Olive
Olea europaea
Silver-leaved evergreen of hot corners — rosemary and lavender at its feet.
Spacing & sowing
- Plant spacing
- 9 ft 10 in
- In-row spacing
- 8 ft 2 in
- Between rows
- 13 ft 1 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
Calendar (from your frost dates)
- Plant out
- at the last spring frost
- First harvest
- 180 days after the last spring frost
- Harvest ends
- 14 days after the first fall frost
Growing
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Watering
- Low
- Soil
- Free-draining, moderately fertile
- Feeding
- Feed in spring, and give containers a liquid feed monthly.
- USDA zones
- 8a–11b
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Thin it in late spring and take off the basal suckers.
- Overwintering
- Wrap it in frost cloth when hard frost is coming, and move containers under shelter for winter.
Through the year
- Mar–Mar Bud Break
- Mar–May Spring Growth
- May–May Flowering
- May–Oct Fruit Set
- Oct–Nov Harvest
- Nov–Dec Growing
- Jan–Mar Growing
Harvest
- When
- Green (unripe) olives from September–October, black (fully ripe) from November into winter; realistically an outdoor crop only in warm dry climates (UK trees fruit reliably only in exceptional sites or under glass). Trees crop in 3–5 years.
- What to look for
- Green stage: full-sized, skin turned from bright to yellowish-green, flesh still firm — for firm brined olives. Ripe stage: skin fully purple-black with the flesh colored through when cut, and slightly soft — for oil and soft black cures. Critically, all olives are inedibly bitter raw (oleuropein) at every stage — never judge by taste off the tree.
- How to harvest
- Hand-strip ("milk") the branches into nets or aprons, or comb with a hand rake; pick before autumn storms drop the crop. Avoid bruising black-ripe fruit, which oxidizes fast.
- How often
- One pick per stage — a green-stage harvest, or leave the crop to blacken for one late harvest; a big tree may take two passes as ripening is uneven.
- Storing the crop
- Process within 1–3 days of picking — raw olives keep briefly refrigerated but must be cured before eating: water-cure, brine-cure (weeks to months), dry-salt-cure black olives, or lye-cure. Properly brined olives then keep a year or more in jars.
Companions
Lavender, Thyme, Rosemary
Pests & problems
- Scale insects Immobile brown or white bumps fixed to stems and leaf undersides, sucking sap and weakening growth. Wipe off with a damp cloth or dab with horticultural soap; watch for the sooty mold that follows.
- Frost damage Soft new growth and open flowers blackened by late frosts. Fleece on cold nights, avoid planting in frost pockets, and resist cutting damage away until frosts pass.
- Olive moth
- Peacock spot
Garden allies
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Companion planting
Good neighbors
Did you know?
Olive trees are astonishingly long-lived; some around the Mediterranean are over 2,000 years old.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com