It's Olives
I truly believe that olives are a blessed tree. There were two main reasons for this, although I have recently found a third: firstly for their amazing fruit, pickled olives are a wonderful meal in themselves and a person could live on them alone. Second, they produce the best oil on earth for both cooking and eating fresh with salad. The third reason is olive leaf extract. This is a process where the leaves are boiled down to extract a dark liquid that can be taken to improve the immune system. I have used this myself and can vouch for its effectiveness. Taking a teaspoon every morning and night helped me avoid getting a cold over a whole winter! I have wanted to plant an olive grove now for ten years. The design for my grove has changed as I have learned more about natural farming and Permaculture techniques. While it has been a long time coming, I believe it is finally happening because it is the right time in my life to do it and I have the right design to apply too.
When thinking about the type of fruit trees I wanted to plant in my new orchard, olives were the obvious choice - not only because of my passion for these trees, but because they would suit the environment of the farm and also because we have cold winters and dry hot summers.
Whilst I have grown olives for years and also helped friends with their olive groves in the past, I have never truly had a grove with hundreds of trees of my own and this was both exciting and a little scary.
There are many varieties to choose from but I let the farm tell me what variety I could use. The soil - this is the area that needs the most improvement on the property. It is mainly clay with shaol underneath, so fertility is low and when there is rain, it could give the olives 'wet feet'. This is one way to kill an olive - I've had it happen to me before, so I need to choose a variety that could cope with this.
In the end I selected the Picual variety. This is a Spanish olive, one of the most planted varieties in Spain. It is used as an oil variety and while it is not classed as a dual purpose variety (oil and table fruit) I have pickled Picual before and they are fantastic.
After a rough calculation, I ordered 300 trees from reputable nursery. 270 Picual, 15 Frantoio and 15 Coratina - these two additional varieties I included as pollinators (even though Picual is classed as self-fertile) just to support the future fruit set. Within a couple if weeks they were freighted out - I am so excited!
