Journal July 31, 2014 Empeltre olive in vitro

This week I have added several new varieties to my olive orchard; sticking with my criteria they have all been dual purpose olives, suitable for table or oil.  The photo above shows three Empeltre cuttings placed in virto today.  The Empeltre is a Spanish variety, the majority of which are planted in Aragon southwest of the Ebro river.   The Ebro river was known to the Romans as Oleum Flumen, which would  translated as Oil River.

Also, I got buy on a very nice Manzanillo tree from a guy on eBay at a very reasonable price.  In addition to the Manzanillo, I purchased a Chamlali and a  Oueslati, both of which are grown in Tunisia.  Soon I expect to have cuttings from those trees in vitro also.

The trees have been struggling in the greenhouse with the summer heat, so I decided to give them the summer outdoors, moving most of them to small deck behind the greenhouse.

 In addition to moving them outdoors, I repotted each tree into a new soil mixture consisting of equal parts of builder's sand, perlite, peat moss and compost.  Both changes have brought about a tremendous change in the health of the trees.

At this point I am regretting that I did not make the changes before I moved them into the greenhouse in the spring.