From Rosalind Creasy
Edible Landscaping Skills

Olive (Olea europaea)

Effort
Very easy to grow
Some pruning needed
Harvesting and preserving are time-consuming

Zones
9-10

Thumbnail Sketch
Evergreen tree or shrub 25-30 ft. tall
Propagated from cuttings and by grafting and budding
Needs full sun
Leaves are gray-green with whitish undersides, narrow, 1-3 in. long
Blooms in spring
Flowers are fragrant but insignificant
Fruits are edible if processed; harvested in fall or winter
Used as multistemmed tree, interest plant, screen, large shrub, to line a driveway, near an herb garden

How to Use

In the Kitchen
Salad Niçoise, pot roast Provençale, Italian poultry stuffing, Greek olives, Spanish olives—the recipes alone indicate that the Mediterranean area is olive country. The fruits of the olive tree are versatile and add great richness to many dishes. They also are a favorite garnish for salad plates and sandwiches. However, I cannot with good conscience urge you to try preserving olives yourself. The standard procedure for removing the bitterness from the fruits requires that they be soaked in a lye solution. Not only is lye a caustic substance, and so difficult to work with, but also the risk of botulism developing in a nonacid home-canned product is great. All things considered, it is best to purchase canned olives.

However, pickled olives and olive oil are less hazardous to produce. Olive presses are available for making olive oil at home. The flavorful oil of olives improves salads and adds a distinctive flavor to browned meats and poultry, so it is worth preparing fresh and keeping as a staple. Although admittedly olive oil is a chore to produce, the superior product and the resulting money savings for heavy users make the effort worthwhile.

In the Landscape
Olive trees are extremely beautiful—in fact, they are among the loveliest of the edible ornamentals. Their gnarled trunks, graceful branching structures, and soft, gray-green foliage give them the appearance of living sculptures. Nevertheless, these trees are often cursed as a nuisance, since their food crop is exceedingly messy, but they are so beautiful that people put up with the inconvenience to use them as ornamentals. Olive trees are particularly effective in a Spanish- or mission-style landscape; their sculptural qualities are shown to their best advantage against white stucco walls.

Olive trees should never be planted near patios, sidewalks, or driveways. Their oil, although tasty in salads, is slippery and staining on hard surfaces. Nor should they be planted in a lawn. The ideal location is with ground covers or a mulch.

Note: If your yard is small, I do not recommend that you use up growing space for edibles with an olive tree. The trees are numerous but very few people process their olives. Whenever I have asked neighbors if I might have some of their olives, naturally expecting to share the resulting olive oil with them, they have readily assented, delighted to know that their olives would be used. If olives have been made available to you, be sure to find out if the trees have been sprayed with pesticides or if herbicides have been applied. Avoid olives that have been so treated.

How to Grow

Climate
Olives need high heat and some winter chill to fruit properly. They are hardy to 13ºF. The fruits, which ripen late in fall, need a very long summer to mature. The fruits are injured by temperatures below 27ºF. High humidity inhibits pollination, so these magnificent trees are limited to the warmer parts of the Southwest for fruit production.

Exposure
Olive trees need full sun. Soil Olive trees adapt to a wide variety of soils but must have good drainage. Fertilizer Occasional applications of nitrogen fertilizer increase fruit production, but trees on normal soils generally produce plenty of fruits without being fed.

Watering
Olive trees are extremely drought tolerant, but deep watering in arid climates once or twice a summer increases fruit production.

Pruning
Prune these trees to shape them. Enjoy accenting their graceful lines. Extreme pruning cuts down on fruit production, but moderate pruning to shape and thin creates a beautiful tree. If you want very large olives, thin the fruits. Olives tend to bear fruits on alternate years. By pruning moderately and thinning the fruits, you can modify this tendency.

Pests and Diseases
Olive are usually unaffected by pests and diseases. You might have some problems with scale or a disease that produces galls (a swelling of plant tissue) on the twigs or branches. Cut those out, and sterilize your tools between cuts.

Do not plant olives where verticillium wilt is a problem, since these trees are quite susceptible. It is not a good idea to plant strawberries as a ground cover under olive trees, as strawberries sometimes carry this disease.

Harvesting
Pick olives green for curing or green or black for olive oil. To get a very high quality oil, use green olives. You will trade off on amount, however, since fully ripe and black olives produce more oil. Olives must be processed to remove the bitterness before they are edible.

How to Purchase

Forms and Sources
Buy olive plants in containers at your local nursery or online.

Pollinators
Most olives are self-pollinating.

Varieties
Make sure you choose a fruiting variety. The “fruitless” varieties usually do produce some fruits, but their crops are poor. The following varieties have good productivity:

‘Manzanillo’—large fruits; low growth habit.

‘Mission’—small fruits with good flavor and high oil content; the most readily available variety.

Making Olive Oil
Pick the olives when they are still green. Dry them on racks for a week or ten days in a warm place out of the sun, turning the olives a few times a day to ensure even drying. Alternately, use a food dryer and follow the directions.

Press the dried olives in an olive press or a cider press. During pressing, do not squeeze hard enough to crush the pits (the pits contain oil but it is inferior for eating and is used to make soap). Collect the juice as it comes out.

Strain the juice through cheesecloth into glass jars and allow it to separate from remaining solids. Siphon the oil off, using plastic tubing. Now the two- to three-month process of clarifying begins. During that time, as sediment builds up on the bottom of the jar, siphon off the oil again, leaving the sediment on the bottom and again straining the oil through multiple layers of cheesecloth. This can be done every two weeks for as many as five times. When the oil is clear, pour it into sterilized jars and seal. Once the oil is opened, refrigerate it, since it becomes rancid at room temperature.
~
See also Rosalind’s Creating Bountiful Yards With Organic Edible Landscaping
and Greg’s Organic Olive Popper’s Recipe
~~
Rosalind Creasy is author of Rosalind Creasy’s Recipes From The Garden: 200 Exciting Recipes from the Author of the Complete Book of Edible Landscaping and many others.
Excerpted from: The Gardener’s Handbook of Edible Plants, Rosalind Creasy, 1986
Illustration Credit: Marcia Hawthorne
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
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