permaculture

["Débora U. Barocas e Peter J. Webb" <petedeby@terra.com.br>]

 

 

Dear Gene, I don't think that Olives would particularly like your climate in Tennessee, but they make nice trees. They like to have a  decent amount of cold and dry weather and are not particularly fond of high humidity. Without well defined seasons they tend to get a bit lost in their growth patterns.

You can grow them from seeds ok, and a bit of cold treatment would help them to sprout quicker. They can be grown from cuttings or are grafted on to Privet (Ligustrum) with the rootstock normally covered by soil at planting time as opposed to the usual care of leaving the graft clear of the soil.

A cutting grown plant or grafted one can give you fruits in a few years, but it is only with age that Olives really come into their own........taste and oil qualities to olives are a bit like wisdom to we humans.

For you to get plants.......find a mail order nursery in California.

Plant the seeds with your daughter and for the Earth.....olives are biodiverse and will produce some sort of fruit for you...but who knows what type and you will probably have to count the years 10 or more depending on the trees'urgency.

Good Luck       Pete Webb