Olive (Common Olive)
Olea europaea (OLEACEAE)
Planting and Growing Olive Trees
You’ll find everything you need to know to plant and grow olive trees (common olive) in the accompanying table’s tabs:
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- Flowers, foliage, and fruit of olive (common olive)
- Growing conditions for olive
- When to plant olive
- How to plant olive
- How to prune olive
- Watering, fertilizing, and care of olive
- Landscape uses of olive
- Pest and disease control for olive
Growing Olive Trees
Many cultivars of slow-growing, long-lived, fruiting or fruitless, erect, round-crowned, evergreen trees, to 30 ft. (9 m) tall and 20–30 ft. (6–9 m) wide, with opposite, gray green, leathery, oval, often narrow, pointed leaves, to 3 in. (75 mm) long, with silver undersides, and with smooth, silver gray bark. Produces numerous suckers.
Common cultivars include Olea europaea ‘Bonita’, ‘Majestic Beauty’, ‘Mission’, ‘Sevillano’, and ‘Wilsoni’, among many others.
Olive Planting and Care Guide
Flowers and Fruit
Many inconspicuous, cream, white, dangling flowers formed in the junctions of leaf stems and branches, in spring, form edible, blue black, fleshy, pitted, staining fruit in autumn. Requires winter chilling to set fruit. Fruitless cultivars may still produce some sparse fruit.
Best Climates
U.S.D.A. Plant Hardiness Zones 7–11. Semi-hardy. Best in arid, hot-summer climates.
Soil Type and Fertility
Dry, well-drained, sandy soil. Fertility: Rich–low. 6.5–8.0 pH. Best in rich soils.
Where and How to Plant
Full sun. Space 10–15 ft. (3–4.5 m) apart.
Proper Care
Easy. Keep moist until established; drought tolerant thereafter. Avoid fertilizing. Prune to shape, thin. Propagate by cuttings, grafting, seed, suckers. Prevent undesired fruit by spraying blossoms with horticultural growth inhibitor during bloom to prevent set.
About This Species
Good choice for accents, containers in formal, orchard, small-space gardens. Freshly picked olives are bitter and inedible; preserve them by following recipe directions for soaking the fruit in successive baths of lye, a caustic compound requiring caution for use. Nematode, scale and olive knot, verticillium wilt susceptible.