Orchard People

[00:00:00] Introduction and Host Welcome
The following program does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Reality Radio 101, its advertisers and sponsors, or its listening audience. Listener discretion is advised.
I'm Stephen Biggs, your guest host on the Urban Forestry Radio Show.
Welcome to the Urban Forestry Radio Show, here on Reality Radio 101. In this radio show and podcast, we learn about fruit trees, permaculture, aboriculture, and so much more. So if you love trees and especially fruit trees, or if you're interested in living a more sustainable life, then this is the place for you.
I'm your host, Susan Poizner of the fruit tree care training website, orchardpeople. com. Thanks for tuning in. And enjoy the show. Welcome
to the urban forestry radio show with your host, Susan Poizner. To contact Susan live right now, send her an email instudio101atgmail. com. And now filling in for Susan Poizner.
[00:01:25] Guest Host Stephen Biggs Introduction
Stephen Biggs Hi everyone, I'm Stephen Biggs, and I'm the guest host today on the Urban Forestry Radio Show. Susan's off this month, and she asked me to do a show on a topic that just fascinates me, olive trees.
I'm a horticulturist, avid gardener, and I'm the author of the book, Grow Figs Where You Think You Can't. And, I'm really delighted to be with you today.
[00:01:51] Fascination with Olive Trees
Now, the first time I saw olive trees growing in the ground here in Canada, I was on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The olive trees were espaliered against a house, and they had Christmas lights draped over top of them.
I was with Bob Duncan, and he runs the nursery and demonstration orchard Fruit Trees and More, and what he told me was that his olive trees are warm enough most winter nights there in Victoria, but when it gets too cold, he turns on the incandescent Christmas lights, which give off heat, and then he drapes an insulating fabric over the wall.
I was also surprised to learn that olives can be grown on some of the southern gulf islands in British Columbia. And I can tell ya, I sure had a bad case of zone envy as I flew back to Toronto. By the way, I returned home from that trip with an olive tree, a medlar tree, and a kefir lime tree stuffed in my suitcase.
And I'd gone out to BC with an empty suitcase knowing that I'd be visiting nurseries. And I really wanted another variety of olives so that I could get fruit from the two pot grown olive trees that I'd been nurturing for over a decade here in Toronto. it's over three years later. I've still never had an olive.
It's a bit disappointing, but nevertheless, I find my olive trees are stunningly beautiful. I just love the way those grey leaves shimmer in the light. Maybe you're lucky enough to garden somewhere that olive trees can survive the winter. Maybe, like me, you have olive trees in pots and you just hope to be able to get a few fruit from them.
Or maybe you just love the look of the trees. Whatever the case, our guest today will share with us his olive growing expertise.
[00:03:37] Guest Introduction: Cary Cloud
Our guest is Cary Cloud from the nursery Olive Tree Growers in North Central Florida. His website is OliveTreeGrowers. com Cary's specialty is container growing large potted specimen olive trees.
In the past, he's grown olive trees in olive friendly gardening zones, but he describes the weather in his current location as being a little bit too mercurial, too changeable, and too unpredictable for olives. And that does give Cary the occasional challenge. When we were emailing back and forth to arrange for him to join me on the show today, he had to deal with two different cold weather emergencies.
[00:04:19] Challenges of Growing Olive Trees
Cary will tell us today about what he does, how he got into growing olives. He'll share some insights about growing olives and then give tips for growing olives in less than ideal climates. Before we start, I'd love to have your stories and your questions. Do you grow olives? And if so, send your questions.
If you have an olive growing tale to share with me, send that too. Email us at instudio101@gmail. com And remember to include your first name. and the city that you're writing from. That's instudio101 at gmail dot com. Now, Cary Cloud of Olive Tree Growers is on the line with me. Cary, thanks for joining us on the show today.
Hi, Stephen. Pleasure to be with you. And tell us what it's like today in Florida. Oh, it's around 80 degrees. mostly sunny. Light breeze. the trees are happy. Yeah. Good to hear. I was looking at the photos on your website before I came in today, Cary, and, in the one of them, the sun is shining between two rows of olive trees, and, it just looks like the leaves are aglow.
It looks really beautiful. For, people who haven't been amongst olive trees, I wonder, can you describe what it's like? they look different in every light. They, It can be very shiny on top of the leaf, which is glossy and a medium green, but the undersides of every cultivar, the undersides of the leaves are a beautiful silver.
And so the least bit of breeze shows the silver underneath the leaves because the branches are very flexible and the leaves are arranged more or less in a whorl around the stem so you can see, fronts of tops of leaves and bottoms of leaves at the same time. And. several well known painters, including Van Gogh and Renoir, have had a lot to say about how difficult it was to paint the olive trees because of their ever changing look.
capturing all those different shades and angles, then. Sounds beautiful. there's, letters to his brother in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam about how he can't come home from southern France yet. Captivated by trying to capture the, light in these olive trees. Wow. Wow. Now tell me, did you grow up around olive trees?
Were I, you said you grew up on a farm, but, no olives then. Hey, no, there was no one growing olives there. now my first experience with it was in 1989 I found a small olive tree for sale in a fruit tree nursery. And I planted it on St. George Island in the beach front of the Gulf of Mexico.
And it did so well there. My main interest was, here's a tree, a broadleaf tree that can stand up to the wind better than even the native Yaupon holly and wax myrtle and even the pines stood up to the wind. And that was my initial interest. Not only is this tree pretty, it can totally stand up to gulf front conditions.
And, That's when I decided I needed to get more of them. At the time, I wasn't even expecting it to fruit. I didn't even think about it. And then later on we found that they fruit better there than they do, I would venture to say, any place in the southeast. I was just going to say, I certainly don't associate olives with Florida, so I guess it's not surprising that you hadn't seen them that frequently.
No, only in the last ten years have farmers It's been planting olives, on scant evidence that it's a realizable goal to, to make olive oil and make money off of it. And you can get enough of olives to feed yourself if that's what you want to do off a tree here, but you won't get olives every year and you won't get a quantity of olives in most places in Florida, virtually all, almost all places in Florida to make it an agricultural enterprise.
but the, beach that I originally planted olives on is the one place in Florida that gets just exactly the right temperature range, that's a very important thing. And also has the salt air, which keeps down any fungal and bacterial pestilence. Okay. And you were saying beach, so are we talking about a sandy soil there?
Oh yeah, we're talking about, we call it ball bearings. We, were professional gardeners there and we said it's like, gardening in ball bearings on the deck of an aircraft Caryr. Huh, what a beautiful description. It's always windy, the soil is absolutely positively drained. But, you have to water, like anything else there.
An olive tree has to be watered regularly, almost every day. And that's one of the myths about olive trees is that they want to be dry. They don't want to be dry. They just don't want to stand in the same water day in and day out. and, I have to tell people that if they're growing olives in most florida soils, which are, most are just sand, it's almost impossible to overwater.
as long as your water table is deeper than the roots can go, that water's going to run right through. Okay. on that note, I remember seeing olive trees growing in Tuscany, in Italy. And the soil looked to me like a bone dry soil that was filled with chunks of rock. And I'm comparing that in my mind to the sandy soils you're talking about.
And it's quite a difference. That's a clay based soil, and so when it's dry on top, it can be moist. A foot down, and also rocks in the soil hold, just by surface tension, hold more water there. but here, there, a quarter of an inch of rain means something. In Florida, it really doesn't mean much at all.
And that's because of your sandy soil there? The rain is just, Yeah, because the soil in Tuscany doesn't dry out quickly. Here, the water just runs right through it. You can get a half inch rain and kick up dust as soon as it stops raining here. Okay. let's move to That's the difference. Let's move to some of The soil is dry on top, but it's got moisture in it at, a foot or two of depth.
So that clay is really holding the moisture, further down. Okay. Okay. Now, if we talk about some of the challenges that, home gardeners might face when, growing olives in, yards and, urban areas, what are the things that you hear about or that you see for all of growing challenges? one thing is that growing your olives in your yard, Sometimes you have no idea what kind of soil is going to be there because the builder brought in something for fill soil somewhere else, from somewhere else.
And in Florida that can be pure sand or, almost like brick mason sand. Or it can be some wet soil, some wetland soil, which is like airless and looks acidic, but that's mostly from tannin. But in any case, it's Basically, very fine particle soil that's just been scooped up from a wet place and put there.
You have to be careful. it depends on whether you got your real soil there or something that the builder left. Sometimes they leave, if there's a masonry house or a stucco house, there's apt to be an incredible amount of lime products left in the soil. So you have to watch out for that.
That's, that would be the first thing. make sure that the soil isn't extremely acidic or extremely sweet. Are there visual cues to, if those brick layers, leave lime products behind? Are there things that, homeowners can look for that might trigger them to realize?
Yeah, you can usually see when you dig, concentrations of where they washed out. Stucco buckets or something like that. And then the soil got stirred around, added to, and stuff like that. There's that. And then the other thing, of course, is if you're suspicious, you can do a pH test. But, And if you're a really practiced gardener, you can taste it and tell if it's acidic or limey.
Taste it? Yeah. Yeah, you can taste the soil. They put a little bit of it on the tip of your tongue, and it's completely different if it's acidic or if it's, extremely sweet. What, aside from, soil in the home garden is a challenge, are there, what are some of the other things One thing is, a lot of times people plant olive trees in a place in their yard where there's really strong light. Say it's, next to a south facing wall. So there's really strong light on the south side and not much light at all on the north side. The tree's going to lean and they're very heliotropic.
They will lean out strongly and once that's done, it's really difficult for somebody to put a stake in the ground and tie it back up, which I get asked about a lot. So what you want to try to do is put it in a place where it has light pretty close to the same amount of light all around. And yeah.
not on the south side of a dark big tree or something like that or a wall or a forest, that, that would be the other thing, and of course, if you're in a northern place, planting it in your yard actually gives you an opportunity to look for your warmest spot and out of the wind spot, that's important.
It also should be said that the winter hardiness of olives is better where winter is winter than like in Florida where it can be 80 degrees today and 16 tomorrow from a cold front and then right back up again. This is good that you mention this because, That hurts olive trees more than, I have olive trees growing in the Portland, Oregon area where a typical winter morning is 35 and the afternoon is 40, 42.
And the olives do fine there. So when you were telling me about the mercurial Here, when we get one day and then we get a cold front, then, even 22, 23 degrees can, cause some splitting of small branches and killing of, small, branches and leaves. Just because of the extremes. The mercurial nature of it, we talked about earlier.
okay. And so that's the kind of cold weather emergency that you were dealing with then, when we were initially corresponding.
[00:16:15] Listener Questions and Expert Answers: Definition of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, How to Get Fruit, Russian Olives and other "Olives"
I have a question that's just come in from Carla. And Carla's asking us, Cary, about the difference between virgin and extra virgin olive oil in relationship to the trees. What's your response to that? extra virgin olive oil means that it has less than 1 percent of free acid. And it has little to do with the tree, except that some, that some cultivars make better oil than others.
But, it's really a matter of how well the olives are grown, mostly. And, the care taken by the, miller. first, they, they say first press, first cold press. All the oil you drink and eat is first cold press oil. extra virgin just means it's very low in acidity, and then there's regular virgin olive oil.
And then beyond that lower grades and all that's chemically extracted after the. Pressing are the centrifuging of oil for food, and that's used for machine oil. Okay. So it's really just a matter of, how good the olives are that year, and how good your miller is. you want oil with less than 1 percent free acid, and that's what can be called extra virgin.
Also, it's cold pressed because you're not supposed to add hot water to it to help separate The oil from the pulp and the juice, although that's often done anyway, from what I've read. But that's what cold press means. They don't add hot water to the mixture to help separate the oil. Okay. I have another question here, Cary.
and this one comes to us from Connor in Ireland. And, He's asking about olives in Dublin, and he says that there they have cool, damp conditions with long summer days. He's in a Zone 9 with little frost, not severe when it comes. And, he said the temperatures rarely exceed 68 Fahrenheit, or about 20 Celsius.
And he, sees olives there, but never any fruit. Why, do you think they're not getting any fruit? The high temperature rarely exceeds 68 Fahrenheit. That's right. Okay, olives don't do much active growing until it's above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Ah. And, so maybe he just doesn't have enough of warm season, hot season, It sounds like it's never too cold. What was the low for Fahrenheit low in general there? he's talking about, very little frost. So I'm guessing somewhere around the freezing point. Yeah, That shouldn't be a problem. Anything above 26, 27 degrees is not a problem. But, we always look forward to days starting to be consistently above 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Because that tells us that the trees are going to start growing. And they make their fruit on the wood that was produced in the previous year. So if you don't get that long whips of wood in a year's growth, then you won't have fruit the next year. So it sounds like their climate there is warm enough for it to survive, but not ideal for the fruit production then, is what you're saying.
Now, I have another question here from Cliff in Toronto, and he's asking about Russian olives. And, maybe we can just sidetrack to that quickly. he's heard about Russian olives, wondering if they're edible and also that he's heard that they're invasive and yet some people talk about using them, interplanting them in fruit orchards.
Do you have any, experience or comments on Russian olives?
We might have lost Cary there. Hey Cary, are you with us? Yeah. Oh, okay, I can't hear anything but a little hissing, but Okay, Steve's got another question for you from Cliff in Toronto. Go ahead, Steve. Okay, yeah, so Cliff in Toronto has been asking about Russian olive trees. And, he's read about Russian olives and is wondering if the fruit on the Russian olives is edible as it is with other olives.
And also, is it, considered an invasive? What do you know about that, Cary? It would be considered invasive here. It's not actually an olive. It's one of those. There's many things that are called some kind of olive that are not related to olive at all. Okay. Here they, they call osmanthus fragrance, which has a small flower like an olive flower.
It's very sweet smelling. They call that tea olive. And a lot of people think olive flowers smell sweet because they're familiar with tea olive. But olive flowers actually have no smell at all. Russian olive is an Elaeagnus. we have Elaeagnus pungens here. I'm not sure what the species name of that Elaeagnus is, but it's, it's considered invasive in places, in a lot of places.
I know it's used a lot in like the inner mountain west where, it's hard to find something to make a hedge or a backdrop with. And they're tough like that. But they're not olive trees at all. Okay. So I wouldn't, know, but I would not suggest eating the fruit until you find out for sure.
okay. It's not really an olive tree. So it's olive in name only. There are several things like that. There's something in South Florida called black olive. And it's a Caribbean tree, Bucida buceras. And people get them confused all the time. Okay. All right.
Now, I grew up eating a lot of olives from jars. and those really insipid black ones that come in cans. And a couple years ago I was really excited when I saw a flat of fresh green olives at a local grocery store. I came home with that flat, but I had no idea what to do with it. That's when I asked my neighbor Helena, she's from Cyprus, just what I should do.
And she said, it's easy Steve, just crack them and put them in brine. The brine, she told me, should be salty enough to float an egg. And I thought that it was going well, until I forgot about them for a little bit too long. And that's when I found that they had gone moldy. I'm hoping to try again this year.
I'd really love to know if I have any chance of harvesting a few olives from my own potted trees. So we'll find out from Cary what makes olive trees fruit and learn about olive tree pollination. Send me your questions, send me your comments, send them for Cary Cloud of Olive Tree Growers. Our email is in studio101@gmail.com, in studio1@gmail.com.
[00:23:57] Curing and Processing Olives
So Cary Cloud, the olives that I was brining went moldy and I think it was neglect on my part, but do you have any suggestions on how to cure olives? on the FA Q page of our website, there's a link to the. University of California at Davis, the Center for the Home Processing of Olives, and it's like a 20 some page PDF file that you can download for free.
And it has six to a dozen, different ways of processing olives in intricate detail there. Excellent. That sounds like a good resource for our listeners, and for me. Yes. I personally prefer the dried olives. I'm not a pickled fruit person. I don't eat much pickled stuff at all.
And it bothered me that I didn't like the olives because I love the oil so much and the tree. But then one year we had a very, dry summer and early fall and the olives, uncharacteristically for Florida, just stayed on the tree and turned black and then began to shrivel. And I tried one of them when all the water was gone from it and it reminded me of the tapenade.
And, which is a paste of olives, with or without other flavors in it. And after trying that and mentioning it to my wife, we started searching and she found the site that we now link on our FAQ page at the University of California, Davis.
[00:25:39] Exploring Olive Oil Costs and Quality
Now, still talking about processing olives, Cary, you were telling us about the difference between the different oils before. I've had Susan email in inquiring about the cost of, olive oil. and I know that's a little bit aside from the growing of trees, but I wonder what insights you can give us into some of the costs that, that olive producers might have to deal with.
there's the cost of harvesting the olives, and, of course, there's fertilizer and time in growing the olives, but, the cost of harvesting the olives is great, and you'd have to be a pretty big farmer to have your own milling operation, and in a lot of Europe, most small farmers and a lot of hobbyist homeowners take their olives to a local mill and have it pressed into oil for a percentage of the oil that it yields.
there's the milling expense, too, of course, and then the bottling and the labeling and the marketing. but there's a lot of variability in the prices of olive oil, and it's not always, it doesn't always follow that the more expensive it is, the better it is. You want to look for the percentage of free acid.
That's a really good indicator of how good an oil is, in my opinion. The lower the percentage, the better the oil I buy from, Greeks in New England who, whose family makes the oil in the Peloponnese Peninsula, Greece in the Kalamata region. but with Koroneiki olives has the lowest acidity I've ever seen at 0.
035 percent like 35, 000ths. But people brag about on their bottles, Much higher oil rates than that. Okay. So we're looking for low levels of free acid. Let's jump back to growing olives at this point.
[00:27:41] Pollination Tips for Home Olive Growers
Now, my potted olive trees flowered once, but they didn't set any fruit. And, they were both the same.
Variety at that point and an unnamed variety, but what pollination pointers can you give me and other home growers of olives? Okay, I remember from, something that you emailed or on your side or something that it only made flowers the year that you left it in an unheated area during the winter.
That's right. And that's absolutely the way it works. but now you, you said you had. Two different cultivated varieties of olive, is that right? I started out with just one, cultivated variety. And, so one was a clone of the other. Some varieties, and they're actually cultivars, Some cultivars are self fertile.
Not a lot of them. Most of them require cross pollination, and sometimes pretty particular other cross pollination. But, Arbequina, for instance, is absolutely self fertile and it's also a great pollinator for any other kind that I've ever grown because it has the longest bloom season. So it's full anthesis will overlap with that of most any other cultivar.
So Arbequina is self fertile and also a good pollinator for other kinds of trees. But just getting flowers and that are. properly fertilized isn't the, everything about it either.
[00:29:17] Challenges of Growing Olives in Different Climates
sometimes you can get flowers and then a temperature change. It doesn't have to freeze. It can just get to be low temperature, maybe in the mid to high 30s for a period after the flowers have reached full anthesis.
And that can keep the floral tube once the pollen is deposited. You can keep the floral tube from developing all the way down to the ovary or just keep it from developing fully so that only a little bit of pollen reaches the ovary and then you can get no olives or what's called shot berries, little olives the size of BBs.
So there's a lot that can go wrong. Another thing that can go wrong if it's outdoors is strong winds or rains when the flowers are at full anthesis can just either scatter the pollen or shatter the flowers. So it, there's a lot that can go wrong, but first of all, you have to absolutely have good nutrition because as I said, fruit is made on the wood that grew in the previous year.
So if it's not growing, it's not making much area that can actually produce fruit. And then the other thing is temperature is just crucial. That's why it's so tenuous here. why I don't think they'll ever be. A commercial olive operation, successful commercial olive operation in Florida because we have such extremes of temperature.
Winter can be cold for two weeks and then in the eighties for two or three weeks and then another cold front. you just never know. ideally for olives, it would slowly cool down in the fall and then. Stay cool to, stay like between jacket and coat weather, but not, heated, insulated underwear weather.
the colder it is without damaging the trees, the better it is for fruiting. some people, some Europeans I've talked with who grew up around olives say that ideally it would just get to 35 degrees and stay there. and that's true. Probably not far off. It wants winter to be winter, and it wants spring to come up slowly.
That's another problem in Florida. When, it becomes spring, it just turns summer right then. Bam. And, that's not good for the olives either. it's a very delicate flowering thing, which is, I get the impression that peaches are very similar. I've heard of that happening with peaches in Georgia, and I suspect it happens with other things.
Maybe even cherries up your way. That just something can just go just not right in the temperature and it can even just an event or two late in the winter or into the spring can, make a very negative impact on fruiting. But assuming good nutrition and water and freedom from pestilence, it's, all about temperature.
I have people who successfully produce olives with potted trees in Manhattan, New York City. And in, Chicago, and New Jersey, and in Janesville, Wisconsin, that those people go to the trouble to just make sure it has the right temperature during the winter. and the other thing that seems to go along a lot with people trying to grow trees in pots is, they think it's getting good light because you can read the newspaper there, but it's not nearly enough light for an olive tree.
Okay. So they start shedding leaves. Olive trees will, plants will tell you how much light they need, plants that do well as house plants that in low light have great big leaves. They're jungle understory plants, or forest understory plants. They have big leaves so they can make photosynthesis with less sunlight.
Trees with little leaves, especially little leathery leaves that are coated with a silvery protection like olive tree leaves, they need a lot of light, strong light. And to grow olives indoors and get fruit, you either need to move them back outside in the sun every time it's not below freezing, or have professional plant lighting.
Okay.
[00:33:45] Best Olive Varieties for Home Growing
and jumping back now to varieties, we had another question from Connor in Ireland about the best varieties to seek out, and you said that the Arbequina is a great choice because it's self fertile and that bloom overlaps. Are there other varieties we should recommend as Well, that would be The one that I definitely would recommend.
I don't know what other cultivars might be available. I know I have had emails and photos from people much farther north in, in England than I would have thought who had olive trees that had fruit on them. And I don't know what cultivars those were, but I would think that probably, Picual, P I C U A L, which is another Spanish cultivar.
Would be a good one to try, and it's a bigger olive than Arbequina. Arbequina is a small olive, under 2 grams. And Picual is a medium sized to big olive, 4 to 6 grams. Okay. Probably 2 to, 3 to, eh, 3 to 5 grams, something like that. Picual. Okay, very good. And, and I don't know what else might be available, but those would be the two, self fertile, most coal hardy.
And probably the most available because I know a lot of the trees in Great Britain come from France, initially. Okay.
Now, at the beginning of the show I told you how I squeezed an olive tree into my suitcase and brought it home. I brought it home as a companion for the two olive trees that I've been growing in seven gallon pots for years. And I really hoped that if I got another variety, olives would follow, and they didn't.
And, Cary and I, my guest Cary, were talking earlier about the fact that I only once ever had blooms, and that was the year that my olive trees were in a cold sunroom. And since then, my olive trees have been spending the winter Not in a sunroom because I don't have it anymore, but they get a dark garage or they're in my warm dining room and there's no more bloom.
So I have on the line with me now Cary Cloud from Olive Tree Growers in Dunnellan, Florida and we'll talk more about tips for succeeding with olives at home. Hi there, Cary. Hi, Stephen.
[00:36:14] Winter Care for Potted Olive Trees
So for people growing olives in cold climates, potted olives, let's talk more about what we can do to encourage flowering.
You were saying that you have, talked to people in places like Manhattan and Wisconsin, and, what, kind of tips can you share for actually not just growing the plant, but getting bloom and fruit on those potted olive trees? All about temperature. that's assuming that there's nutrition and water enough.
But, once you have the growth, olive's fruit on the previous year's growth, but temperature is crucial. If it doesn't get below 55 degrees, you're probably never going to have any fruit. And a lot of people bring their trees and potted trees into a place that's more, warmer than 55 degrees. And ideally, you won't have extreme swings in temperature either.
You want it to be cold, but not freezing. And you want it not to warm up. You certainly don't want temperatures over 70 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. And you have to have temperatures below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. And it really is the best if it just stays a little bit cold all winter long, and then warms up slowly.
That's the ideal situation. Okay. And is that so that you don't get, the plant trying too rapidly to grow then? Suddenly coming out of, dormancy and growing too quickly?
Are you there, Cary? Cary, are you there? Hello, Cary? We might have lost him because of his cell signal. I think. Cary, are you there? Yep, let me try to get Cary back on the line, okay, Steve? Okay.
And, when we were talking earlier with Cary, we were talking about varieties, and he recommended Arbequina and Picual. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. P I C U A L. And I should mention that the Arbequina is the the variety that I came home with in my suitcase after my trip to British Columbia when I visited a nursery there and I said Can you sell me an olive tree that's most likely to give me olives and most likely to give me olives on my existing trees?
That's the, olive tree that I came home with. And I think Cary's there. Are you there, Cary? Yes, I'm here. Okay, sorry about that folks. We got a cell signal we lost on Cary, but, Cary's back with us. Okay. And, Cary, we've had a question come in from Alexis, who's wondering about the difference between table olive trees and oil olive trees.
Are they the same, or are they different types of trees? No, they're the same, and in most places where olives are grown, whatever olive they grow is used both ways. there are some olives that are so small that it's impractical to use them for table fruit, such as Chemlali, which is grown in, along the coast in Tunisia.
and some people, consider, it's depends on where you're from. Some people think that, it's better to have table olives that are small olives. That's the popular attitude in a lot of Southern France and in a lot of the, Southern, Coast of the Mediterranean. And then other people, particularly in Italy and in, the islands around there, they like really, big olives for their table fruit.
So it's, just a matter of personal taste. a lot of people say, Oh yeah, those olives are really big, but they don't have good texture and flavor. And, of course, those big olives are often flavored with other things. olives are by nature extremely bitter, so if you have a big olive, you have more bitterness to get out, so it's going to take more processing.
but it's just a matter of personal preference, really. Most olives are used both ways. They often pick the best olives for table fruit and then pick the general picking for oil. Okay, so it's really a personal preference. That's right. All right.
[00:40:59] Yield Expectations for Home-Grown Olive Trees
Now Stan has sent us a question and he's wondering how many olives would an average tree yield?
Is it enough to make it worthwhile for someone to grow one tree? What do you think about that? Yeah, in a place where everything's good for it, and it can produce its maximum, depending on the cultivar because some are much bigger trees than others, from 50 to 125 pounds of olives per tree. And it takes 50 pounds of olives to make a gallon of olive oil with a good press, good system.
50 pounds for one gallon. Okay. And, I'm thinking back to the trees that I have Cary. They're about 7 feet tall. And, if I were ever to succeed in getting olives on those trees of mine, which I really hope I do after we talk today, what kind of yield do you think you could get off of a tree that size? Seven foot tree, and is it what, four or five feet wide, or?
It's a seven foot tree with a ball at the top. so it's maybe as wide as, a bit wider than a person. Okay. if you get maximum fruit from it, Probably, maybe just no more than like a quart or a half gallon. Something like that. Okay. So it would be enough for somebody to, to brine and have some table olives that they can say they've grown themselves.
Yeah. Okay. Let's, jump back, Cary, to some of the people you've talked to in cold zones in Wisconsin and Manhattan. I'd love to know, what are they doing to make their trees survive the winter? a lot of those people are people I sold trees to. I used to ship a small tree five feet tall in a two gallon pot, five feet tall and only two, two and a half, three feet wide.
And I eventually quit doing it because so many people had trouble with it, but some people did it very well. And it's a matter of keeping that temperature right in the winter. And also. It takes a little attention to grow an olive tree in a pot. It's a much more difficult thing to do than growing a, a flowering tropical or something in a pot.
it wants to be a great big tree with the root system spread out for 30 feet in diameter. And, you have to take much closer attention to it than you would if you were growing it in the ground.
[00:43:45] Innovative Methods for Protecting Olive Trees in Cold Climates
Now, we have also heard of people growing olive trees in the ground in places with cold winters.
the first couple of times I heard about the Chicago burial of olive trees, I thought somebody was just pulling my leg. Eventually, I talked to people who had enough gravitas to convince me that, yeah, we do this. And what they say they do is dig around all the way, three quarters of the way around the tree, and then dig a trench out from the tree.
And then they bend it over into this trench, and they cover it with leaves and soil for the entire winter. And then they stand it up again, and they say it leafs out again, after that. I haven't actually seen that, but I've been told that by many people. And also, one of the most interesting schemes I've heard is a lady in Philadelphia, who, She has a chimney on the south side of her house, and so she has her olive tree planted near the chimney, and she builds a fence around the tree in the fall, and then when it starts to get too cold for the tree, she fills that up with leaves, and then puts a cloth cover over the top.
And it being on the south side near the chimney helps a lot. I've also heard of people using those shake and break heat packs like you would use in a camp, or they Different sizes of them for in your boots or whatever. and, actually putting, covering the tree and then putting those heat packs in there, which probably would have to be changed two or three times during the night.
Wow. And another thing I've heard of people doing, this is a construction contractor who happened to have the big incandescent lights, and he just puts those on it at night. And that keeps it from getting too cold. here in North Florida, where sometimes it can get, the coldest I've seen is 13 degrees.
And that's just sudden, a cold front that comes out of northern Canada and comes right here. and I just, when my trees were smaller, and we had a couple of periods like that, you need something below, anything below 20, I would just lay them down and cover them with one layer of that. white frost fabric.
It's like an unwoven cotton. It's more like lint from a cotton making place that's just pressed together in the fabric. Big sheets of fabric. And that keeps it okay. I mean it, biomass creates heat too, so when you pile things up, and then cover them, they stay warmer than if it's just standing alone and covered.
So, that works here, but where it's going to be Below 20 for many, hours. that's going to take much more effort. But, I also know people, in Manhattan who bought trees from me, who happen to have a deck, a precious commodity there, would bring their trees out in the winter every day that they could.
And that just made all the difference. And then when they brought them in, it wasn't all the way into the heated part of the house. It was in a transition room that stayed cooler. But, the people who bring their trees inside, I've had emails from people who bought trees from me, and they had it outside until the first really hard freeze, but it had been quite cool, and the tree was okay with that, but then when they brought it inside, the tree thought, oh, winter's over, it's spring now, and it started setting flowers, So I have people calling me and and asking what's those little bunches of white grapes on my olive tree and it's unopened flower buds. Oh, okay. So it can get fooled into thinking it's spring. If you leave it outside through some pretty cool weather, and then bring it inside before your first really hard cold front, it could be fooled into fruiting.
Best to, just keep it as cool as possible, and not be fooled. Without being frozen, and then not having it inside a heated house. Once it's cool, keep it cool until spring then. Okay. that would be what it would take really. and I have customers who bought 7 gallon trees and now they have them in 45 or 65 gallon pots.
And they bring them in and out with some dolly systems. But, it, there's all kind of ways, it just takes, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of preparation, but, some avid gardeners find it worth the trouble. I certainly do myself. They're, beautiful trees. And even though I don't get olives, I'm still hoping for olives, but even though I don't get olives, it's worth it just for the way the light comes through them and, the way you were describing them when we started out today.
They're just beautiful trees. Yes, absolutely. And most of my sales now are for that purpose. I sell bigger trees, 45 gallon to 100 gallon. And a lot of them go to events. We delivered a tree. to Toronto, or we couldn't go across the border, we delivered it to Niagara Falls and someone picked it up there, a couple of trees about two months ago for an event, I don't even know what the event was, it was, I was contacted by the event paneling person, they were just happy to find the trees and someone was willing to take them right away to Niagara Falls.
So we, we did send some to Toronto a couple, three months ago. Okay. That's good to know that there will be more olive trees here in Toronto.
[00:49:43] Conclusion and Resources for Olive Tree Enthusiasts
Cary, with that, we're going to wrap up. We're out of time, and I'd like to say thank you very much for telling us all about olives and how you grow them there in Florida and what we can try to do in other parts of the world to get olive trees to grow for us.
thanks very much for joining me on the show today. Thank you, Stephen. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Cary. So my guest today was Cary Cloud of Olive Tree Growers in Dunnellon, Florida. And Cary's website is OliveTreeGrowers. com And if you have more olive growing questions, there's lots of good information on there.
So the Urban Forestry Radio Show is just about over for this month. I hope you've enjoyed our show. And, I'd like to remind you that there's so much more that you can learn on the Orchard People website. That's orchardpeople. com. There's blogs, there's videos, online fruit tree care training courses for arborists, for gardeners, for home growers.
And, if you like this show, do go through the past episodes in the archive at orchardpeople. com slash podcasts. We have shows about fruit trees, food forests, permaculture, arboriculture, and of course if you want to listen to this show again, go We will add it soon. While you're visiting OrchardPeople.
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