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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.
On June 7, 2014 I cut a single leaf from a miniature rose plant that Ava had given her grandmother last Mother's Day. The leaf was cut into several sections, which were then placed in vitro.
This is the very first time I have attempted a leaf cutting, so I really don't know what to expect. That said, one month later callus cells are beginning to form on the leaf sections, so I am hoping that soon new plants will begin to grow from the callus.
Above is one of the Picholine olive explants placed in vitro on June 13, 2014. At that time I had placed three explants in the same vessel, however, they began to grow so quickly that I have decided to separate them so each can have enough room, and media, to grow.
This is a photo taken on 7/4/14 of a single node Taggiasca olive explant that was placed in vitro on 6/15/14. I am finding that different varietals seem to respond differently. Then again, it could also be what the plant was doing at the time the explant was taken. It seems that the larger the immature nodes is, the faster the explant responds.
As a test, an explant was taken from a Manzanillo olive and placed in vitro. When the explant was taken, the node was very immature; it has been at least two weeks since the test began and the explant is still alive, however no growth is evident.
Contrary to what one might expect, the olives in the greenhouse are hardly growing at all with all of the summer sun and heat. They seem to put on spurts of growth in the late winter, early spring and fall. They certainly are a challenge to grow.
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