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.

Olive oil tasting at Peka Peka - 13 November 2011

The Noble-Beasley's lovely home, with a view on Kapiti island.

This might come as a surprise, but I've never attended an olive oil tasting before. So I was very delighted when Allan (the new chairperson of the Kapiti branch) announced that Tricia and Rob of Noble Estate would host the event. Helen Walshaw led the tasting while Allan and David gave short talks on the ONZ developments and subs, as well as diseases and their control.

After a week of fairly miserable weather leading up to the event, were lucky enough to have a wonderful sunny day for the tasting, so the whole event took place outside in the beautiful surroundings of Noble Estate.

The tasting turned out a very informal affair and Helen kindly agreed to give Gerry and myself the rundown on how it is normally done. Everybody who presses oil (which is just about all the members, except for us :-}) brought a bottle of their oil for the tasting.

Dunking bits of bread (ciabatta?) in good quality oil and tasting it (which is different from how it is traditionally done), is a very pleasant experience. I thought it might be too oily, but not at all. It tasted absolutely divine!

We had a lovely lunch afterwards, courtesy of the branch and everybody who contributed salads.

Getting the formalities out of the way before the tasting. (l-r) Allan, Anne, Helen, David, Paul and Tricia.

The tasting table - interesting how the oils differ in taste and colour.

Gerry putting his newly acquired tasting skills to the test.
Is that a peppery aftertaste?

Feed me ! - chomp chomp chomp

The past two weeks or so have mainly kept us busy clearing grass and weed around the trees and mowing the lawn, which has grown with leaps and bounds since spring eventually stuck its head out. It only took a couple of good rain sessions, coupled with warmer temperatures, to blow life into everything. The fruit trees are either full of tiny little plums, peaches and figs, or still in bloom. The almonds are already sizable fruit. Our olives seems to be "slower" than some of the others I've seen thus far, with ours only now starting to make tiny new branches and leaves. And only here and there the flower buds are starting to show. Could it be that Palmy's temperature stays lower for longer and that trees therefore takes longer to bud after winter?

Chomping down knee-length grass with a weed-eater against a slope is no easy task. And that was all it took - two weeks of occasional rain, warmer weather and voila - grass out of control!

We've been thinking of alternative ways to control the grass and no real solutions have transpired yet. Except for one hopeful, maybe - a Billy Goat. Nope, not the four-legged version, but rather an industrial chomper made in America. It is self propelled, a push model and can handle slopes of up to 20 degrees. I'm sure there's many similar machines out there, but we're looking ... and reading ... and talking ... Who knows, maybe one day we could afford something that will make life a hundred times easier.

And like David who refuse to use copper sprays, so do I refuse to use glyphosates ... But who knows how long we will keep clearing around the trees by hand, before we get fed-up with the tedious job and succumb to RoundUp.

While Gerry were mowing bits by bits, I decided that a good dose of a variety of sprays for the olives is just what the doctor ordered. We've been postponing the spraying since MetService has been predicting rain and/or showers for the past week. And not a drop has fallen. So, this time I decided, bugger this, they don't know what they're talking about, and started spraying the fruit trees.

A mix of these will hopefully give the trees super-duper energy!

I only have a 5 litre sprayer and after the second batch figured that I can cover about 50 of the trees with 5 litre. This give them a fairly good coverage. The mix consisted of fish emulsion - to deter rabbits (I hope - so far so good), liquid copper (for fungus related diseases and to deter slugs and snails), Bio-Gold which seems like the best "all-in-one" fertiliser around, and Raingard (to prevent the fertiliser from raining off). It took the biggest part of the afternoon to spray all the trees and Gerry also finished the last section of the grass. Unfortunately the patches that were first cut, some days ago, already needs their next cutting. And so it goes in summer ...

And here's the best part! Exactly 10 minutes after we wrapped up, cleaned everything and put it away, it started to rain ... How's that for luck - just after the trees have been sprayed! The first hour or so was just a drizzle, but then it really came pouring down for the rest of the evening. We measured 25mm in the rain meter. I'm not convinced that the raingard would have coped with the amounts of water coming down... Time will tell.

And like Andrew suggested: "Every saturday that looks good in terms of the weather, should be a spray day". Maybe we should just follow this strategy. :)

Olives New Zealand AGM and awards - 15 October 2011

A whole day of fun and events was planned, starting off with the AGM and lunch at Tatum Park. Thereafter we all went over to David and Helen's for presentations by two Spanish gentleman (organised by Goran Erdevicki from GEA): Juan Vilar and Javier Hidalgo - experts by all accounts on all things olive - followed by the fieldwalk in the Kapiti Olives grove (last year’s Olives New Zealand EVOO ‘Best in Show’ Award). The awards dinner was planned for the evening back at Tatum Park, followed by the semi-final WCR game between France and Wales.

Gerry and I decided to go for the morning and afternoon events only, as the dinner was another expense that we couldn't afford currently. We got to meet the chairperson of ONZ, Andrew Taylor, and a lot of other growers from various other areas. It is great to see so many enthusiastic people, passionate about the industry and trying to make things better for all. The presentations by the Spanish (both from GEA Westfalia) were quite informative, albeit focussed on Spain, which is much drier that NZ. Just to comprehend the scale at which they operate, is mind blowing. They also presented everybody with wonderful handouts (books on olives, victorinox knives, flash drives, notebooks, pens, etc.).

Afterwards we all headed outside for a walk amongst the olive trees of David and Helen. The good thing about having experts looking at your grove, is that they can immediately detect if anything could be wrong with the trees. Unfortunately (and fortunately) for David, they discovered that his trees have some mineral deficiencies as well as diseases. Apparently if the tips of the leaves turn brown, you need to up your nutrients in the form of potassium (if the soil is alcaline) or boron (if the soil is acidic). His trees also seemed to be pestered by peacock spot amongst others, and are losing their leaves at a rate. This will obviously effect flowering and fruit set. So, although David swore by his conviction never to use copper spray, it now turns out that he might just have to do that.

All in all a great outing, very informative and insightful. Pity we couldn't make the awards function as well. Some pics from the day:

AGM at Tatum Park, with David discussing some changes to the ONZ constitution.

Goran left and Javier from Spain.

Juan also from Spain.

Listening and learning at the Kapiti Olives grove field walk.

Attending these events provide excellent opportunities to learn more about olives.

David, Juan, Javier and another grower.

Can't remember what disease this is, but it looks like cigarette ash on the back of the leaves,
and it's a main cause for leaves to drop from the trees at an alarming rate.

Ascolano obituary :-(

This little piggy decided to go to heaven. Poor little thing. I'm not sure exactly why, but of all the trees, this seems to be the only one who died, presumably from the snow? It was planted in a very soggy spot and I suspect that the wetness in combination with the snow and freezing temperatures, caused its feet to get frostbite! The stem is still soft and green though. Any ideas on what to do with this one to save it from a sure death?

Kapiti branch AGM 2011

David and Helen invited all the Kapiti branch members for drinks, eats and the Kapiti branch AGM at their place in Te Horo Beach. And what a beautiful place they have right on the beach.

We made the one hour drive on Sunday afternoon to arrive for the meeting at 16:00. Some 20 people were present and it was very nice to meet and chat with some other growers in our region.

The meeting got underway and things that were covered include the financial statements, subscriptions fees for Olives NZ as well as Kapiti branch memberships, the constitution, upcoming ONZ AGM and awards dinner for Olives NZ. Committee members for the Kapiti branch were elected for the new year, and I am happy to report that I now find myself on the committee, together with Allan Frazer (chairperson), Anne Barnett (secretary/treasurer), Lance Wiggins and David Walshaw.

I am looking forward to see what the next year will bring.