March in the Olive Grove

​Summer seemed to finally arrive in the later part of February with some lovely sunny days.  The nights, however, are already cooling off.  Into autumn and shorter days but maybe more settled weather and some lovely calm, sunny days.  Olive trees really need a good dose of sun on the canopy to grow and mature the fruit.
Olive trees this year haven’t had the dry, persistently hot conditions of previous years and they don’t have the heavy crop load of last year’s bumper season so they should be looking healthy. The more humid conditions this summer may have made trees more susceptible to fungal disease, most commonly, peacock spot.  Peacock Spot will first appear as small sooty spots on the leaves upper surfaces.  These small spots will become a dark green to black colour as they increase in size and on some cultivars develop a yellow halo around them.  Infected leaves will fall prematurely.  The fungus weakens small shoots and twigs and this loss of small fruiting wood will ultimately affect production.  It may take 2-3 years to become apparent so keep an eye out for yellow circles on the leaves.  A few affected leaves will not compromise the trees but if you are concerned this is increasing in your trees then a spray with copper mid to March can help clean things up. 

​Growth has been strong this year in both trees and weeds growing well and lawns still green.  Clear out under your trees now.  Get rid of basal shoots before they harden off.  They will take energy from the tree and also potentially harbour moisture and disease.  The same goes for weeds and grass, keep it short under trees.  It also helps with airflow to dry off foliage as we get into damper, autumn mornings.
If you are irrigating your trees now is the time to cut it back as moisture loss reduces in these cooler days.  Olive trees like moist soil but not wet feet.
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Harvest is still a long way off yet with a lot of fruit growth needed in between now and June.  The flesh will be plumping up and growing that oil content.  Watch your olives grow in size over the next three months. You don’t have to do much else.
In the April newsletter we will notify pressing rates and fees for the 2026 season along with how to assess olive maturity.  In May we will publish our season start date and information about the booking system to get your olives pressed.