Olives. Now, What?

| September 15, 2012 | 10 Replies

We planted several olive trees before I ever started on the vegetable garden. Only two are in the ground, and they both have olives.

Naturally, I paid no attention to the variety when they were planted. When one of the potted olive trees grew a single olive, I read up on olives and it seemed like a ton of work. No more olives came, and I thought, “Whew!” And forgot about it. But, now, the two trees in the ground have olives. The smaller tree above, has two dozen and they are olive size. The larger tree has a couple hundred, I’m guessing, of these little olives, and they haven’t gotten any bigger in a couple of months.

I guess I better read up on olives again! Thanks for stopping by on a real hot day! – Kaye

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Category: Fruit

Comments (10)

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  1. Rob says:

    Now an olive press! Or a switch from organic wine to martinis.

  2. I’m curious as to how this olive conundrum will turn out! Keep us posted. Fascinating.

  3. Well, this article explains it all. http://www.wikihow.com/Cure-Olives
    I don’t know how you know what kind of olive you have and when it is ripe, though. I would HOPE they are the green olives, as I have NO intention of ever working with lye. – Kaye

  4. Kaye, jump on a plane and come to Turkey, they have loads here

  5. Lois says:

    I must follow these links to see how to deal with my handful of tiny but lovely olives!

    • Lois, there is a naughty olive fruit fly pest, and I was reading last night that ALL olives after mid-October should be harvested from tree, including all that may have fallen on ground and either buried at least 4″ deep, or removed from garden and disposed of. A serious threat to home and commercial growers. If you are not curing olives, just get rid of them, but, the maggots overwinter in the fruit, so all fruit must be removed and disposed of. – Kaye

      • Lois says:

        Thank you for that… is it just a general pest which loves olives as well, or specific to olives? I’ll remove all old fruit anyway. I had something trying to eat the leaves too… it may have been the same something which ate my rose leaves!

      • Lois, it’s a relatively new pest, Olive Fruit Fly “rendered many commercial and home olives inedible by laying eggs that hatch into maggots in the fruit. Remove from garden all unharvested fruit including fallen fruit, or bury it four inches deep. Cultivate the soil under the tree to four inches deep to kill overwintering pupae and again in mid to late summer.” There’s more info I can send if you want about natural pest spray. Doubt this is what ate your roses. – Kaye

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