Olea, Olive Tree 'Arbequina'

I grow an 'Arbequina' in my garden in Surrey, British Columbia which flowers but doesn't really set much fruit. It is a beautiful plant ...Read Morewith graceful foliage and form. It has had some bark splitting from cold and exposure to winter sun but has healed well and puts on a lot of growth each June and July. Apparently the larger they get, the less chance of winter damage.

Olives typically don't have surface roots and this is not a large tree. I've placed one about 6' from the house and 3' from the driveway...Read More and don't anticipate a problem. I don't know about 2' away, but doubt it will hurt your foundation. It was one of 2 types suggested for my area, so I started with this and a mission olive (large tree). After later research I found no issues with other varieties and I now have 6 types growing and all are doing well... the cultivars can be found on-line for mail order. Due to it's size, the arbequina cures faster, and thus to me seems to have a milder taste; taste will be somewhat dependent on the curing method. Don't overwater; when the rest of the yard is withering the olives still look happy, though I still water about once a week; supposedly root rot can be an issue if too wet, but in sandy FL the soil doesn't hold water for long. Fertilizer may make them grow a bit faster, but supposely it is not a major factor in fruit production unless the soil is totally lacking; these things developed in very poor soil conditions so thrive just about anywhere you put them. All of mine can handle temperatures down to 22 degrees, some into the teens, so I don't worry about covering them here (NW of Tampa).

I'm not sure if I have this tree growing in my garden. It is a volunteer and is over 5 ft tall, about 3-4 yrs old. I brought a sample to ...Read Moremy local garden center and they ID'd it as possibly an arbequina. I would love for it to be an olive tree, esp one that is known for its quality olive oil! If it is, my concern is that it is growing less than a foot away from my house, next to the cinderblock/cement foundation. I hope the root doesn't spread thick and outward. I wonder, if anyone should know, whether I may be able to successfully transplant this tree to another location? What are your suggestions?

I bought two babies (grafted cuttings) in spring '09 at Rose Garden for a whopping $30 each, after being told this was the only variety o...Read Moref Olive that could successfully be grown in the humid, rainy Southeast. The nursery lady told me there was one in a nearby neighborhood that produces well and has been in the ground for almost a decade. I immediately moved them from their 1-gallon pots into big plastic 10-gal. pots. One has such vigorous growth that I'm constantly pruning it back; this is truly an incredible specimen and has gone from a 2 foot whip to a 5 foot mini-behemoth in a year and a half. The other developed a fungus at the point where it was staked, probably due to me tying it too tightly and damaging the bark. This tree is slowly growing back nicely, albeit without a central leader (main trunk), but I will get to work on fixing that via training.

They both have had absolutely zero cold damage, even in the notorious January '10 freeze. (The temp. was down to about 20º for three nights in a row, with a wind chill of around 15º.) They were huddled up on a porch next to the house, to be fair; but still, the cold tolerance of these little whippersnappers has been very impressive to me. They even put out new growth all winter long.

I mentioned that they are in plastic pots because I should have used clay ones in order to help with drainage, considering how much rainfall we get here. But I have read that olive farmers in the Mediterranean water their trees heavily before harvesting, so it's not as much of a xeric species as some would have you believe. There are some impressive large olive trees (of unknown cultivar) growing in Old Metairie in the yard of a Medjool- and Bismarckia-dotted house that Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie wanted to buy last year; the owners are said to have rejected their offer of around $8 million. So yeah, this is a marquee tree, and I hope they do well in this area in the long run, hence why I was willing to spend $60 to find out. I have read they are susceptible to the fatal ganoderma fungus in rainy of areas, sadly. Which is why I will be planting them in a very sandy amended bed and will never ever consider watering them (once they're in the ground). To be honest, they look so similar to the Live Oak that if one wants the olive look in one's yard around here, the best thing would be to just "bonsai" a young Live Oak in one's yard, but then the neighbors might think you're on crack. Live oak acorns even resemble black olives... I've read about farmers in (presumably not-so-humid parts of) Texas trying to grow Arbequinas on a mass scale, so we'll see how that works out.

By the way, the variety name is pronounced Ar-buh-KEE-nuh, not Ar-buh-KWIE-nuh as I'd originally thought. It was developed in the wondrous Catalonia region of Spain, and is said to be one of the best olives for making oil; some olive snobs aver that it's the best. The Arbequina olive has a relatively short shelf life, though, so it's not considered a good "table olive" for eating. They are tiny and fairly bitter compared to other olives, but like I said, they're mainly grown with the intent of being made into oil.