Begin to feed the olive now [February] at the beginning of the month. If using liquid fertilizer, apply at least three times. If your fertilizer is solid, once will be enough. This is to put lots of energy in the roots for the stripping of the tree.

This is the time to do any heavy pruning of the olive, besides thinning of the top and general cutting back. You can seal the cuts. However, with a potted olive, all but the smallest will not heal over. Even in the ground the cuts take forever to heal over, and even then sometimes not at all. This is probably why really old olives are hollow trunked. Although the wood is very hard in time, it will rot when the bark is not there to protect it.

The exposed wood will turn black, so if you use lime sulfur, be sure to put some black India ink to hide the bleaching effect.

After two or three weeks of feeding, remove all the soft tip growth and then proceed to strip all the inner foliage off, leaving only one mature leaf on the end of each branch and twig. Top thinning is important at this time because the olive is top dominant. Develop the inner and lower branches first. The top will finish last. Use copper wire to put movement in the branches and twigs. Olive is tough and will not hold the bend of aluminum unless you use very heavy gauge, and then it is too difficult to put small bends in the branches because these may not be the ones you keep. It is the new growth that will be closer to the trunk and also closer to fine that you will eventually want to keep. These will give you the branch size and shape you want to make a very interesting structure.

After about three weeks, depending on the weather, you will begin to see new buds pop out all over the tree. As soon as the new growth puts out two sets of leaves, cut it back to one set. The leaves will be small. This cut will then produce two new sets of growth; let the growth go to two sets of leaves each, then cut back to one set. Keep this up all during the growing year, and keep feeding too. Next year when you go through this process you will find a great improvement in the structure of the branches.

Looking for an olive tree may be difficult, although there are lots of them around. I feel the miniatures are not as good as the regular varieties. Olives come in different shades of gray green to green. I like dark green, but that is only my preference. The others are just as good. The difficult part of finding a good olive is to find a short trunk that is very thick. Olives grow very fast in height, but thicken very slowly.

Olives will develop suckers around the base. Remove them as soon as they form. If you like a slightly bumpy base, leave the suckers on for six months or so, and then cut them off. As new ones develop, leave them on six months before removing, and you will develop an irregular base.

Repot the olive in May, when the weather stays warm. Be sure to cut off all the down-growing roots and force out the side-growing roots. This will give the base a larger spread in time.

Olives can be put in matte blue or blue-green pots. Shallow pots look best unless you have a very thick trunk (five to seven inches at the base).

Olives can be grown single or as a multiple trunk. If single, the trunk should be fairly straight. A little movement is good, but not myogi [informal upright] style. The trunk can be planted at an angle, but not too extreme. If the trunk is multiple style, try to find one with a dominant trunk and the others of varying sizes—not with several trunks all the same.

Place the tree in full sun. Give it lots of water and food. Soil mix should be on the finer side, but not so fine it interferes with drainage.

(February 1997)

Tags: John Boyce, Olive, Tree Care