Oregon Olive Trees™

Oregon Olives 

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Oregon Olives

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Introduction

Planting

Growing

Cultivars

All are doing well, with strong re-growth.

 

10/03/09:

In fact, although I stripped off most of the flowers in very late spring, I let two olives grow (one has to reward oneself just a tiny bit, occasionally!).  If I was to use them for Castelvetrano style table olives, I think I would have picked them today.  But I didn’t...

 

11/03/09:

The same five trees came through the winter in pretty good shape; in fact so good that they are being booted from the nursery and being field planted.

 

05/07/10:

Another month, and they are fully colored and suitable to make olive oil!  From left to right: two Arbequina, three Koroneiki, two Boutellian, and the same two Nocellara del Belice.

 

12/04/09:

In fact, we are so impressed with Nocellara del Belice that we decided to make our second experimental production grove of the cultivar.  I even made a special trip down to California to secure some really nice #5 potted trees from McEvoy Ranch.  Wow!  I have never received more email asking me to ship trees back down to California than I have on those trees.  Even Ridgely Evers of DaVero (one of my olive world role models) made a extremely strong pitch to get some.

 

The McEvoy trees are doing just great, and have set considerable amounts of fruit on last year's wood while still maintaining strong new growth that will bear next year's crop (knock on wood for our winter weather!).  Also impressive, they are ripening up fairly well given our "green" olive weather this year.

 

Nocellara del Belice, Reken Estate, Nov. 20, 2010:

Nocellara del Belice (origin - Sicily, Italy)

 

Uses: Nocellara del Belice is from Sicily, so of course it’s major use is for green Sicilian table olives, processed Castelvetrano style with a crisp firm flesh and a delicious taste!  Most people don’t realize, but most dual use olives have a higher commercial value as table olives as opposed to being processed into olive oil.  Two excellent examples of this are Kalamata and Nocellara del Belice: both can produce top caliber olive oils but are generally used for table olives.  According to “Olive Oil” by Quest-Ritson (an excellent little book!), Sicily is amongst the premiere regions for producing the worlds best olive oils (and far exceeding even Tuscan oils in a quality for the price sense).  Quoting from the book: “Nocellara del Belice is pre-eminent both as a table olive and for its oil.  The oil is aromatic with a distinctive taste.  Some liken it to artichokes, green tomatoes or over-ripe fruit, but it is more complex than that and is truly the ripe, pungent taste of the olive itself”.

 

Productivity: since Nocellara del Belice was not in our initial trials of olive trees (an olive tree from Sicily?  Sicilian olive trees will never grow and produce in Oregon.  So we were told, but like we believe everything we hear?), we have relatively less experience with these trees.  So far, our young trees appear to be just as productive as other olive trees, and the fruit is amongst the largest.  For olive oil production, so far it looks to be fairly early in turning color, although the only real crop we have had was in a particularly cold year.

 

Fruit: Large size, firm flesh, a high flesh to pit ratio (6:1 to 8:1), and freestone are excellent table olive characteristics!  These trees should probably be harvested in plenty of time to beat the fall frosts, for use as green ripe table olives.  Perhaps even a little bit earlier than the local pinot noir grapes are harvested.  For use as olive oil, they appear to be amongst the earliest to change color in our climate, and that in a cold year.

 

Tolerances: high to humidity; so far has shown remarkable ability to recover from cold weather (we have yet to have one die).  Adaptable to different growing circumstances with a medium height and vigor; Typically in Sicily they are pruned hard and kept small such that they can be pretty much be harvested from the ground.  They have a very dark green leaf, and are Carmen's favorite olive trees.

 

Comments: We like Nocellara del Belice so much, we are struggling to get enough trees to sell and still finish planting our second production grove for ourselves!  Also another fact that should tell you something: as we do not ship trees, everybody who buys trees comes out to our nursery to check out the different cultivars.  The fact: Nocellara del Belice is our best selling tree.  Highly recommended for making Castelvetrano-style olives, and for making olive oil.  Since the trees can and typically are kept fairly small, it is suitable for suburban yards and higher density plantings on expensive land (e.g. pinot noir type properties).

 

The only drawback so far: it does require a pollinator tree.  We recommend (as usual) Pendolino.

 

 

Nocellara del Belice was affected in about the average sense by the December 2008 storms; the good news is that of these two gallon trees, five out of five made it through the winter, and all are growing well.  They may look a little sad here, but remember those storms out-right killed about 75% per cent of my olive trees in this size pot...

 

06/11/09:

Olives picked right before an early storm blew in.

 

Reken Estate, 11/23/10:

http://www.olioverde.it/curing-olives-to-eat-them/1153/