permaculture

[Richard Archer <permaculture@juggernaut.com.au>]

At 9:22 PM -0800 22/2/06, Rain Tenaqiya wrote:

>  I've been wondering about the best way to prune olives for
>harvesting.  It seems they would be best kept as hedges or living
>fences, even though they are so beautiful as trees.  Though many of
>the olives that fall to the ground have larvae in them, I wonder if
>you could rake these up or spread a tarp on top of them and then shake
>ripe olives off the tree for harvest.

Olives are harvested commercially with a tree shaker.
They put down a big funnel under the tree to collect the
olives then grab hold of the trunk with a machine and
shake the tree until all the olives have dropped off.

The traditional way is to put a tarpaulin down under the
tree and then to rake the branches (with a long-handled
garden rake). This pulls all the olives off, and you then
manually sort into green/black for pickles. Or just press
them all for oil.

Olives are such tough trees that you could plant almost
anything with them and they will survive and thrive.
So I would be inclined to just plant whatever else
I needed in that position in the landscape.

 ...Richard.