the owner of old, terraced Moraiolos at 500 metres plus(allegedly more frost resistant than many varieties), I do look with some envy at the neat groves of Frantoio that people grow lower down in the valleys. Maybe you're too high up for Frantoio, but if you're not, and your neighbours recommend them, they have a wonderful growth habit for picking because their fruiting branches grow naturally downwards. I thought this was esoteric pruning practice until somebody told me! It's easy to forget the importance of growth habit ... until it comes to harvest time.
ps maybe Iotaresco can tell me how to persuade my Moraiolo olives to do the same!

Deep tilling just exposes the deep soil to drying out and blowing away. The whole point of no till is to avoid all the water loss from tilling.

Well done for planting more trees!

Abruzzo desparately needs them as last summer demonstrated just how close desertification is approaching to some parts of the region.This is happening already in Puglia and other parts of Southern Italy and once things get really bad there's little to be done.Parts of our garden still had patches of moist ground even in September because of the shade and leaf litter from the oaks.

This year we'll get any manure/compost we can find locally and sread it over the land under all the olives.Other farmers in the valley seem to be doing the same thing but we still get some resistence from the 'clean land' lobby.This seems to encourage farmers to plough up all the soil to clear any vegetation.Understandable because fires can do so much damage but it seems counter to any advice on organic gardening methods.Don't know what others are doing?

Will you have room for any native trees? We have a wonderful elm that's now very old and slowly dying.I have some seedlings I want to plant out but we can only accomodate so many.Let me know!!

[quote=mungo;79736]Contact... possibly "Allan Mason" for info about olives.[/quote]
I assume my name was mentioned because I started a thread some months back about olive pruning. I certainly don't consider myself any sort of expert on olives. I have read a fair amount on the topic, but I've only got one year's worth of experience.

There are a lot of people here who have much more experience than me and I'm sure that lotaresco is one of them.

For what it's worth, if I was looking to plant olives I'd go along with his suggestion of digging holes and backfilling with the excavated earth.

Italians do seem to love the whole idea of getting in a monstrous caterpillar tractor with an absolutely enormous plough to rip up the earth at least a metre deep before planting olives. Yet olives were successfully grown here for a few years before the post-WWII mechanisation of Italian agriculture. I understand that the ancient Greeks advised digging a deep hole for olives, but it would be astounding (yet not impossible, I suppose) if every one of the thousands of ancient olives one sees in Italy required some poor sod to dig a hole a metre deep and a metre in diameter.

The fact is that olives are incredibly robust plants (once they get established) and their root systems are able to search out water and nutrients in very difficult conditions.

As it happens, I'm planning on getting a few young olives to plant alongside a track on part of my land. The strip in question has been used to pile up the rocks taken from the adjacent field for who knows how long, so I certainly have no plans for major excavations. My plan is to give the plants a bit of room amongst the boulders with a bit of compost and then regular watering over the coming year.

We shall see what we shall see, but the one thing that's certain is that in a decade or so I'll be able to get back to you with a more helpful response to your question, pilchard. :bigergrin:

[quote=lupo;79764]ps maybe Iotaresco can tell me how to persuade my Moraiolo olives to do the same![/quote]

I don't know about Moraiolo since we don't have any. My friend Massimo is the real expert at pruning and training, he has trees trained into exquisite cones which are really easy to harvest and look good too. Ours are trained "vaso" which is easy to do, but involves "quite a bit" of climbing on trees as large as toritiglione. I have persuaded a few trees to grow in a pendant form by leaving the leaders in place and pruning all of the shoots off the upper surface of the branch. Over two years the branch will grow over and downwards which makes it easier to harvest. You can persuade it to grow where you want by tying it in.

I can heartily recommend this book if you're intending to make a real go of pruning olives:

[URL="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pruning-Training-Systems-Modern-Growing/dp/0643064435/"]Pruning and Training Systems[/URL]

Sorry Alan, I didn't mean to "land you in it" - it was just that I remembered your posts about olives, nor did I mean to be flippant about the knowledge that other people like lotaresco may have - it's just that lotaresco hasn't been around for a while and I didn't link his name instantly with olives.
I'll shut up now that I've read lotaresco has just won an award for his olives! :reallyembarrassed:

[quote=mungo;79781]lotaresco has just won an award for his olives! :reallyembarrassed:[/quote]

Only thanks to my wife and the help of almost a whole frazione. OK, we're just a handful of people, but fortunately most of them are proper farmers, not an Englishman playing at it.

[quote=pilchard;79730]
Vines..which ones and where do you buy them? I know you may say ask your local neighbours, and we do, they are very helpful and always promise that when the time comes we will be taken to the best place to buy..Unfortunately they are very busy and sometimes it gets forgotten and we don't like to keep asking so..anyone know where to buy good vines cheaply.
Sprat[/quote]
At the risk of saying just what you have asked me not to - find someone who has an established vineyard. In my experience they either graft and grow their own - or they buy from someone else locally who does this. Either way they should be able to help. Local neighbours who are not growing vines commercially are less likely to be able to help. All serious vineyards have to replace vines on occasion. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of Abruzzo.

The soil preperation goes for vines as well as trees, we turnover the soil to a depth of 1.4 metres in the autumn and then plant a nursery grown two year old vine in the early spring. Don't expect to be able to buy vines at the moment. Of course I am sure that garden centres in the locallity will sell vines too - but that is a very different (and expensive) route.

On our Piedmont vineyard we only grow Barbera d'Asti and Moscato d'Asti grapes, I presume your choices will be Trebbiano or Montepulciano?

[quote=piedmont_phil;79820]At the risk of saying just what you have asked me not to - find someone who has an established vineyard. In my experience they either graft and grow their own - or they buy from someone else locally who does this. Either way they should be able to help. Local neighbours who are not growing vines commercially are less likely to be able to help. All serious vineyards have to replace vines on occasion. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of Abruzzo.

On our Piedmont vineyard we only grow Barbera d'Asti and Moscato d'Asti grapes, I presume your choices will be Trebbiano or Montepulciano?[/quote]

Hi there Phil,
Been meaning to discuss vines and wines with you for some time as you seem to have a reputation for being a guru. Yes of course Montepulciano and Trebbiano are the natural choices here in Abruzzo but considering there is so much good wine made from these two grape varieties in the area it would be interesting to try, in addition other varieties. We are at approx 350 metres, the soil is solid clay and nothing else and we have a perfect south facing slope . There will probably be a bit of underlying rock deeper down of the type the locals call Tufa (soft crumbly rock), was wondering what varieties you could reccomend? Appreciate other than soil, climate, and elevation personal preferance is a major consideration . We like Sauvigon Blanc, Pinot grigios and Malvaisia is a good one, as to reds a particular favourite of Pilchards is Petit Verdot which tha Austrailians manage to turn into something etheral. Have you got any recommends, tips and can you recommend any reading material?
Thanks Sprat

[quote=lotaresco;79758]For olives you need to plant to a regular grid. I'm not a fan of the deep ploughing theory, we plant using an excavator and dig a cubic hole 1 metre on each side then put the soil back into the hole. My mate down the valley has a big excavator and can dig a hole like that in one scoop.