Growing Olive Trees

..... and I'm now very curious about your avatar - its not showing!!!! (it wasn't a bit naughtly, was it!!!??? :eek: )

 

DOH!!!!!! just put me brain cell back in..... 'tis the other Dave's avatar!!!! .....I'm easily confused..... (being blonde, NOT old!!!!!)
He, he!!!! love it!!!

 

Hi Honey Bee,

It hasn't caught any frosts but the porch isn't heated so the temperatures have been lower than the house. I will try and get a picture posted tonight. The top of the tree is definitely looking very sad so it may well have died off :( If so, I will have to try and save the green shoot and have a weird shpaed tree!

Cheers,

Dave

 

Dave (the other one!)
Your olive should not lose leaves in winter though it may shed the occasional one.
At this time of year if it is indoors it should be showing new growth buds.
I'm not certain, but have doubts as to whether olives are normally grafted. Our two pets were grown from Greek cuttings though we also have a UK grown 'bush olive' and its useless - lots of less than pea sized fruits and it doesn't even look nice. If yours isn't a grafted tree I'd be tempted to let the new shoot grow and chop out the dead stuff.
If your olives tasted disgusting was it because you tried them straight off the tree? Olives should be first preserved in salt unless you have enough to start your own oil factory.

Hi Nixon. I too found the avatar a bit disturbing so I've changed it. And yes I do look like that but it took several years of teaching to develop the hex stare!

 

Hi Dave,

My olive tree would be a UK bush one I would think. It wasn't very expensive and it has definitely lost most of its leaves. I will post a picture when I can. The fruit was shriveled and looked rather unhealthy, but I didn't know that about preserving them in salt first! Will try that this year if the plant gets that far!

Can they be trained well? I'm just thinking if I'm going to let the shoot grow, I may be able to at least get it growing upright?

Cheers,

Dave

 

Dave,(tother one in Lancs)
Our bush (UK and inexpensive) olive lives all year round outside and has not really lost any leaves. I'll take some pics and we can compare our failures! It lives outside mainly because I don't like it and regard it as a waste of space but my wife refuses to let me consign it to the compost heap!
You can train them if you put in a stick and tie the soft growth to it. If you snip the leader it should put out side shoots. At least that's what real olives do.

 

Hi Dave (and a big thank you for noticing that it really should be Lancs - my dad still refuses to put Merseyside on his letters! )

Anyway, here are the pictures of my sad olive tree - I've taken a full length one and a close up of the new growth. See what you think.

Full Tree



New Growth



So will I be eating home grown olives this summer, or am I off to Tescos?! :D

 

Hi Dave.
It looks rather like it almost became an ex-olive!
It does look as though it's been grafted though, but lets see what Nixon thinks.
Anyway since the upper part looks pretty well dead, I don't think you have anything to lose by snipping it just above the new shoots and seeing what happens.
And I think that the odds are on Tesco as supplier of your olives this year!

Here's our bush. It has been outside all year. You can still see some of the useless tiny fruit it produced. It may have an encounter with a shredder soon.



These are our two Greek olives. They were grown from a cutting taken in Zakynthos in July 2003. The one on the right is just about to flower and the one on the left is putting out growth buds.
They live in our conservatory most of the year but spent December and January in a cold greenhouse.


[ 04. March 2006, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: Dave W ]

 

Hi, there - it does look like a graft - but the new shoot looks perfectly ok, not a sucker, so I'd see what happens if you get rid of all the old stuff above it - I don't see you have much to lose! What does everyone else think?

 

Thanks guys - I think I'll try it if no-one replies with some hideous stories of olive death!

The new side shoot has been growing very vigorously, it had two new small leaves on it within the 24 hours between first posting and taking the picture!

Any particular direction recommended for cutting above the new growth (diagonal, straight etc)?

 

Oh well, I took the plunge and snipped it. Let's hope it picks up - if so, I'll post some pictures of the progress!

Thanks for all the help guys! :D

 

I tend to agree, it does look like a graft, but the new shoot seems to originate above the graft, strangely enough.

 

I am very puzzled now. I have no idea what kind of olive mine is, but it has produced edible olives each year I've had it.
Last year my cat stripped the bark from a patch half way up its' stem [luckily not all round] and it still had quite a few on it! It has lost quite a few leaves this winter but has new buds on so I hope it's going to survive. I'm encouraged by Dave IHG's experience as hopefully if mine did die off above the damage, it would shoot from below.
I'm going to plant some of the olives as well, just to see what happens...Dave W, how did you take the cuttings? BTW I love your latest avatars- the demonic portrait was quite scary!

 

Hi Liz
I took a couple of tip cuttings about 6 inches long the day before we flew home and wrapped them in a face flannel. When back home I cut them into sections about 3 inches, removed the bottom leaves and popped them into rooting gel in my propagator.
The roots took quite a while to develop - probably about 3 months compared with about one month for some oleander cuttings I had taken.
I'm currently watching a cutting I took from one of the rooted plants last November and the roots are only just now starting to develop.

The avatar - "Henry" is probably better looking than me, but then I'm not so prickly!