The cold is settling in—it looks like Wednesday night/Thursday morning will be the coldest with temps in the Gulf Islands bottoming out at -6C. But I only know this remotely since I’m visiting some olive growers in California this week. It’s chilly here in San Francisco but still above freezing—that’s not the case over in the East Bay and further inland. The big difference between the little bit of freezing here in California on the coast and the cold on the BC coast is that here in California it will warm up during the day. Our BC weather forecast is for temperatures to only nudge a little above freezing during the day. If this keeps up, young olive trees will start to stress and you should see some leaf yellowing and maybe some leaf drop. Mostly that should depend on how long this freeze lasts and if the wind keeps blowing.

Anyone that has winter reports on their olive trees can email me at michael@olivetrees.ca. I’ll try to post any interesting photos or info while I’m on the road here in California.

So far it’s been a relatively mild winter in the Southern Gulf Islands. A new cold snap has finally come along but as of today (Friday Jan 13) the weather forecasts don’t call for temps to drop much below zero. And we may have a little snow in some parts. Weather like this shouldn’t cause a problem for olive trees, especially with the long hardening off period that the olives have had in the last couple months (though many young trees in pots have continued to slowly grow—they may lose that tender growth but not a big deal). 

Protection in this kind of weather where temps might drop to -2C or so at night is not critical although a deep mulch of wood chips can help smooth out temperature swings between warmish days and cold nights. And if there is an occasional harder freeze, a deep mulch will protect the trunk from freezing. If the weather continues to stick with lows above -4C the trees should get through the winter in fine shape.

We’re not quite open for the season but in February I’ll be posting information on what we’ll have on offer in terms of cultivars, sizes and prices. I can tell you that we will stick with Frantoio and Leccino as our lead cultivars along with Maurino and Pendolino as primary pollinator cultivars. I hope to also introduce limited quantities of a few other cultivars that show promise for our area—stay tuned!

It’s getting too late to plant trees in the ground so we are closing up the online shop for now. Stay tuned for news about our 2012 inventory. We plan to introduce a limited number of new varieties that we think have a good chance of doing well here on the Northern edge of the Pacific northwest’s olive tree friendly growing zone.

Head on over to the Waterlea Pender Island page and you’ll see that I’ve posted a couple new photos of Frantoio and Leccino trees in full bloom at Waterlea on Pender Island. Too bad the bloom is two and a half months too late. Ahh, farming—the sure path to a diminishing fortune.

 We now have a limited number of one gallon Maurino and Leccino available. We still have Leccino AB46 in stock but are currently sold out of AB46 Frantoio and Pendolino.

Also newly available are a very limited number of Frantoio one and two gallon trees propagated from cuttings here on Saturna. These trees range in price from $25-35 depending on actual tree size. We will not offer these trees online but you may email us at info@olivetrees.ca  if you’re interested in purchasing these grown on Saturna trees.

We won’t be attending the Sidney market this week or next but we will be selling trees at Saturna’s July 1 Lamb Barbecue—hope to see you there!

Here is a shot of a Frantoio tree with olives in early October 2010 and again in late October:

Once again we will be at the Sidney evening market this Thursday. But we will also be setting up our table in front of Fol Epi bakery this Friday and Saturday morning from 10 am to 12 noon (http://www.folepi.ca/contact.php). I figure any excuse to eat Cliff’s pastries is a good one. Come on down to sip a Café Fantastico cappuccino, munch on a delicious croissant and buy some olive trees. Fol Epi is located at 101-398 Harbour Road (Dockside Green) in West Vic.

Visit the Saturna Olive Consortium and our olive trees at the Sidney Summer Market

We are delivering to Nanaimo this weekend (June 10-11). If you live up-island and want olive trees, now’s your opportunity to buy them in good time to plant them this year!

Is it over yet? Winter I mean. Today, here on Saturna the weather felt more like February at times than April. Whichever month we are in, I think it’s safe to say that we won’t be experiencing anything like the cold snaps we had in late November and again in late February.

The two trees planted next to our house on top of a ridge, exposed to both southeast and northeast winds, have lost many leaves and from the sad look of the remaining leaves I expect more will drop soon. However, I’m confident they’ll live a long and healthy life—olive trees have more lives than cats, and in this case the wood on their main branches and trunks have healthy tissue.

In other cases, we have heard from customers whose trees have lost all their leaves. I counsel patience when trees lose their leaves after a cold winter—if it ever warms up the trees will likely come back to life. If your own trees have lost leaves or are looking sad, you can test for signs of life in each tree by scratching the surface of a few branches with your fingernail to look for green healthy tissue. If the tissue shows no green (and no white sapwood beneath) then that branch is a write-off. If there is green tissue then odds are the leaves will show up in a month or so.

Our new inventory of trees arrived from Oregon over the Easter weekend. This year we are featuring both a new size tree and a new variety. The new size is called AB46 and you can read all about it on our Tree Sizes page. The new variety is Pendolino—a new addition to our Tuscan variety offerings—which you can read about on our Variety Descriptions page.

Our shipment of AB46 size trees also included Frantoio and Leccino. All three varieties are now available for purchase at our new online order page.

Before ordering your trees, we suggest you first read Choosing Your Trees. Then go to the Variety Descriptions page to read detailed varietal information. The Tree Sizes page provides size, availability and price information. From there you can proceed to the Order Page. Links to all of these pages can be found on the sidebar to the left of this post.

We hope that you find our online ordering process straightforward and pain free. Once you’ve selected your trees by variety and size, you’ll have the option of paying for the trees either through PayPal or by cheque. The only drawback to using the pay-by-cheque option is that we cannot confirm your order until we receive your cheque. If you choose the PayPal option, we should be able to confirm your order within 48 hours from the time you place your order.

Picking up your trees

We will distribute trees on Saturna on Saturday, June 4, with time and location to be announced. For those not able to make the journey to Saturna on that date, we will distribute remaining tree orders at a Saanich Peninsula location on Saturday, June 11.

We have sold out of our current inventory of  3 gallon Frantoio and Leccino seconds.

Despite the cold winter and an interminably cold spring, the olive grove on Pender Island is looking very healthy. Andrew Butt has kindly sent us some photos which he shot last weekend. Check out this page for more photos. Here’s a tease:

Or not. The Leccino tree planted at our house two years ago lost almost all its leaves this winter. And up until now we have seen no new growth. Yesterday however, we noticed some minute green leaf buds starting to show along some of the branches—a hopeful sign that the ground is finally warming up enough to kick the trees out of their dormancy. That said we don’t expect to see any real growth on stressed trees this year until mid June or perhaps even later—it’s been that kind of spring. Too darn cold and too wet.

Many of the trees we kept in pots in an unheated greenhouse over the winter began to show signs of life a little earlier. This isn’t surprising since the soil in the potted plants has been much warmer than the ground soil. Yesterday, we found that of the few potted trees we thought were complete goners, three have started pushing new shoots from their branches.

The message here? If your trees lost leaves over the winter and are looking dead to the world, please be patient. Unless the trees have been sitting in saturated ground over the winter (a death knell for olives in the cold), the trees are probably still dormant but not dead. Depending on the weather, it could be another month before they show any significant signs of life.

Finally, for an interesting read on the effects of the 2010-2011 winter on perennials in our area, check out Phoenix Perennial’s mid-May newsletter posting: Discussion of Hardiness and the Challenges of “Armageddon” Winters

Olive trees like warmth and light, there’s no disputing that. After a few warm sunny days, the trees respond in kind. Here are some photos of the aforementioned Leccino and its new growth:

Here's a branch that is still looking sad

Working down the trunk the buds are more apparent

Even further down the trunk dormant buds are springing to life in response to warmth and light.

Some of our more precocious Pendolinos are pushing flower buds:

Pendolino (AB46 size) showing both new branch growth and new flower buds