Journal June 10, 2014 - New Plant

Since I began collecting olive trees I have been trying to locate a Picholine olive and I have finally found one.  For whatever reason this variety is hard to find in this country.

Picholine Olive Trees are native to France, they have large, flat, light green leaves, and medium sized fruit, which can weigh about 3-5 grams. The olives are harvested green, for eating, and black, for oil. They ripen in late November to December. Picholine Olives are self-fertile and are known to be resistant to both drought and cold, and can adapt to a variety of temperatures and soils.  

The tree I received had two trunks, one of which was removed, as I do not want any twin trunked trees.

The trunk that was removed was dipped in Vita-Grow rooting hormone and planted in Ava's garden with her corn.  I thought I would give it a chance to root, and I did not want to root it using conventional cloning methods.  My thinking is that the Roman army planted millions of trees, and they must have pretty much just stuck them in the ground as I have.

My previous attempts at cloning olives using traditional cloning have met with dismal results, which is another reason I just stuck the branch in the ground.   Using traditional methods requires misting several times a day, without misting equipment the success rate is pretty near nil.  I much prefer my present method of cloning using tissue culture.