Flowers & fruit - 3 January 2012

Although the flowering phase has almost passed, there are still a couple of late bloomers, as can be seen in the images below. Factors like "on" years and "off" years, and the fact that the trees are really way too young to make any meaningful observations yet, etc. aside, I thought it would still be interesting to document their progress. 

In essence, the Barnea were the first to bloom. Very eager trees it seems. However, it doesn't seem to bear lots of fruit. The Frantoio had the most flowers and the SA Verdale seems to be very prolific bearers. The tiny wee bit of a little tree of no more that 30cm high, already has fruit almost the size of peas. For most of the other trees you still almost need a magnifying glass to spot the baby olives! The Manzanilla probably had an "off" year this season, since they had quite a lot of flowers last year (with no fruit), and only a very small number had flowers this year. Given, they were only about a year old at the time. :) The Ascolano and J5 currently appear to be performing quite similar, bearing comparable volumes of flowers and fruit. 

Ascolano - they are all full of blooms and tiny fruit are developing.

Ascolano - tiny little olives.

El Greco - one of the 'one of each' lot, was full of flowers.
This tree had even more flowers than the Frantoio.

Frantoio - most of the flowers are gone by now.

Frantoio - close-up. Tiny fruit visible.

J5 - a lot of flowers still on the trees.

Koroneiki - the last blooms only opening now. The first ones started opening some time ago already.
These trees seem to have a long blooming period?

Manzanilla - no flowers for most of the trees.

There are a few Manzanillas with flowers and they are also slower to develop than the other trees.

SA Verdale - little over eager prolific producers :). The "trees" are about 30cm tall and they
already have the largest fruit of all the trees. Almost pea size.

SA Verdale. They seem to be fairly happy? Or is it just the opposite?
A case of "make fruit while you can for survival?" ... I hope not.

One of each - 2 January 2012

I've decided, just for fun, to buy one of each type of olive tree that I can lay my hands on. It should make for a nice experiment to see how the different trees are doing in our area. We allocated an area amongst the other fruit trees where all the odds and ends are planted.

So far our 'one of each' collection includes:

- Pendolino
- Leccino
- Rakinos
- J2
- Chemlali
- Signore
- El Greco
- Koroneiki
- A mystery tree - one that was here when we bought the land.

Then there's my other curse which forces me buy nearly dead trees in an attempt to "save" them from fatality. As part of that we also have 4 Barnea, 2 Verdale and one each of Frantoio, Ascolano and a J5. The latter 4 also make up the bulk varieties of our grove.

The search continues.