Olive trees... to graft or not to graft?

[djubaya]

Dear friends,

I found an very giant old olive tree which has been unattended for at
least 60 years and it is loaded with olives. It is near my land in west
Sonoma County California so I figure it would be a good mother plant for
scion wood.

My question has to do with cuttings. Would I need a different root stock
or could I root it directly? If I need root stock were would I look? If
there are suckers coming off the base of the tree (I would assume these
would be the original root graft stock) could I use that to graft to? I do
not know much about olives but I know I want this tree.

Thanx, Djubaya

[DGholston]

>My question has to do with cuttings. Would I need a different root stock or
could I root it directly? If I need root stock were would I look? If there are
suckers coming off the base of the tree (I would assume these would be the
original root graft stock) could I use that to graft to? I do not know much
about olives but I know I want this tree.<

I am attaching the part on propagation from the California Rare Fruit Growers
Fruit Fact on Olive. As you see, cuttings can be grafted or rooted directly. As
you see the, the suckers would have to be grafted. The entire Fruit Fact can be
read at the the CRFG web site: http://www.crfg.org/pubs/frtfacts.html.

Don Gholston

>>Propagation: None of the cultivated varieties can be propagated by seed. Seed
propagated trees revert to the original small-fruited wild variety. The
seedlings can, of course, be grafted or chip budded with material from desired
cultivars. The variety of an olive tree can also be changed by bark grafting or
top working. Another method of propagation is transplanting suckers that grow
at the base of mature trees. However, these would have to be grafted if the
suckers grew from the seedling rootstock.

A commonly practiced method is propagation from cuttings. Twelve to fourteen
inch long, one to three inch wide cuttings from the two year old wood of a
mature tree is treated with a rooting hormone, planted in a light rooting
medium and kept moist. Trees grown from such cuttings can be further grafted
with wood from another cultivar. Cutting grown trees bear fruit in about four
years.

[Helen Kay]

On 3 Jun 1998, djubaya wrote:

> My question has to do with cuttings. Would I need a different root stock
> or could I root it directly? If I need root stock were would I look? If
> there are suckers coming off the base of the tree (I would assume these
> would be the original root graft stock) could I use that to graft to? I do
> not know much about olives but I know I want this tree.
>

It depends on the variety: some don't seem to be very enthusiastic about
rooting from cuttings. (Kalamata is one such.) Your best source of
rootstock, if you want to do it cheaply, might be seedlings.
But it wouldn't hurt to just stick in a few cuttings and see what they
do. If they grow, you win.

Helen.

[Gary Cooper]

Is rooting olive cuttings preferred over growing them from seed? I've
heard that even seeds from canned olives can sometimes be sprouted, and
have toyed with the idea of trying it.

Gary

[DGholston]

>Is rooting olive cuttings preferred over growing them from seed? I've heard
that even seeds from canned olives can sometimes be sprouted, and have toyed
with the idea of trying it.<

See the attached quote taken from an earlier posting to this thread:

"None of the cultivated varieties can be propagated by seed. Seed propagated
trees revert to the original small-fruited wild variety. The seedlings can, of
course, be grafted or chip budded with material from desired cultivars."

Don Gholston

[Helen Kay]

On Thu, 4 Jun 1998, Gary Cooper wrote:

> Is rooting olive cuttings preferred over growing them from seed? I've
> heard that even seeds from canned olives can sometimes be sprouted, and
> have toyed with the idea of trying it.
>

Depends what you want...I'm not sure whether any olive varieties will grow
true from seed. Although you could be lucky, and get a good seedling. If
you want eating olives, relatively quickly, you're probably better off
with a named variety.

(That said: Olives are pest plants around Adelaide, and several outlying
council districts have run eradication programs over the last few
years--clearing roadsides and planting native trees, and suchlike. There's
some concern that they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as
some of those feral olives are good oil producers and some are worth
pickling--there's been no survey done, though, beyond locals having
favorite trees.)

Helen. (However much I like papaya, I must admit that all this talk of
olives and loquats and mulberries makes me homesick for South Australia!)