Consider the Olive

I’m not suggesting that olive trees should elbow out spruces, firs, and other conifers that are our traditional Christmas trees. Still, an olive tree symbolizes peace and is a tree you actually would find growing in Jerusalem, so is an appropriate accompaniment to the holiday season.

Old olive tree in Spain

Even if you’ll never see strings of light bulbs corralling cut olive trees together on bare lots of land the way they do cut Christmas trees, you could grow your own olive tree. Grow it as a houseplant, that is, which you’d have to do where winter lows dip near 10 degrees (USDA Hardiness Zones 8).

I’ll bet you’re thinking that an olive tree grows too large to keep year after year as a holiday houseplant. Well so do — or would — many other houseplants, including such tropical trees as schefflera, rubber tree, and weeping fig. All these trees are kept to Lilliputian proportions by having their roots cramped into pots and occasionally, along with some of their stems, lopped back.

An olive tree is even better adapted to living indoors that are the many houseplants that come from lush, tropical forests. On the dry hillsides of the Mediterranean, where olives are native, their deep roots do have access to water. But for much of the year the air there is bone dry — just like in our homes in winter! Fertilizer salt buildup is sometimes a problem with houseplants; olive trees also tolerate this in good stride.

A Beginning

A few routes will lead you to your olive plant. Most challenging would be to start with seeds. Most olive fruits are pickled or cured so will never sprout. I’ve purchased very delicious olives that are naturally cured. Their seeds will sprout. You could also purchase seeds (Hudsons Seed Catalog, www.jlhudsonseeds.net) or squeeze them out of ripe fruits if you happen to be where olive trees grow or can have someone send you some.

Clip off their pointed ends, sow them in pots, and then wait 4 or 5 months. Young olive trees will reward your patience with their rapid growth.

Another route to an olive tree is with cuttings, which, again, you can lay hands on if you happen to be where the trees grow or you can have sent. Decades ago, I had an olive tree that started life as a small, leafy cutting that I had furtively yanked from the base of a small tree growing in a university greenhouse. I’m not suggesting a repetition of my crime, but young sprouts do root readily if their tops are kept in humid air with a covering of glass or clear plastic.

Other kinds of cuttings also root readily, and need less attention to maintenance of high humidity. Older, leafless pieces of stem can develop roots, as can pieces of bark laid on soil. Pieces of large roots dug from around a tree eventually send up shoots if buried back in soil.

Of course, you could also just purchase a small olive tree (from, for instance, Raintree Nursery, www.raintreenursery.com).

Once your new plant is up and growing, care for it just as you would any other houseplant. Do check that the soil stays moist because the stiff leaves won’t wilt to tell you they’re thirsty — until they drop off as the branch to which they are attached dies back. Dropping leaves are not always cause for panic, because, like other evergreens, olive’s older leaves do eventually drop.

You’ll like the way your olive tree looks even beyond the holiday season. The evergreen leaves are silvery on their undersides sides and darker green on top. Judging from the thousand-plus year old specimens that still survive around the Mediterranean, your olive tree could live a long time. All the while, the plant will get more picturesque as its branching pattern turns craggy and its trunk becomes gnarled.

Harvest?

I once read that there’s little chance of ever plucking a bountiful crop of fruit from an indoor olive tree. Calling accepted.

Long after my pilfered olive tree was no longer with me, I purchased an olive tree, the variety Arbequina. That variety is self-fruitful so doesn’t need a mate to bear fruit. And I did manage to harvest olives. The plant, which came from Raintree Nursery, started bearing its first season!

My first olive harvest

The year after my first harvest, my tree had but one fruit still hanging on its branches in late summer. I think my ducks ate it, and probably any others also. 

The following season, I went into autumn with about a dozen fruits. What with being knocked around when moved indoors and the change in environment, about half that number of fruits remained to ripen.

Olive branches bearing fruits

I like my olives fully ripe, black, so have let them hang as long as possible. (Green olives are harvested underripe.) With time, those ripening fruits begin to to dry and shrivel, and that’s when I harvest them. Delicious, to me at least.

I’m hoping, with judicious pruning and the tree now wintering in a sunny window in a very cool mudroom (temperature in the low 40s), for greater harvests in the future. Judicious pruning means leaving enough one-year-old stems, which send out fruit bearing new shoots fruit, while, at the same time, cutting back some other stems to promote growth of new one-year-old shoots for next year’s harvest.

With frustratingly small yields, I was going to give up on the plant a few years ago — until a friend reminded me, “You can’t do that. The olive tree is beautiful and for thousands of years has been a symbol of joy, happiness, and peace.” That’s even better than the fruits, so the tree is a keeper.