How are olives farmed?
Olives are fruit trees. They are propogated from cuttings, rather than grown from seed, because seed rarely breeds ‘true’ to the parent. Cuttings about 5 inches long are taken from young wood, then kept in a mist house (a special type of greenhouse where humidity is kept very high) until they sprout roots – typically about 4 to 6 months. Then they are transplanted to pots for about a year, by which point they are single stalks roughly two feet tall, with many leaves. At this point, they‘re ready to go in the ground. Depending on the varietal, the terrain, and the intended method of farming, the trees are planted to a density of between 50 and 300 trees per acres. Our trees, which tend to be relatively small, are planted at a density of about 200 to the acre (on a 12×17 foot matrix). While not strictly necessary, most modern olive groves use some form of irrigation to speed growth and to even out the yield from year to year. (Olives bear their fruit on the previous year‘s growth, so the
