Oregon Olives

Oregon Olive Oil

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Oregon Olive Trees™

Oregon Olives 

Olive Tree Sales Closed for the Month of May

 

As a nurseryman and small scale farmer, I have a motto: "Sell, repot or plant annually".  Since April was dedicated to sales to others, it is now time to move on to repotting and planting in our own groves!  To give ourselves time to focus and "Git 'er done", we are closed for sales the entire month of May.  While I will still strive to answer all email questions during this time, my responses probably will not be particularly timely.

 

So, until June, happy growing!
Text Box: For the past 100 years, American grown and processed olive oil was all about California.  And for most of those past 100 years, olive oil was a salvage operation, using the culls from the table fruit cultivars Ascolano, Manzanillo, Mission, and Sevillano.  More recently, there have been groves in California planted specifically for the purpose of olive oil production.  People like Nan McEvoy (McEvoy Ranch) and Ridgely Evers (DaVero) went to Europe, decided on their favorite olive oil, and brought back the exact clones and planted them in perfect imitation of what was being done in Europe.   Times they are a-changing, and Oregon now has a unique opportunity to boldly pioneer a new approach to making olive oil.  Using the “research groves” of Oregon Olives and the sensory skills of Alexandra Devarenne (a noted California authority on olive oil and olive oil blending), Oregon Olive Trees presents some unique field blends developed especially for Oregon, that have the potential to produce Gold Medal winning olive oils:   "Short Season Soft Field Blend”: a blend designed to produce a well-balanced oil in a short season location. Because of the softer flavor profile of the Arbequina and Leccino, this oil will be fruity without excessive bitterness even when harvested quite green: 30% Arbequina, 50% Leccino, 20% Pendolino.   "Short Season With a Kick Field Blend": a slightly more assertive choice for short season areas. The addition of Frantoio will add complexity but also more bitterness in the oil. Frantoio benefits from hang time on the tree, so this blend will probably be ready for harvest a little later than Short Season Soft Field Blend: 30% Arbequina, 40% Leccino, 15% Frantoio, 15% Pendolino. "Tuscan for the North Field Blend": a classic blend for assertive, green style olive oil in the Tuscan tradition. In the Northwest it will benefit from the latest harvest possible, just ahead of the first freeze. The oil will be dominated by grassy notes and have fairly high bitterness and pungency. It will have excellent shelf life and stability: 50% Leccino, 30% Frantoio, 10% Moraiolo, 10% Pendolino.    "Dual Purpose Field Blend": a mix of olives designed for the grower who wants the option of table olive production. The varieties Itrana, Nocellara del Belice and Picholine are excellent for table fruit as well as for making olive oil; and Leccino and Pendolino are relatively large oil type olives that can also be used for table olives. Since olives for green ripe processing are picked earlier in the season than olives for olive oil, this blend should always allow for a harvest in our climate, even in years low in accumulated heat. If picked for olive oil, this blend may have aggressive bitterness and will require the latest possible harvest date. Adding Leccino to the blend will help counter this bitterness potential: 50% Leccino, 15% Itrana, 15% Nocellara del Belice, 15% Picholine, 5% Pendolino.   "Premium Dark Horse Field Blend": an unexpected combination of a delicate early harvest Italian variety and a very distinctive early harvest Spanish variety. The Leccino will contribute a soft spicy base with some pepper on the finish; the Picual will add a dark, bittersweet chocolate / coffee note: 60% Leccino, 30% Picual, 10% Pendolino. As a single varietal olive oil for those wanting a truly distinctive product, we recommend Frantoio. If you are the type that can handle the suspense of harvesting at the very last minute, a 100% Frantoio planting has the potential in our climate to produce an outstanding Best of Show olive oil. But be warned, it will not be free and easy, you will most probably be biting your knuckles before the crop is in... By focusing on the end product, olive oil, and by boldly planting what has never been planted before, Oregon has the opportunity to raise the bar on premium olive oil production to an exciting new level! For "urban homesteaders" wanting a smaller easily managed tree, we recommend Arbequina. For those who have a little more space and want a classic olive tree "ambiance and feel", it is hard to beat Kalamata. Both are considered self fruitful, but will benefit from having a cross pollinator on the same lot. From the time of the ancient Greeks until this very day, olive oil has had far more prestige than the table olive. However, for the small scale boutique operation in Oregon, making table olives might make far more sense. Given the short growing season here, and that green ripe table olives are picked earlier than oil olives, table olives seem to make more sense from a grower’s perspective. Add in the fact that olive oil mills are just so darn expensive and that milling olives for oil essentially throws away at least 80% of the product (as pomace and waste water), table olives look even more promising for the small scale operation looking to actually make some money from growing olive trees. Even in California, there are far more acres harvested for table olives than for olive oil. Oregon Olives takes a special interest in table olives for exactly these reasons. While it makes little sense to try and compete with the main and well adapted California cultivars, we can recommend the following cultivars for Oregon: Amfissa Carolea Itrana Kalamata Nocellara del Belice Picholine As an interesting aside, California black ripe style table olives (you know, pizza olives) are picked green ripe, and then the color is changed to black in the processing. Evalution of at least 65 cultivars is proceeding here at Oregon Olives; there will almost certainly be more cultivar recommendations coming that are suitable for planting here in Oregon. After all, we all are at the beginning of a new industry when there is still room for learning and growth!

Recommended Cultivars For North-West Oregon

 

Here is my current (Fall 2011) assessment of the olives trees in our groves: these cultivars are the top cultivars from a horticultural perspective.  Listed in very rough order of adaptation to our climate (name, origin, traditional use, traditional pollinator, etc.):

 

* Frantoio, Italy, oil, self-compatible(?)
* Lucca, UC intro, oil, self-compatible(?), very similar to Frantoio, except later harvest
* Leccino, Italy, oil, (pollinators: Pendolino, Leccino, Moraiolo, Marino; also highest yielding on average)
* Pendolino, Italy, oil (considered a "universal" pollinator, but will not pollinate itself or another Pendolino)
* Arbequina, Spain, oil, self-compatible(?), good for potted tree

* Picholine, France, green ripe, oil, self-compatible(?)
* Bouteillan, France, oil

   Carolea, Italy, green and black ripe, oil (pollinators: Itrana, Picholene)

* Picual, Spain, oil, black ripe, self-compatible(?)
* Itrana, Italy, black ripe, oil, (pollinators: Leccino, Pendolino)
* Nocellara del Belice, Italy (Sicily), green ripe (Castelveltrano-style), oil

* Amfissa, Greece, green and black ripe, oil

* Taggiasca, Italy, oil, self-compatible(?)

* Tanche, France, black ripe, oil (pollinator: Cayon)

* Coratina, Italy, oil, green table

* Bosana, Italy (Sardinia), oil, self-compatible(?)

* Grignan, Italy, oil, (pollinator: Casaliva)

   Chetoui, Tunisia, oil, black ripe, self-compatible(?)

   Verdale, France, oil, green ripe, self-compatible(?)

 

These cultivars are also doing well; but either seem to be just a tad more sensitive to our growing conditions, or we just don't have a lot of trees on which to base a more solid recommendation:

 

* Kalamata, Greece, black ripe (Kalamata style), oil, self-compatible(?) excellent specimen tree

* Ascolano, Italy, green ripe (pollinators: Itrana, Santa Caterina)

   Maurino, Italy, oil

* Cailletier, France, oil, half ripe

* Empeltre, Spain, oil, black ripe, self-compatible(?)

   Nocellara de Etnea, Italy (Sicily), green ripe, oil

   Hoji Blanca, Spain, oil, green ripe, self-compatible(?)

* Moraiolo, Italy, oil, (pollinators: Pendolino, Marino)

 

* Cultivars we at Oregon Olive Trees expect to have available for sale in 2012

 

And these cultivars are under evaluation as to their suitability in the northern Willamette valley:

 

   Agezy Shami, Egypt, green ripe

   Aglandau, France, oil, green ripe, self-compatible(?)

   Azapa, Chile, green or black ripe

   Barnea (K18), Israel, oil

   Barouni, Tunisia, green ripe, self-compatible(?)

   Canino, Italy, oil, (pollinators: Frantoio, Leccino, Moraiolo, Marino)

   Carboncella, Italy, oil, (pollinators: Pendolino, Marino)

   Casaliva, Italy, oil, (pollinator: Grignan)

   Lechin di Sevilla, Spain, oil, self-compatible(?)

   Manzanillo, Spain, green ripe, self-compatible(?)

   Mission, Spain, green ripe, oil, self-compatible(?)

   Mission Leiva, Columbia

   Oueslati, Tunisia, oil, table olives

   Salonenque, France, oil, green ripe, oil

   Saiali Magloub, Tunisia, table olives

   Salome, Australia, oil

   Santa Caterina, Italy, green ripe

   Sevillano, Spain, green ripe

 

self-compatible: a given olive tree can pollinate itself.

 

These are very new to us, and we basically don't have enough data yet to draw any conclusions:

 

   Bidh El Hammam

   Cordovil

   Dolce Del Marocco

   Giaraffa

   Grossane

   Hamid

   Karydolia

   Nab Tamri

   Prunara

   Rubra

   Syrogylolia

   Touffahi

   Vassilika

 

And, the sad list: those which we do not think are particularly suitable for our climate:

 

   Arbosana

   Koroneiki

   Uc 49-14

   Uc 52.24.1

 

The ratings will undoubtedly change as time goes by, and we are still collecting new cultivars; but until next fall, this is how we see it!

Some data on olive fruit size in the Pacific North West

 

Farms are factories: taking in nutrients, water, sunlight and our time and energy; in return giving us food to eat.  Here in the PNW, as compared to places olives are traditionally grown, we have a relatively short growing season and a relative lack of sunlight.  Olive trees do respond to their environment, and can adapt somewhat to the lack of these inputs.  However, the 2011 growing season made it clear that in a "poor" growing year the size of the olives will be below expectations.  How much so and to what effect?  The answer, as almost all answers in farming are: "It varies".  Particularly, the size of the crop negatively impacts the size of the individual olive.  Some of our small potted trees, of particularly precocious cultivars with a natural tendency to have small olives (think SHD clones like Koroneiki) had hundreds of very tiny olives.  Here is a picture of all of the olive cultivars we had fruit on in 2011, to give you an idea on size in a "low accumulated heat" year:

From top to bottom, and left to right:

 

                US Quarter   US Dime

Aggezi Shami    Aglandau     Amfissa                Arbequina

Arbosana        Ascolano     Azapa                  Barouni

Bosana          Bouteillan   Cailletier             Canino

Carolea         Casaliva     Chetoui                Coratina

Empeltre        Frantoio     Grignan                Hoji Blanca

Itrana          Kalamata     Koroneiki              Leccino

Lucca           Manzanillo   Maurino                Mission

Mission Leiva   Moraiolo     Nocellara del Belice   Nocellara de Etnea

Pendolino       Picholene    Picual                 Saiali Magloue

Salome          Salonenque   Santa Caterina         Sevillano

                US Quarter   US Dime

 

Size does matter for table olives, probably more so for Americans than Europeans; probably the biggest complaints I have from people trying smaller ones is their small size and that they are "big pit, little meat" olives.

 

Picture taken Nov 10, 2011.

Fall tours 2011

 

The fall rains have started, and the 2011 tour season and tree sales are over for us.  The tours all went excellent, and everybody really appreciated them, but there were several unintended consequences.  After every one saw how well even small trees planted from AB46 pots can grow, and how #2 trees have really good survivability, we didn't sell any #5 trees.

 

Two Leccino, one planted in spring 2010 out of an AB46 pot, the other planted spring 2011 out of a #5 pot.  Which do you think is which (09/19/11):

(The one on the left was planted out of an AB46 pot)

 

And the other thing I noticed: we didn't sell a single Arbequina tree.  After seeing the size of, say, Amfissa, Picholene, Nocellara del Belice, Santa Caterina, Ascolano, Sevillano and other olives, I guess nobody wanted Arbequina.

 

Three Nocellara del Belice, and one Arbequina olive (the small one, but it is -not- a shotberry!) 09/19/11

And that brings up something interesting I learned.  People who have only Arbequina are experiencing severe shotberry problems, to the extent that they have essentially only shotberries.  I guess I will be rethinking and re-writing what I have to say on pollination!

 

Speaking of Nocellara del Belice, here is a blog post from last year's harvest in Sicily:

 

                                                    Curing Nocellara olives

 

Doesn't it just make you want to go out and start picking olives and curing them?!