Olive trees, any advice re looking after.

Evening chaps and chapess' s.

I treated myself to 2 olive trees today ( around 3ft in height) and I'm after some advice how to go looking after them. I've put them in planters for now until they grow a bit more, do these need feeding regularly in the growing season or sparingly? Also, how cold hardy are they? Lastly, will they produce edible fruit? Both are fruiting now, but are very small, any advice most welcome.

Ta GC wizards :-)

 

Mine flowered in the hot weather, fed it as the flowers were going over and then they all dropped off

He's got to be about 25 years old now, only ever had 2 tiny olives on it.

I bring him in when it goes down below minus 10c

 

Thanks zigs

I suppose being small, is it right in thinking that mine are nowhere near cold hardy to -10?

 

Pete might know, he got me to bring mine in when it was frozen solid a few years back

 

Mine has survived minus 12 on a couple of nights a few years ago, but its planted in the border.
Mine also flowers, but never got any flowers to set let alone get any olives.
A mate says he had some small olives form, but they are not going to reach maturity.

I think they are much hardier than is generally assumed, but like heat in summer and full sun to ripen the wood.

 

Ahh, mine wasn't in full sun this year.

 

Thanks pete and zigs

 

What are you calling them Al?

Called mine Boris.

 

George and Henry

 

Does anyone have any ideas re: pot bound olive trees
Bought 2 small olive trees potted them in pots substantially bigger (15x bigger) than original pot but after 3 years in their pot I have found they are now pot bound, with roots extending out of drainage holes in pot!
This has only occurred during the last growing season.
As I would like to keep the large terracotta pots they are currently in, I was wondering if trimming the roots of the olives trees would kill them?

 

If the roots are just coming out the drainage holes I`d trim them and cant see them being damaged as a result. If you pot up again you might end up with a small plant in a huge pot and a big plant in a small pot would look better.

 

Thanks Wee Tam, I had not thought how the plant would look in pot so worried about roots!
Your right! I will have a go at trimming them.