Butterfly4u... I feel like I have known you for a very long time...Boy does time fly! Thank you for your kind comments and stopping by...You do know that your suggestions and comments always have meant a lot to me.. Much apprciated.. I was reading some of your older posts, and I even think you wrote one on olives too, or gardenias also.. I will be commenting soon..Your plants are just beautiful too! Yes, it is the same one as last year...It grew big didn't it?!..I love this tree..I also have 3 others doing just as nice..I bought them in 2 inch pots, and now they are so much bigger since the spring..I will post those pics soon..I hope you see them.. Because of all the gardenia information you have dispensed here, mine are also doing fanatastic! I never got that red olive....They are so expensive and I was told they do not bloom as much.. I never put that any in the pop up..This particular one has been going in my garage at night when temps drop to the 30's..Then it has stayed outdoors everyday since..It seems to thrive in the cold....I also place it against the pop up so that it faces the sun and it warms that area up very nicely..Cold at night, warm by day and fresh rain...Loves it..;-) So nice to spend this time with you..:-) Moonwolf....I have seen your new aquired plants..Just beautiful..They should do very well with your love and caring attitude to back them up...Nice.. Kemistry....Thank you so much....I am suprised you couldn't keep them happy inside for the winter...They are not hard to grow indoors for the winter.. If you should decide to get one again, I , as well as everyone else would be happy to help you.. MIke

i wouldnt doubt it because there are naturalized parrots in many cool areas. Brooklyn is a zone 7 and has parrots thriving in some communities. They are in abundance too but arent very widespread and live together. Just like all other city birds they eat a lot of food that is on the ground but will eat a lot of other foods too. They dont look like tropical parrots, but can be trained to talk, but probably will never do so in the wild. Definitely not those beautiful tropical looking parrots you see as pets or in the zoo, but they do have nice green colors to them. But as far as stealing fruit, there are lots of other much more common birds that will do that job a lot quicker than these parrots in brooklyn (I believe they are called quaker parrots and are from argentina). I think they are also in other areas but Im really only familiar with the ones in Brooklyn. Good luck! -Alex

Oops, I messed up the heading of my post! It should read something like Olive Tree: Good Sources. That's what I get for doing too many things at the same time.

I agree with nmgirl, there have been rumors on this forum of olive trees in protected microclimates in Albuquerque, which is pretty incredible, but that is still a good zone or two warmer than 6. Potted plants may be the only surefire way to go, especially if you want fruit... I had some small potted olives in a sunroom for a while, but they never flowered, showed slow growth, and were very susceptible to scale. Other plants, like pomegranates, citrus, guava, mango, have done much better under the same conditions. Incidentally, pomegranate is another Mediterranean fruit that would have a better chance for you outside in the ground. It's much hardier than sources say, sprouts back easily from the roots, is smaller and easier to cover for protection, and is deciduous, which means that it goes fully dormant in the winter. A nurseryman in zone 6 Moriarty, NM is trialing some pomegranates that survived last winter's record low of -34 there! Back to the olives on a different note: if you read accounts of the early Spanish settlement of Santa Fe, you find that their plans included olive groves on every land parcel. Obviously they tried it and quickly discovered that olive trees could not survive here. I can see say with confidence that there are no true olive trees grown outside here in Santa Fe to this day. Similarly, almonds were initially grown here by the Spanish, and supposedly there were still almond orchards in Northern NM until the trees were killed by some intense winters sometime in the mid 1900's. I'm sure you could still find the occasional backyard almond tree, but they are apparently even more susceptible to late frosts than the locally widespread apricot.