What is the scoop on olive fumigation?

This article talks about how to reduce olive fruit production in the low desert.

Full disclosure here: I’m an arborist, not a chemist, so this article may be light on multi-syllable words and heavy on “field knowledge.”

The first thing we need to talk about is the fact that olive trees need to be thinned before spray application. Whenever we have sprayed undiluted Olives, the effectiveness of the application has been seriously compromised. The chemical simply can’t reach all the flowers, and wherever the flowers survive the spray, there will eventually be olives. So, clear up the trees before you spray them so you don’t have olive oil all over your sidewalk AND a bill for spraying them.

Once the trees are cut down, there is a choice of which chemicals to use. While there are others to choose from, such as Florel, at Clean Cut we use Keep almost exclusively, as we find it much more effective than other options. Maintenance is a more powerful chemical and can usually get the job done in one application. Being able to accomplish our goal in a single application equates to a lower cost to the customer, which naturally makes our customers happy. However, maintenance has a major drawback: it can cause trees to decline at a rapid rate, especially if applied incorrectly. Most of our customers are so fed up with olives in the ground that they no longer care about the overall health of the tree. Maintenance is also a strong chemical, so take personal protection measures and keep the area free of children, pets and other things that breathe for a period of time after spraying.

If you’re okay with multiple chemical applications, there are a few other options you can consider. Embark and Olive Stop are generally better for the tree and also better for people. These chemicals are less dangerous and, of course, not as effective as maintenance, but it seems that everything is a trade-off in life. The other problem with these types of chemicals is the fact that they may need to be applied 2 or 3 times. Soon enough, the math leans toward tree removal when calculating the cost of annually thinning and spraying an olive tree three times. Most of our customers just prefer to Keep, but it’s still good to be aware of other options.

The third option is to become an expert in curing olives and handing out jars of olives during the holidays. The curing process for olives involves salt water to draw out the bitterness and preserve the fruit. If I had unlimited free time on my hands, that’s what I would do. I have only met one person who went to the trouble of curing their own olives and I was so impressed that someone could take a fruit that causes so much headache in the entire Valley and turn it into something as good as edible olives.