Wouldn`t it be handy to have your own olive tree in your garden? ready made olive oil which is about the best type of oil you can get, certainly one of the healthiest.

Indeed it would, green_lover66, but there`re a lot of things to take into consideration before running off to buy an Olive tree.

Olive trees are a Mediterranean native, and require a fairly balmy climate. In particular, they will not tolerate cold winters; if you experience temperatures below 15° Fahrenheit (-7°Celsius), plan on planting something else!

Olives are shallow-rooted, so windy areas are problematic. You won't notice a problem at first, but when a mature tree, carrying a heavy crop, is exposed to high winds, they're extremely vulnerable. If you're in a windy area, plan on planting something else!

While olive trees are astoundingly tolerant of a wide range of soil conditions, they don't like wet feet. If you have heavy clay soil, or if water stands on the soil where you intend to plant after a rain, plan on planting something else!

They prefer the same kind of soil that everything else likes, but in most places around the world they are relegated to otherwise marginal areas: hillsides that aren't readily tilled or are unsuitable for grapes, small pieces of land that aren't useful for row-farmed crops, etc.
Varietals

Once you've chosen your site, the really big decision is what to plant. Remember, there are over 900 olive tree varieties - each with its own unique characteristics - and once you've made your selection, you're stuck. It's not like grapes, where if fashions change you can graft over to a new varietal and have a producing vineyard again in three years. Olive trees don't graft well, so what you plant is what you've got!

Remember, too, that most great olive oils are 'field blends' of multiple varietals. In other words, a given field is planted to a mixture of varietals, which are then harvested together. The reason for this is that it produces much more interesting oil than you get with a single varietal.

An unfortunate trend, especially in California, is to plant, harvest, and press each varietal separately, and then blend the resulting oils. This is a common practice in winemaking, and makes sense there because so much of the character of wine is developed during the maturation process, which takes months or even years. Oil, on the other hand, is at its peak the day it is made, so it's more like a food than a wine.

So the next question is, which blend?

It`s suggested that you start by tasting oils from similar climates (and, if possible, soil types), choose one you like, and plant accordingly. In the software business, we call this 'reverse engineering,' and while it doesn't do much to advance the state of the art, it is a safe, proven path to success. Unless you're planning on living for several generations, so that you've got time to explore a number of different alternatives, it's probably safer to go this route!

Unfortunately, much like grapes, not only are there hundreds of varietals, but there are multiple 'clones' of each one. That's why it's so important to start with the oil and work backwards!

Depending on the varietals you choose and the cultivation model, you'll plant somewhere between 100 and 220 trees per acre; some intensive mechanical farming sites have planted as many as 900 trees per acre!

If you want to make your own oil, you'll need at least an acre of trees. And actually, from an economic perspective, it really doesn't make sense to plant fewer than 5 acres, because that's the point at which you begin to enjoy some economies of scale.

You should plan on putting in a drip irrigation system, with emitters placed near the dripline of the trees, but not at the trunk! (They'll develop crown rot and die.) While olives are relatively drought-tolerant, you'll see much better results (more fruit, and less alternate-bearing) if you keep the trees well-watered. This may mean about 10-20 gallons of water per tree per week from June through October.

Nitrogen is the major fertilizer need.

The trees will require pruning as they mature, both for structural reasons (to ensure a strong tree) and for bearing reasons (to keep light flowing to the bearing branches on both sides of the tree). Since olives bear on last year's growth, pruning involves a delicate balance between this year's crop (and income) and next.
The Olive Fly

1998 will be remembered in the olive industry in California as a bad year - not because the crop was bad, or off, but because that was the year in which a little crtter known as Bactrocera (Dacus) Oleae, a.k.a. the Olive Fly, first showed up in the New World.

The Olive Fly is a fruit fly that has long plagued the olive-growing regions of the Mediterranean. Yet somehow, despite all of the olive trees imported into California over the centuries, the fly never made it. This gave California (and Mexico) growers a real advantage. Sadly, that honeymoon is now over. Since 1998, it has spread into all of California's olive-growing regions, as well as into Mexico.

Like other fruit flies, the Olive Fly lays eggs in young fruit. Unlike other fruit flies, this one likes olives - so much so that if not treated they will infest essentially every single olive in a grove. Infested fruit is simply not useful for either eating or making extra virgin olive oil.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the Fly can be controlled. There are several methods. The proven one requires the spraying of a quite benign treatment called Spinosad, although it must be applied weekly throughout the growing season. Every week. No exceptions. There are some other methods under investigation that are less labor-intensive, and which should be approved for use in California in time for the 2003 or 2004 seasons.

What about the cost of setting all of this up? It varies.

There are so many factors that influence the costs that it's really hard to nail down. But very roughly, figure that (using hired labor) it will cost about $7,500 per acre to plant, depending on how much soil work and site preparation you need to do.

Each year, you'll spend a few thousand dollars per acre for fertilizer, pruning, water, mowing, etc.

You'll get a small crop in four years, which will build slowly over the following decade, topping out at about three or four tons of fruit per acre at full production. We harvest by hand, and have found that 15 experienced workers can harvest a little over two tons in a long day. There are mechanical harvesting systems available, and they work well in flat environments with certain varietals, but results are mixed.

Depending on which varietal(s) you have, you should figure that the fruit will sell for between $300 and $1,000 per ton, although in some years the top price may hit $1,500.

For the health conscious among us:-

Olive oil's health benefits
The greatest exponent of monounsaturated fat is olive oil, and it is a prime component of the Mediterranean Diet. Olive oil is a natural juice which preserves the taste, aroma, vitamins and properties of the olive fruit. Olive oil is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as it is - freshly pressed from the fruit.
olive oil

The beneficial health effects of olive oil are due to both its high content of monounsaturated fatty acids and its high content of antioxidative substances. Studies have shown that olive oil offers protection against heart disease by controlling LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels while raising HDL (the "good" cholesterol) levels. (1-3) No other naturally produced oil has as large an amount of monounsaturated as olive oil -mainly oleic acid.

Olive oil is very well tolerated by the stomach. In fact, olive oil's protective function has a beneficial effect on ulcers and gastritis. Olive oil activates the secretion of bile and pancreatic hormones much more naturally than prescribed drugs. Consequently, it lowers the incidence of gallstone formation.
Olive oil and heart disease

Studies have shown that people who consumed 25 milliliters (mL) - about 2 tablespoons - of virgin olive oil daily for 1 week showed less oxidation of LDL cholesterol and higher levels of antioxidant compounds, particularly phenols, in the blood.(4)

But while all types of olive oil are sources of monounsaturated fat, EXTRA VIRGIN olive oil, from the first pressing of the olives, contains higher levels of antioxidants, particularly vitamin E and phenols, because it is less processed.

Olive oil is clearly one of the good oils, one of the healing fats. Most people do quite well with it since it does not upset the critical omega 6 to omega 3 ratio and most of the fatty acids in olive oil are actually an omega-9 oil which is monounsaturated.
Olive oil and colon cancer
Spanish researchers suggest that including olive oil in your diet may also offer benefits in terms of colon cancer prevention (5). Their study results showed that rats fed diet supplemented with olive oil had a lower risk of colon cancer than those fed safflower oil-supplemented diets. In fact, the rats that received olive oil had colon cancer rates almost as low as those fed fish oil, which several studies have already linked to a reduction in colon cancer risk.
olive oil


Types of olive oil

Generally, olive oil is extracted by pressing or crushing olives. Olive oil comes in different varieties, depending on the amount of processing involved. Varieties include:
Extra virgin - considered the best, least processed, comprising the oil from the first pressing of the olives.
Virgin - from the second pressing.
Pure - undergoes some processing, such as filtering and refining.
Extra light - undergoes considerable processing and only retains a very mild olive flavour.

When buying olive oil you will want to obtain a high quality EXTRA VIRGIN oil. The oil that comes from the first "pressing" of the olive, is extracted without using heat (a cold press) or chemicals, and has no "off" flavors is awarded "extra virgin" status. The less the olive oil is handled, the closer to its natural state, the better the oil. If the olive oil meets all the criteria, it can be designated as "extra virgin".

What is pure and light olive oil? "Pure" olive oil is made by adding a little extra virgin olive oil to refined olive oil. It is a lesser grade oil that is also labeled as just "olive oil" in the U.S.

"Light" olive oil is a marketing concept and not a classification of olive oil grades. It is completely unregulated by any certification organizations and therefore has no real precedent to what its content should be. Sometimes, the olive oil is cut with other vegetable oils.
How to care for your olive oil

Resist the temptation to place your beautiful bottle of olive oil on the windowsill. Light and heat are the #1 enemy of oil. Keep olive oil in a cool and dark place, tightly sealed. Oxygen promotes rancidity. Olive oil is like other oils and can easily go rancid when exposed to air, light or high temperatures.

You can of course buy extra virgin olive oil in any grocery store. A good source on the internet for extra virgin olive oil is here.
Olive oil versus canola oil

Do not fall into the hype which is put out by traditional medicine regarding the promotion of canola oil (rapeseed) as superior due to its concentration of monounsaturated fatty acids. Olive oil is far superior and has been around for thousands of years. Canola oil is a relatively recent development and the original crops were unfit for human consumption due to their high content of a dangerous fatty acid called euric acid.

If the taste of olive oil is a problem, or if you are frying or sautéing food, then you should consider coconut oil. Many nutritionally misinformed people would consider this unwise due to coconut oil's nearly exclusive content of saturated fat. However, this is just not the case. Because it has mostly saturated fat, it is much less dangerous to heat. The heat will not tend to cause the oil to transition into dangerous trans fatty acids.