The Olive Grove...

We have finished planting our little olive grove. The trees are so small you can hardly see them at all, but they should make good progress over the spring.

At the end of the Bluebell walk one arrives at the lake, and passing through a serpentine glade in the lakeside Oak wood, one arrives at the olive grove and Tuscan garden. The olive grove has 12 olive trees of four different varieties, designed to cross pollinate each other (although each variety is self pollinating to a greater or lesser extent. The varieties are:

Frantoio: A Tuscan cultivar known for its excellent oil quality and flavour and moderate to high yields of easy to pick olives. It is frost hardy and a late ripener. Although it is self fertile, its yields improve by pollinating with Leccino. It is the main pollinator for other varieties.

Leccino: Quality and production similar to Frantoio, but more vigorous and higher yielding. Frost hardy. Resistant peacock spot. Late flowering. Pollinated with Frantoio, Pendolino, Picholine or Moraiolo.



Koroneiki: A vigorous, early bearer but late ripener from Greece. It is a small shrubby hardy tree bearing large crops of small fruit, useful as an evergreen shelter. It is self fertile and naturally resistant to Peacock Spot. The olives are OK for pickling as cocktail olives, but it is known for its very high yields of high quality oil.


Manzanillo: This is the world's most popular table olive. It has a high flesh/pit ratio. The tree is small, spreading, early-bearing, and high- producing: well-suited to pickling or oil. The oil has a peppery flavour. It is self fertile but its yield improves with pollination by Frantoio. This is one of the good home garden varieties, with the advantage of early ripening, but the disadvantage that it is prone to Peacock Spot and susceptible to hard frosts.

Hopefully one day the grove above will resemble the grove below...

The fences on the western side have been planted with 3 varieties of grape vines, so one day they will become a verdant border and complete the Tuscan theme. We are currently looking for a press which will handle grapes, cider apples and olives, so we can bottle out own wine, vinegar, cider and oils...


Update 14 January: We now have our first crops of olives and the trees are starting to bush out more...