Which olive trees do I buy?

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by jackie, Apr 18, 2008.

  1. jackie

    jackie Junior Member

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    I'm hoping to plant a row of olives this Autumn and am finding most nursries sell manzanillo. Is this the best variety to get for oil? I'm thinking of planting mostly oil trees and perhaps 4-6 which are more suitable for pickling. I live on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. I'm also trying to source a supplier as local nursries seem an expensive option for 30 or more.

    We have a clay soil and generally plant fruiting trees on a mound of soil rather than digging into the heavy soil. We have a front end loader on the tractor and a mountain of soil from when the house and shed sites were scraped for building 6 years ago. Plan to plant the oilves this way also un less I get advice to the contrary.

    Is a good winter suficient to establish them or should I invest in drippers for the first couple of years?
    Any help or advice would be apreciated as this is a significant financial outlay.

    Thanks Jackie
     
  2. Comfrey

    Comfrey Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    This is not a full reply, but I can tell you that I live in native olive country, the trees are never irrigated, manzanillo is common, there is a wilder variety good for eating (and easy to pickle in salt) called "Cuquillo"; from observation, they like growing with pines (the sort you get pinenuts from), acacia, fig, almond, carob, roses, asparagus, artichokes. Generally if they are for oil, hereabouts at least, for harvesting reasons they are grown in bare soil, since the oil-rich fruit fall on the ground. Don't know how this would suit a permaculture set-up. :?:
     
  3. Comfrey

    Comfrey Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Although I forgot to say that here, in the past, olive trees were underplanted with crops like wheat.
     
  4. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Interesting thanks for that.
    Olives are often recommended for cottage gardens because flowers can grow under them.

    I wooul be intersted in what varieties people recommend too.
    Especially for wet warm areas near NSW coast. I have a cutting of a friend's Olive tree. I have no idea what it is.

    Does 'manazano' mean apple is Spanish? Does that mean they are big olives?
     
  5. TT

    TT Junior Member

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  6. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Great link thanks .
    it seems manzano is very highly recommended.
    is this the way to go?
    What about the pollinator question has that been resolved??

    Daleys Nursery
    Has a range of Olives . They seem like nice, if disorganised,(website not always up to date) people.
     
  7. Comfrey

    Comfrey Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Dear Jackie

    How did you get on with your olives?
    I've been worrying about this from time to time and realised the advice I wanted to offer was, why not try several different varieties of olive? The manzanillo (manzana is apple) is good for oil but not one of the tastiest for eating in my opinion, although a lot probably depends on how you cure them. I'd be tempted to put in some others as well, such as the cuquillo I mentioned (a real tough one this). Do you know anything against Kalamata olives? They're supposed to be great oil producers and taste good too.
    All this on the back of some really strange weather we've been having with disastrous harvests, just makes me think monocrops are a bad idea.

    Good luck in any case.
     
  8. inahd

    inahd Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    has anyone heard of hardy olive varieties?
     
  9. Comfrey

    Comfrey Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    How hardy? All of those mentioned are hardy to at least -8 degrees C.
     
  10. inahd

    inahd Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    well lets see, to zone 7 i guess? i could probably grow some olives here what with global warming...
     
  11. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Hello all,

    I would normally skim/scheme a thread like this but I am becoming ever more convinced that many of the dilemmas we face are not plant based so much as variety based. I know myself I live in the savannah/dry tropics so it means whenever I look at a seed/seeds/tree/plant pot recommendations I am doomed.

    I am doomed because it says ''well drained loam with lotsa compost in it'.... FFS I am doing that now.

    Here is where experience kicks in. Here in the tropics I have grown a squillion plants that 'cant' be grown here' 'cos of our humidity. For whatever reason I decided to grow those plants cos that was what I wanted to eat etc. So now when I hear that someone is Melbourne has a mango, I dont even quibble, as I know you can grow mangoes in Melbourne's climate and it's all about microclimate and nutrients. That said, they may never get many fruit. Big Deal I would personally run naked round my garden daily if I could grow brussel sprouts.[Hmmmmm I did for a while but nothing happened..... :D ]At the cost of a packet of seeds..... just plant them. Go for it. You may even be ''WRONG''.... whoop de doo.... just say to yourself..''I WILL NEVER PLANT THOSE BASTARDS AGAIN'' and if you have that attitude - buy different seeds just keep on planting on.

    Anyway, back to the original argument. I believe that more successes are achieved now by gardeners who just wanna have some, ie, my eggplant only needs to produce 10 eggfruit and i am a winner. Same stuff with zuccini. We are not all professional farmers..

    cheers,
     
  12. jackie

    jackie Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Thanks for the replies. I've left the olive planting on hold whilst we're getting more bare rooted fruit trees in the ground. I'm just going to take a gamble that the water board won't up our water restrictions as they're going to need water this summer. The olives are the same, the plan was to install a water tank off the shed which is uphill from where the olives are and gravity drip water them to get them established. Finances are on hold so are the olives and tank. My idea was to line the top section of the drive with them. Good all round location and would look good too.
    I've decided to just buy whats available from local nurseries which is mainly manzanillo. I may get a few others just to have a play. Will be about 30-40 in total. Then I'll be looking for a home method of extracting olive oil. Every thing I've found on the web so far is quite expensive. There's always more to learn. Why so many trees? I figure too much food may be a good problem to have. All our family and friends are on suburban blocks and know little about food growing, if they get hungry I already know where they'll be heading so I may as well try to prepare.
    And olive trees are very beautiful.
     
  13. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Jackie,

    As a kid I saw Olive Presses as a huge corkscrew on a spline that was contained by something akin to a decent sized wine barrel[with all the joints seperated], in fact they were very cylindrical with vertical slats. The catch bowl at the bottom was a like a little circular trough with a bias that drained it to one side. Some of them even had rudimentary filters on them.

    Here is the rub. The olive oil produced by Italians, Greeks, Croatians etc, in the Sunraysia district, was so strong that they always 'shandyied' it with other generic vegetable oil as it was considered 'too strong'..

    What I would suggest is that you offered a metal fabricator/engineer a few dollars and decent virgin olive oil you would get a great press made for little money and enjoy huge results.

    On the issue of irrigation required for olives. Olives are the ultimate survivor. If I were on the Mornington Peninsula I would consider growing them in individual shelters for the first couple of years, just to help them out.

    cheers


    cheers,
     
  14. permasculptor

    permasculptor Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    there is some on ebay at the moment just type in- italian olive trees
     
  15. Comfrey

    Comfrey Junior Member

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    Re: Which olive trees do I buy?

    Hi Jackie

    I know you don't want to plant 40 trees and watch them die, but really, have faith, at the moment here where I am in Spain we've got about 38 degrees every day, and it will be like that till September, this is with no ocean breezes, it is too hot for anything and the water-dependent plants here are just wilting by midday. At the same time olive seedlings are sprouting on the ground from the pits of last year's fallen olives, as happy as Larry. Our trees are a few years old now, but seriously, we just don't water them. Old guys prune them with a chainsaw a foot from the ground and off they grow again manically during a drought. Probably they'd be less happy with too much water. How small are you looking at? I would have thought any tree over two foot tall, planted with the soil built up around the stem then surrounded by a watering ditch say two foot max in diameter could be hand watered every once in a while and get along very well even during a drought. Even forty of them.

    I also have heard that in South Australia north of Adelaide (which is not exactly well watered country) birds dropping olive pips is leading to a real problem with self-sown trees in National Parks. So it can't be too hard to grow an olive I should think.

    Why not try one as an experiment and see. "Secano" is the term used here, dry land agriculture for olives.

    By the by, I just had a look for you at Australian olive oil supplies bits and pieces for harvesting and processing, and all I can say is Wow! I never knew you had to do all that to get olive oil! Here the olives turn up at the cooperative in baskets or buckets, go down a chute, get weighed, up into a de-leafer that cleans them up a bit and then get crushed and separated into cold-press olive oil. Simple! In the old days it was just a big cone-shaped stone went round a circular basin (pulled by a donkey) and crushed the olives, with separation the oil came off the top. Olive oil is just separated fruit juice after all. I reckon you just need a way of crushing them that doesn't require pitting them first. I might add that it's not because we're backward round here (though maybe that's true), we produce really GOOD olive oil.

    Anyway, I am enjoying your olive driveway from afar. Best of luck.
     

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