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2010 @ Oregon Olives™ |
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Oregon Olives |
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Think global - buy local. |
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Oregon Olives |
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Oregon Olive Oil |
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Oregon Olive Trees |
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Jan 31, 2010
Salt dried black olives Take about half a cup of home cured salt dried black olives (these are Pendolino), add a quarter teaspoon each crushed dried red pepper and dried rosemary, sprinkle with extra virgin olive oil (here we used a robust single varietal Ascolano), stir, and enjoy!
Don't have any home cured olives? You need to plant a couple of olive trees! Pendolino is one of the best for our climate; and turns black ripe the soonest of any cultivar we grow. |
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David Lawrence: David@OregonOlives.com |
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Mar 15, 2010
Ladybugs love olive trees I'm not exactly sure why, but they do; I see many more ladybugs on olive trees than I do on any other tree or bush. Especially they seem to like to try to jam themselves into any crevice (to provide shelter and warmth?); this is a Pendolino tree that had it's top blown off in the Dec 2008 storms. They are especially noticeable this time of the year, as we walk the groves, waiting patiently for spring to arrive. |
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April 21, 2010
"Mature" SHD Olive Trees in California Here is a photo of a Super High Density Arbequina olive tree plantation in California (pictures taken April 14, 2010). Note the four foot spacing between trees, and that the trees are at their full height (about seven feet). This grove is probably at the height of its productivity (see discussion of SHD: Super High Density, or not? ), and thus is a "mature" olive grove. Kind of looks something like what a grape grower would love, eh? |
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What I find most interesting though, is the amount of damage the trees have. My guess is about 50% of the leaves are dead: note bare branches, brown leaves attached to dead broken twigs, and leaf litter on the ground. Mechanical harvesting is quite brutal; but else wise these trees look very similar in the extent of the canopy damage as local large SHD Arbequina. Which show more damage than local large non-SHD Arbequina olive trees... |
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June 05, 2010
Beer and olive oil? The "Reken Estate" olive trees were laid out very far apart by modern standards. The owner, Karl Reken, wants very tall trees, so the trees were spaced much farther apart than might be considered normal. He very much likes the color green, and brown somehow conjures up thoughts of getting old. He is also much enamored with the idea of inter-cropping as he saw in Sicily; but I drew the line at planting grape vines amidst the olive trees. Tomatoes were his next thought; we settled on grain. As was done in classical times in Athens and Roman controlled lands. From foreground to background: six row barley (used mostly for animal feed), hard red spring wheat (for making bread), oats (rototilling it under makes the most mellow soil you can imagine!), and two row barley (used mostly for beer). Right now it looks pretty much like a lawn (grains are just cultivated grasses anyway). For use as a spring cover crop, it would be roto-tilled under when it was still green and just beginning to show the seed heads. Maybe in about a month. But I think we are going to let it grow and actually harvest some this year, when the time comes. Who knows, maybe I'll learn to make whole grain beer! That goes well with olive oil, doesn't it? Or should I stick with home made whole grain sourdough breads?? |
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June 17, 2010
First Olive Blossoms of the Year This years winner for earliest blossoms: Grignan. Grignan is a new variety for us, originally from the Veneto in Italy. Veneto is one of the very farthest north of any traditional olive growing districts; to the east of Lake Garda and near the city of Verona. In fact, slightly farther north than even we are! Grignan is said to be capable of producing very good olive oil with a distinctive taste. Well, we aren't there yet, but having blooming olive trees is a good place to start! This spring is going to be another late spring for us, by perhaps a couple of weeks. Which means the peak of olive blooming may well be in the first days of July. The season started late even down in northern California, with the first olives blooming in the northern coastal olive districts around June 1, about a month later than usual for them. |
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July 1, 2010
Waiter! Bring me water! One has to feel just the tiniest bit sorry when experts move beyond their competency. For example, consider this article. A noted University of California authority tries to extrapolate what he knows about growing olive trees to Oregon conditions, and gets important information wrong: - Oregon does not have a problem with rain or humid weather during bloom. As of today, blooming has barely started this year, peak bloom is still a week away. As all of us here in north west Oregon know, we have beautiful weather in July. Like the third bear says: just right. For people, and for olive trees (and for bears!). - Oregon does not have disease pressure. California has major problems with olive leaf spot (peacock spot), olive knot and verticulum wilt; none appear to be of any major economic importance here in Oregon. We don't spray; in fact don't even own any spray equipment. - All olive growing districts in the United States have problems with freezing temperatures in winter. We here in Oregon will undoubtedly feel pressure to pick "early"; so what? This just means we probably wont be able to compete in the "golden, buttery ripe" style of olive oil most years. Do you like irony? This expert pushes California olive oil, the very first example he chooses is McEvoy Ranch (indeed, the very first California olive oil we ever bought: a fine Tuscan style green extra virgin olive oil). Appreciate the irony as it goes by: when Nan McEvoy was planting olive trees, the University of California - Davis "experts" told her it would never work: her land was too cold, with "a great deal of fog and cool wind" ("The Olive in California", pgs 149-150). Waiter! Bring me water for my parched olive trees! 07/01/10: three Verdale olive trees, only the second cultivar to bloom here this year, so far: |
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July 12, 2010
Clone Names and Clone Games A local grower once made the claim he had searched far and wide, and discovered the exact and only three olive tree clones that would flourish in Oregon (Arbequina i-18, Arbosana i-43, Koroneiki i-38). These are clonal selections, all patented and owned by AgroMilloria SA. And by the way this grower is a dealer for NursTech olive trees, a wholly owned subsidiary of AgroMilloria, which sells these exact three olive trees. Funny coincidences in this world. I had an interesting conversation with a neighbor, who totally independent of what we are doing decided to plant olive trees. His point was that he has planted his trees, and doesn't much care if the trees I have to offer are better. Not even willing to graft them over, as may be. In the next breath, he admitted this wasn't the way the Oregon fine wine industry developed: in the beginning there were many cultivars and clones being planted; and it just happened that pinot noir was the consensus choice as the best for our area (and that subsequently many vineyards were then grafted to pinot noir, and indeed to the very specific clones that had shown to be better). Why should this learning curve be any different for olive trees? The only way we will know what are the best cultivars and clones for Oregon is to plant them. And, to make product from them. There is no reason to think that the clones best for the hot long season climates of California will be the best here (emphatically not true of wine grapes, and almost certainly true of the three olive tree clones mentioned above). Manzanillo is the #1 planted table olive tree in California. In California, it is considered cold sensitive, and so Californians say Manzanillo is not suitable at all for Oregon. 07/04/10 Reken Estate, standard Manzanillo olive tree, planted fall 2008 as a 2 gallon tree: |
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We at Oregon Olives really have research groves (even our experimental Tuscan olive oil production grove is a research grove). We are planting every different olive tree we can get our hands on! Even some that one might think have no chance here in Oregon; like olive trees from very hot desert places like Egypt and Tunisia (the thought being that deserts have very high diurnal temperature swings, and get quite cold at night. These traits are what we are interested in, not adaptation to high heat). So far, a standout variety is Ouslati. 07/11/10 Reken Estate Ouslati olive tree, struck from a cutting in spring 2008: |
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All three of our cuttings that formed trees are doing exceptionally well, including coming through both of the past two extreme winters in pots (almost a death sentence for a lot of cultivars). The punch line: recent DNA testing at our source of Ouslati (the National Clonal Germplasm Repository) has identified Oueslati as being a clone of Manzanillo. Perhaps, the best Manzanillo for growing in Oregon? This is the first year we will let it set a few fruit (hey, it is only two years and a couple of months old!). Records from the NCGR show the fruit as being black ripe there on October 20; plenty of time to ripen here in Oregon even given our normal delayed season as compared to California. Size of the fruit averaged slightly over 10 grams. That's pretty big. Hopefully this fall we shall see what the fruit are like here in Oregon! |
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July 11, 2010
Peak Bloom The olive bloom season is very delayed, even worse than I had thought it would be. On the other hand, what with the change to hot weather, the season is also compressed. Everything is massively blooming, all at once. I can't imagine anybody having pollination problems this year! I am also afraid the weather has kicked us into an alternate bearing pattern, there was strong re-growth and an extremely scanty crop last year due to the December 2008 storms. 07/11/10 Reken Estate Pendolino: |
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July 25, 2010
A Farmer, Working the Land In the old days, farmers bent nature to their will. Olive trees should be trees, darn it, not bushes as they want to be. So farmers sculpted them into trees, merrily hacking and pruning away. If your trees started to alternate bear, well just hack some more branches off in the "on" years. In California, given the wonderful weather, this worked just fine. Fast forward to today, and to the fact that we are trying to grow olive trees on the edge here in Oregon. We are taking a "let the trees guide us" approach, and so far have pretty much limited our interventions to cover cropping and weed control as ongoing yearly farming tasks. Much much less intensive than what the local grape growers do - there are people working the vineyards here almost every week (this week they were doing shoot pruning). "Low maintenance" farming - that's what we olive growers enjoy! For the first time, we are seriously watching the trees to see how much fruit sets - this year we might have to thin some of the fruit due to massive set! Here is a trick from California: it's time to thin when 11 - 16 of the fruits can be placed across the folded center of a business card. Guess it's time to make up our minds as to what to do, eh? |
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Aug 11, 2010
Waiter! Bring me 271,544 1/2 gallons of water! We live in a dry summer Mediterranean climate. Just about the time the fields and meadows dry up and turn brown, all available soil moisture is gone (uh, that's why everything dries up and turns brown!). Right now, I estimate the soil water deficit here at about one third of an acre-foot, which is about 543,085 gallons of water for our five acres of land. But the Reken Estate olive trees (pictured below) are an experiment in true sustainable farming, being dry farmed with no additional watering beyond what rain and snow provide. Prior to about 1980, all olive trees world wide were dry farmed. Now-a-days, almost no trees are being planted with the wider spacing required. Olive trees are very drought tolerant, and can survive perfectly fine with no additional watering, provided they can source their limited water needs from that in the ground. But merely surviving is just the first step - we also need to have a crop! The tighter you space them, the more water you are going to have to provide. At 28' hexagonal spacing on nice deep Jory soil, my estimate is the Reken Estate will do OK, even when full grown, with no watering; Kathy's Grove on thinner poorer soil, spaced at a 20' hexagonal pattern, will need about 271,544 1/2 gallons to date when full grown (a 50% water deficiency from full field saturation). Approximately, of course. And only up until today - more would be required for the rest of the year. One nice rainy week this winter, I need to write this up with a clearer and more in depth web page. It is hard for the average person to understand just how much water agriculture consumes. Even olive trees grown for profit. Reken Estate: grain and olive trees |
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Open Olive Grove and Tour Day
This year the olive trees look good enough that we have decided to have our first open field day and walking tour at Oregon Olive Trees:
Saturday, Sept 11, 2010
See details at:
While the olives will not be anywhere close to full sized and ripe, the weather should still be good!
Nocellara del Belice olives, Reken Estate: |
