Kitchen Garden Forum

We have just had our first jar of olives from my own tree. It has taken several months of rinsing, adding fresh water and salt to remove the bitter taste, but I must say it was worth it. They tasted pleasantly fruity with no bitterness.

I've had the tree for about four years and have just potted it up again as a treat for producing such a good crop last year. The new blossom buds are just forming, so here's hoping for perhaps larger fruits this time.

Excellent. I've had a tree for years, about 3 foot high...it's never grown any bigger or better or had any sort of activity at all. It's still alive so I think I shall show it your post. I might repot it too to see if that makes a difference.

Well done you

Well done. I imagine it's quite a feat producing edible olives in this climate. I once bought a carrier bag of fresh olives back from a holiday in Portugal with the aim of preserving them. I followed the brining technique explained to me in very poor English by the farmer in whose villa we were staying where I picked them but they all went brown and rotted, so either the olives were poor quality or I got the process wrong. I gather the fruit can be affected by a little weevil which makes them unsuitable for preserving so you did well. In their natural habitat they seem to grow in rather dry arid soil so you would imagine they don,t need much attention or nourishment but that may not prove to be the case. Hope you manage to repeat your success this year

Wow PP - excellent! I am actually extremely jealous, had my one & only olive last year though so might be on my way!

Westi