olive tree pruningOlive Tree pruning in Tuscany

Its coming up to the time of year when we look at starting to prune our olive trees, well, not all of them, we tend to work in a rotation with maybe 300 tress pruned every year, for a small farmholding, with just Marthese & I working, we feel this is a number we can achieve.

When do we prune our olive trees?

Many things come into consideration when we look at starting to prune our olive trees, time, do we have time now to do it, when later in the year we will not have time, how much foliage has been created by the tree, and how is the weather.

For time, we have many projects that need to be started and completed based on season so this is taken into consideration when we plan our year.

The trees want to produce olives when they feel they already have enough foliage, if there is not enough foliage then the tree will put more energy into creating more foliage, if we leave the pruning until the tree has produced foliage, we can then start pruning safe in the knowledge that the tree thinks it has produced foliage, and can go on to produce olives.

Pruning in bad weather can lead to the introduction of disease to the tree so we try to prune when the weather is dry, giving the tree chance to heal pruning cuts.

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