I have just acquired an Arbosanna olive tree, and for now I am going to leave it in a 60 gallon pot so I can pull it under the balcony in winter. I am wondering if anyone else out there has tried growing olives and if they have had any success putting them in the ground?
Hi Calicojack: In most cases there is no substitute for growing an eventual large sized tree in the ground rather than growing the tree in a container or a very large pot. Olives for the most part can handle cold weather so if cold is your biggest concern then you may want to plant your tree next Spring. For fruiting Olives grown in British Columbia the hard part will be getting your trees fruit to ripen. Arbosana is a later ripening variety, which for you would mean a variety that will probably ripen in mid to late Summer. What your tree will need is lots of sunlight and warm temperatures for the Olives to ripen without being excessively bitter. Yes, there are others growing Olives to press in nearby islands near you but no one is saying whether all of the Olives pressed are grown there. Usually what happens in less warm climates is that Olives from elsewhere are brought in an used as the base and then pressed with the local Olives to mask the local grown fruit and make the oil much less acidic and whole lot less bitter. It is rare to see and have a single variety Olive Oil like a single Malt Scotch for example. Most Olive Oils are a pressed blend of generally three to four Olive varieties. Jim
I have a grand total of three Arbequina now in the greenhouse after being outside all summer. Total crop is a whopping three olives so far. I am getting up my courage to plant them on a steepish SW facing slope in Cobble Hill. The nursery claims these are early ripening and hardy to -6c.
I've got mine ('Arbequina') in the ground in Parksville, so I think you should be even better off in Cobble Hill. Everything I've read about olives seems to agree that most varieties are hardy to about -13C, at which point they're killed to the ground (growing back in a multi-trunked form). Supposedly if you visit the Mediterranean region, multi-trunked olive trees serve as a perfect indicator for where temperatures have dipped below -13C in the last hundred years or so.
