Olives 2014

Olives – we love eating the things!

 

 

picking olives

I picked mine October onwards. I have 3 cultivar olive trees. They have not been pruned or cared for in years - so have grown very large and unkempt. Their height makes picking olives for eating very difficult. I was only able to pick olives of the shortest one. This with the aid of a ladder.

 

Over the season I picked 3 kilogrammes of olives from the one tree. The olives on all three trees were heavily infected by the Mediterranean fruit fly. They lay their eggs in the olives and their larvae then eat the olive from the inside. This year I must do something to thwart them. Since I don't want to spray with pesticides, I think my options are limited to clay coating the olives. I have read that kaolin clay is the clay to use but I think any other fine clay would be suitable. The other option is to use fly traps around the trees.

 

I marinaded the olives following an italian receipe which I found on the internet. I had to substitute the dill with wild thyme as I didn't have any. I do have a lot wild thyme here so there's always a wild time to be had 🙂 . I never knew about wild thyme until one swedish neighbour introduced me to it. She is a very knowledgeable gardener. For my first attempt I have to say I am very pleased with the result. DSC_0277 DSC_0377

These olives are certain very edible and I have eaten my way through half of them.

 

I have a lot of wild olives trees. They produced either no olives or very miniscule ones. I however had one wild olive tree produce half decent olives. wild olivesThey are about half the size of the cultivar variety and while not having much flesh on them are still worth the chew with drinks.DSC_0306

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I attempted cleft grafting a wild olive tree. We'll have to wait a few weeks to see if it's successful or not. I have read up on and am still learning the different techniques used to graft trees from articles on the internet. I have my grafting compound and grafting tape and am definitely raring to go come spring! DSC_0383