Olive Tree

[broadway]

Hi Folks,

I've had a Olive tree for about a month and the leafs now seem all brittle, am I doig anything wrong?

Thanks......Broadway

[bramble]

Broadway, you did'nt say if you have the tree outdoors or indoors. If it is indoors the leaves may have dried up due to central heating. If it is outdoors it may be suffering from frost or wind-burn. Let us have a little more info about it.

[broadway]

Doh!

Inside Bramble

[smallblueplanet]

They're not really house plants, I keep mine outside all year, although its a biggish one. If it looks really cold I'll stand it in the garage for a few days, but as long as they don't stand in too wet conditions the cold really should be okay, certainly in London.

[smallblueplanet]

Here's thread from a few years back where SueA & I compare olive trees!!!

growing olives trees

olive guide

[hypnophil]

Olive trees are very hardy, mine is out all year in all weather!
i did try to cover it with fleece but it blew away in 2 days LOL
The french have terrible winters too and the trees can stand even severe frost which splits the whole tree, they just regrow, may not be happy about it though.
i don't know why yours would have brittle leaves , just keep an eye on it, maybe feed it or freshen its soil, depends where you got it from and how old it is, is the pot too small?
maybe some expert grape can help.
hope it is ok, they are lovely trees

[TonyF]

I think the trees are too warm when they want to be dormant and cold. In this area and especially in Italy/Spain, the trees are outside in orchards all year and unless there is some sort of catastophe natural, they all survive quite well in longer-term temperatures of frost that you usually don't see in the UK.

[crichmond]

Here is my olive tree which stays out with no protection all year round, admitedly it is a mature 100+ years old, all I do is feed once in the winter with a fair amount of slow release fertiliser I dont even water ( cos it rains enough in winter ) in summer I water once a week and feed with tomato food once a month, it has thousands of tiny white flowers sometime around the end of spring but although thousands of fruit set they dont tend to mature into full size olives as the climate isnt warm enough in the summer here, probably around 50 or 60 olives grow to full size but thats all.

Cheers Chris

[shirlthegirl43]

How lovely crichmond. I bought a little olive tree year before last from Lidl. It 'died' last winter so I stood the pot outside all summer and totally ignored it. I noticed a week ago that it now has new 'branches' growing below the previous growth - it is still outside as it seems quite happy there.

[crichmond]

They are pretty hardy shirl and can come back from loking like they are dead, Im glad yours appears to be doing just that.
Obviously the one in the picture is my pride and joy, as you may be able to see I have built my patio table out of concrete to resemble a greek pillar and used a patio circle as the tabletop leaving out the inner ring this left the 2 foot opening to put the plant pot in. The thing on the wall in the background is a reproduction of one of the elgin marbles Ive still got to finish the patio by putting 2 more marbles on the other 2 walls and I need to paint it all as well.
Should look good when its finished, I hope.
PS. in case your wondering why, I am half greek and love the country.

[redadmiral]

ah, i had an olive tree seedling, but stupidly left it indoors rather than outdoors whilst i went away for the christmas break and when i came back it had dried up, the leaves were brittle like broadway said above, it must have got too hot from the central heating. any advice grapes? should i put it outside and hope for a miraculous recovery?

[smallblueplanet]

Perhaps put it somewhere outside thats cooler than inside, but not too cold so it doesn't shock it, to give it the best chance of recovering?

[crichmond]

If you move it outside now it will almost certainly shock it. they need to aclimatise slowly to the cold especially if small.
My advice is keep it where it is and water it till water comes out of the bottom then pour any excess away and dont water again until the surface of the soil is dry if it starts showing signs of recovery start feeding as you would a tomato plant until it has a decent amount of foilage returned ie once a week then once a month when recovered during summer. never leave it sitting in water as this will rot the roots.

[redadmiral]

thank you very much for the advice! i will try that, and i sincerely hope it does recover, because i have been wanting an olive tree for ages, and was looking forward to watching it (slowly slowly) develop over the years. as you can imagine, i was gutted when i realised i had almost certainly killed it...

[crichmond]

The only thing I would add is make sure its not next to the radiator, or if you do have a room with the radiator switched off then put in there near the window for light.