How olives are grown and harvested

Propagate the trees

Olives root easily from cuttings and layering, and they throw up suckers from a cut stump. Trees from suckers or seed give poor yields, though, so growers root cuttings or bud and graft onto better stock.

Wait for flower and fruit

Small white flowers form on the previous year's wood, and the buds take 4 to 6 weeks to grow before they bloom. The fruit that follows is a small drupe, 1 to 2.5 cm long when ripe.

Hedge for the harvester

Older California orchards have tall trees, with fruit on flexible hanging shoots that machines handle badly. Growers adapt them by hand-pruning limbs in the way and hedging the rows. A Tulare County trial topped trees at 12 ft and hedged alternate sides each year, with no significant change in cumulative yield.

Shake trunks or canopies

Most olives come off by shaking the tree or single branches. A trunk shaker suits upright trees with smooth trunks, and a canopy-contact machine suits hedgerows, each carried on a mobile platform with a catch frame. University of California trials of both removed at least 75% of the fruit.

at least 75% of fruit removed in UC trials

Pick table fruit gently

Damaged table olives turn bitter, so pickers use baskets hung around the neck. On ladders, others milk fruit into a sack tied at the waist. In mountainous parts of Italy, Croatia and Greece the crop is still picked by hand, because machines cannot work the terrain.