The Consortium is taking a vacation until fall so our online store will not have inventory listed. You can still make inquiries about available trees but we will be up-potting many of our smaller trees at this time so only a few one or two gallon trees will be available until next spring. If you have a question about any of our current or past varieties feel free to drop us a line.

The first real cold weather of the season is finally upon us but so far this looks like a pretty benign cold front in terms of olive trees planted in the ground. Unless you live in a serious cold spot on the South Coast this is just a wake-up telling us that winter is indeed upon us.

So, what to do? Well, first, if your trees have olives on them, now would be a great time to pick them. I picked some of the early maturing varieties over a month ago—Maurino, Pendolino and Frantoio were all ready to pick in the green stage). Now I’m picking all other varieties such as Carolea (pictured here in the bowl).

Beyond harvesting, now would be a good time to ensure you have placed deep mulch around the base of the trees. And if it looks like temps in your area are going below minus 5 or 6—and especially in windy locations—then wrap your trees in something plant friendly like row cover cloth or horticultural fleece. Don’t use plastic or burlap to wrap your tree.

This six year old Maurino is showing a better fruit set this year than last:

and its companion Leccino shows a little less fruit but also better than last year:

Stop by our table at Victoria Seedy Saturday—in addition to featured cultivars such as Amphissa, Cailletier and Frantoio we’ll have some one-offs such as Boutellian—a wonderful French variety. And this 3 gallon Carolea pictured below. Carolea is a hard to find but very good variety for our growing region. It’s cold hardy and produces early ripening fat olives. Later this year a few more trees will come available but for now this the only one I have ready for sale.

Come visit our table at Victoria’s Seedy Saturday. We’ll have some of our usual suspects such as Frantoio and Leccino on hand but we will also have one or two special varieties we don’t offer online. More info to follow…

Seedy Saturday 2016

The harvest on my trees planted in the ground was light compared to last year but here are some cured olives harvested from the potted trees at the nursery:

Saturna Olive Consortium will be at the Saturna Saturday Market. And on Monday afternoon at Wild Thyme Bus for the ferry lineup

Stop by for a visit and take home a tree…or two…or…

Our inventory grew by a bit last week with the arrival of these 5 gallon trees. On average they’re about five feet tall. Picture below are Frantoio and Nocellara: 

Amphissa and Cailletier (Nicoise) to be exact. SOC will add a number of Amphissa and a few Cailletier by July. Taking orders now at the online store.

Amphissa produce medium to large sized table olives, often brined green.  And Cailletier is where delicious Nicoise olives come from. 

In case you missed it, a couple days ago we added five gallon Maurino trees to the online store inventory. These are in very limited supply—right now there are six listed in stock…not sure if we’ll get any more than that this year.