Kibkom North Cyprus Forum

Olives- or lack of them!
We have four nice olive tree which produced a great crop last year ( but they misteriously disappeared a day before we moved in) this year however all the young olives have dropped off together with a large amount of their foliage, we have watered sparingly a couple of times a week. I think the damage was done in that early heatwave, or do olive trees have a "rest" every other year?Any tips please anyone?

I'm no expert so hopefully one will come along shortly...

We have a few olive trees and from personal experience they tend to have a good crop every 2 years. Last year was exceptional, we got 23 litres compared with 10 litres two years earlier.

13 Years of Olives and wondering why sometimes we have loads and sometimes we don't. At one stage I would have said that you get a wonderful crop when you have a hard and wet winter - last winter was the wettest I have know here and my olives are rubbish this year, the wind early in the year played havoc with the flower and we lost a lot of small olives. Have always watered the olives when the fruit showed but two years ago I was told not to do that and that year was a good crop - it just seems like sometimes the crop is really good then good for a couple of years then poor for a year followed by good for a couple of years then a bumper harvest.

It does depend on where you are as well, the olives on the trees closest to the sea seem to do best - until they don't, lol - and the ones up on higher ground are always later than the ones at sea level - always! I do know that if you hard prune your olive trees then don't expect much for the next couple of years for sure. But, prune you must, keep them clean up through the branches so the air can get around them and you get better olives, don't forget that the trees like to have the old bark taken off as well - not all the way back to the wood but a good scraping makes them sing!!!

You can see on older olive trees where this has been done for years gone by but it seems to be a practise that has fallen into disuse over the last few years.

Then again, what do I know? I was born in the UK, lived in Canada so know about apples and cherries a bit but only started to learn about olives when I go here - I need the experience of many more years yet. Look after them, they will outlive you for sure!!!