Posts Tagged: Olives
Growing Olive Trees in the Napa Valley
By Okhoo Hanes, U. C. Master Gardener of Napa County If you are a home gardener in Napa Valley,...
Olive Harvest at Grumpy Goats Farm
Yesterday I was an agritourist. Pamela Marvel and Stuart Littell, owners of Grumpy Goats Farm, in the Capay Valley of Yolo County, invited me to be part of their annual olive harvest, joining the "friends and family" contingent and picking alongside a hired picking crew. Grumpy Goats is a twenty acre organic farm planted with multiple varieties of olives that are pressed into prize-winning extra virgin olive oil. For me, the day was an adventure. I got to enjoy a sunny fall day being part of an ancient rite of the season, and I got to spend a few hours with some people whose paths don't often cross my own.
Being a guest, I didn't arrive until 9:30 or so, after a beautiful drive through the surrounding farm land. Stuart was there to meet me, introduced me to the other friends and family, and offered me coffee and pastries. With my own picking basket strapped on, I started picking. The young trees were soft and kind, giving their fruit easily with a gentle pull. Even the lowest branches almost dragging on the ground bore olives to harvest. The rhythm was easy on the body - no ladders to climb and lots of trays close by to dump olives when the picking basket began to get heavy. The crew of men and women worked fast around me, and I learned by watching. The other family and friends guests and I tried to keep up, and talked as we picked.
After a few hours it was lunch time. Stuart and Pamela put on lunch for the "family and friends", while the crew gathered to eat by their vehicles or in the shade of the trees. We talked and ate and enjoyed the pleasant day, learning more about each others' lives. Then it was time to go back to picking. This time I joined in with the hired crew, trying not to get in their way.
I thought of the election earlier this week. I thought of our new president-elect and the fearful changes that might be coming for this kind woman and her family and her friends. I wondered what harvest day would be like for Stuart and Pamela next year, or the year after. This agritourism adventure connected me briefly to people whose kindness and friendliness I hope to be able to repay before too long.
UC releases new cost studies for growing olives
UC Agricultural Issues Center has released two new studies on the cost and returns of growing olives in the Sacramento Valley. One study focuses on producing table olives with the Manzanillo variety. The other study focuses on establishing a super-high-density orchard and producing olives for oil, using the Arbequina variety.
The cost analyses are based on hypothetical farm operations of well-managed orchards, using practices common to the region. Growers, UC ANR Cooperative Extension farm advisors and other agricultural associates provided input and reviewed the methods and findings of the studies.
The authors describe the assumptions used to identify current costs for the olive crop, material inputs, cash and non-cash overhead. A ranging analysis table shows profits over a range of prices and yields. Other tables show the monthly cash costs, the costs and returns per acre, hourly equipment costs, and the whole farm annual equipment, investment and business overhead costs.
The new studies are titled:
- “Sample Costs to Produce Table Olives in the Sacramento Valley – 2016”
- “Sample Costs to Establish a Super-High-Density Orchard and Produce Olives for Oil in the Sacramento Valley – 2016”
Free copies of these studies and other sample cost of production studies for many commodities are available. To download the cost studies, visit http://coststudies.ucdavis.edu.
The cost and returns program is associated with the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the UC Agricultural Issues Center, which is a statewide program of UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
For additional information or an explanation of the calculations used in the studies, contact the UC Agricultural Issues Center at (530) 752-4651 or Jeremy Murdock at jmmurdock@ucdavis.edu.
Olives
About 16 years ago, well before I was a Master Gardener, I planted my first olive trees. My goal...
New olive disease in Italy concerns California researchers
This has California researchers worried and baffled. The bacterium Xyllela fastidiosa has been present in the state for more than 100 years and can sometimes be found in olive trees. Trials conducted by USDA and UC researchers from 2008 to 2011 showed that strains of the bacterium found in California did not cause disease in olives.
“It's complicated,” said Elizabeth Fichtner, an olive and nut crop expert with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR). “The Italians found X. fastidiosa in sick trees, but the causal agent of the disease still remains to be identified by scientists.”
There are different subspecies of X. fastidiosa. In California, X. fastidiosa subspecies fastidiosa causes Pierce's disease in grapevines and almond leaf scorch disease. Another subspecies, multiplex, causes disease in almonds but not grapevines. A possible reason why California olive trees are unaffected by the bacterium is that the genotypes found in Italy belong to a different subspecies named pauca, a subspecies group not known to occur in the United States. Strains of X. fastidiosa subspecies pauca cause a serious citrus disease in Brazil and Argentina. The X. fastidiosa subspecies known from California do not cause disease in citrus.
Fichtner is working closely with USDA researcher Rodrigo Krugner of the USDA San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center in Parlier to better understand the potential threat to California olives and keep California growers informed.
Krugner traveled to Italy to view the olive trees with quick decline symptoms.
“They took me where it all started,” Krugner said. “Trees that were alive had scorched leaves, twig and branch dieback. I have been seeing olive trees in California with similar symptoms since 2008, but in Italy the disease is more severe. It's devastating.”
Surveys led by Krugner, dating back to 2008, showed that, among symptomatic ornamental trees in Southern California, 30 out of 78 were positive for X. fastidiosa.
“In the San Joaquin Valley, only 3 out of 121 were positive despite disease symptoms being the same between trees in the two regions,” Krugner said. “In greenhouse studies in which olive trees were inoculated with X. fastidiosa, the bacteria survived in the plants but produced no symptoms. In time, the bacteria disappeared.”
Krugner said he and Fichtner visited an olive orchard in the Fresno area where the trees were suffering from widespread leaf scorch symptoms and some dieback.
“The entire orchard had symptoms, every tree,” Krugner said. “But all samples were negative for presence X. fastidiosa by molecular tests and culturing.”
One possible explanation for the widespread and uniform distribution of the disease symptoms in the Fresno orchard was over watering and over working the soil, which may have damaged the roots facilitating the invasion of soil pathogens.
California olive growers and landscape managers with olive trees should be on the lookout for olive dieback symptoms. If new incidences of extensive dieback or scorch on olives are found, contact the local UC ANR Cooperative Extension farm advisor to facilitate early detection of potential new pathogens.
“Because of the regular movement of plants and plant materials across international borders, there is a constant flux of organisms,” Fichtner said. “We need to be aware of global trends in plant diseases and the establishment of insects that can spread disease.”
For more information about Xylella fastidiosa and olive quick decline syndrome in Italy, see an overview posted on the UC Berkeley plant disease page.
An initiative to manage endemic and invasive pests and diseases is part of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Strategic Vision 2025.