Olive Trees

The first decision on this page is whether you want fruit at all. Ripe olives drop, stain pale paving and get walked indoors, and birds carry the seed into bushland, so fruiting olives count as an environmental weed in South Australia and parts of Victoria and New South Wales. On lawn or gravel, well back from the entry, that is a sweeping job. Backing onto a reserve, check your council listing before you order a row.

If the fruit is the problem

Swan Hill was selected in northern Victoria as a non fruiting form. It sets next to nothing and sheds very little viable pollen. Buy it for the grey canopy and never for a harvest. Tolleys Upright is the other low litter answer. Fruiting is light next to the commercial cultivars, and it holds its branches close to a central axis instead of sprawling.

Table fruit and oil

Nothing here goes from branch to plate; raw olives are bitter and need curing first. Kalamata is the tapered purple black Greek table cultivar, but flower set depends on a genuinely cold winter, so it crops in central Victoria and sulks in a warm coastal garden further north. Manzanillo is the rounded Spanish green, broader and lower branching than the upright types, and Californian Queen and Mission fill out the table group. Table cultivars set a heavier crop with a second variety flowering nearby, and they bear biennially, a heavy year then a light one. Keep the lot of them off driveways, pool surrounds, light coloured concrete and pale render. On the oil side Frantoio is self fertile and crops on its own, and Verdale is a South Australian oil cultivar, at home in hot dry summers on alkaline limestone ground. Correggiola is the Tuscan oil olive that also travels under the Frantoio label, with pendulous branches and a name as a pollinator. Nevadillo Blanco is an Andalusian oil variety planted here mainly for its upright, well furnished shape.

Sun and drainage decide it

Full sun is not negotiable. In shade an olive stretches, thins out, stops flowering, then rots at the base over a wet winter, and feeding will not fix it. On the basalt clay through Melbourne's west a deep hole turns into a sump by July, so plant proud of the grade on a mound. High pH is a non issue, which is why Perth limestone sand suits an olive. Humidity is the real limit: through Brisbane and the northern rivers olives run leggy and fruit poorly. Check leaf undersides in spring for olive lace bug, which mottles the foliage grey from below before anything shows on top; it builds up quickly in a congested canopy. Prune in late winter to an open vase so light reaches the inner wood. Light regular clipping holds a shape, but an olive that has run away is not lost: it breaks readily from old wood, so a hard renovation cut is a real option in the ground. Go lighter in a pot, where there is less in reserve to push the regrowth. Our low water gardens guide covers spacing in a dry bed.

Grades, pots and courtyards

Eleven lines start at 5 litres or under, six of those at 140mm, a pot holding about a litre and a half. Six lines carry nothing below 90 litres, and nine are offered in a single size, so check the listing before assuming a grade. Three run up to 1000 litres for crane in trunks. For containers, Olivia is the compact 12 litre selection and Garden Harvest the compact fruiting one; both want a free draining mix and no saucer under the pot. Manzanillo Espaliers arrive already trained flat, so wire them up as they go in and check the ties each season before they bite into thickening wood. Pollination partners and curing are covered in growing fruit trees.