Olive Trees
Pam Chatters
Posts: 6
We started a new garden last year, amongst the trees we have a specimen olive tree and 3 standard olives. All of them but especially the standards look like they are dying. Most have shed their leaves. Is there hope - we are feeding them weekly with seaweed but is there anything else we should be doing
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I don't know if this will help but i have found it useful
http://www.bigplantnursery.co.uk/GrowingGuideOlives.htm
Olives are marginal in UK gardens and won't tolerate prolonged very cold weather without protection. Are your plants in the ground or in pots? Did you wrap them against the frost? The website above suggests that they should cope with short spells down to -7C but we had colder weather during last Winter. I would leave them for a few more weeks to see how they react to (hopefully!) warmer temperatures.
My Olive has just had its second winter in the ground. The man in the nursery said it was fine to leave in the ground over winter but I am not to sure. I have wrapped it up in fleece both years but each time it has lost leaves and looks thin and sad. Last year I resisted trimmig it and towards the end of the summer it had new small leaves . I wonder if it is getting enough heat to recover fully before the next winter.
My Olive Tree in a pot is looking quite sorry for itself, and I thought it was on the way out, but the other day I dd spot some very early sign of new year buds. I think the long cold spring has not helped. I'm hoping it's just complaining but once the weather warms up, it'll sort itself out.
Bear in mind where these come from. It's hard to reproduce those conditions here- even in the south of England so I'd be wary of leaving them outside in the ground unless you have really sharp drainage and some protection. A sheltered urban garden is probably fine but otherwise I'd make sure they had a bit of extra care to get them through our lovely winters!
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I grew one quite successfully in a pot until the frst bad winter 3 years ago - it looked realy woeful after that but although it lost most of its leaves it surprised me and came back. The second bad winter was the end of it really and I decided it needed to much pampering so I didn't keep it. I live in the SE.