Olive Trees: How to Cost Effectively Reduce Olives and Pollen

12 years ago

I live in San Rafael, California and have two lovely full grown olive trees in our backyard that are next to our swimming pool. Unfortunately, the trees drop a tremendous amount of olives, fallen leaves, and flowers in our pool that become a pool maintenance nightmare. Additionally, my wife is extremely allergic to the pollen.

We very much want to keep the trees, and just want to find a cost effective way to reduce the load that ends up in our pool and yard, as well as having less pollen. I have investigated spraying to reduce olives, but found it too costly. Instead I was planning on having them heavily pruned once every three or four years to keep the canopy relatively small and compact. In fact, this has worked in the past when I had them heavily trimmed 7 years ago to about 1/10 the current canopy volume (practically pollarded), resulting in negligible olives, flowers, pollen, and leaf drop for about 3 years. However, my wife heard from someone that trimming olive trees will only encourage more olives and pollen. But from my direct observation, it does the exact opposite. Not only does a tiny canopy result in less debris, but for the first few years, the tree is spending most of its energy growing back new branches and leaves, and less on producing flowers and fruit.

Who is right? Which is the best cost effective approach? Thanks!

Greg

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Comments (9)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
12 years ago
my wife is extremely allergic to the pollen.

===>>> i will yell.. GET RID OF THEM.. ===>>>> NOW!!!!

what are you thinking???? need she die before you understand what an EXTREME allergy is???

and she ought to move out.. until you take care of it ...

seriously.. what is the cost effectiveness of hospitalization???

KEN
Embothrium
12 years ago
Not seeing how major pruning by a contractor every so many years into perpetuity is an economical choice. And if you have turned them into pollards or otherwise severely pruned specimens then the charm of the natural shapes has already been lost - maybe plant some more suitable kinds of trees among them, cut the olive trees out after the new set is of some size.

Otherwise they should probably be trimmed frequently, maintained as formal specimens instead of getting whacked back hard at longer intervals. Every time they are forced to regrow most of the top that was present at the time they are drawing on nutrient reserves in the trunks and may be gradually becoming diminished by the repeated assaults. There is also the possibility of trunk decay developing due to the large pruning cuts being made.

For planting near swimming pools you want plants with large parts that do not get sucked past filters. As you have described olive trees are probably about as bad a choice as one could come up with.
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Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
12 years ago
That post we had recently about too many cherries and what to do about them reminded me of the perennial questions transplants to GCV/NorCal have about olives.

You can spray Florel every year at 150.00/pop forever. Or you can cut the tree down. Not sure why the previous owner put such a messy tree near the pool, but that is how folks make money - fixing mistakes.

Dan
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
12 years ago
Why is it that you don't want to remove them and replace with something more suitable?
pineresin
12 years ago
Olive trees are valuable, and (compared to many trees) not too difficult to transplant at large sizes. Wait until autumn / winter, and sell them to a tree broker who has clients who do want olives.

Resin
dsieber
12 years ago
Olive trees are valuable if you are in the hinter lands of Italy or Tunisia. I doubt you can find somebody to transport them out of the US for free!!! You may be able to find a transporter in the US to a compatible location if your olives suitable to the vision of the boutique US olive oils that the producers are in to!!!
Embothrium
12 years ago
The trees have already been whacked down to a pollard-like condition on a prior occasion. And it is also true that for all the money that is in California and all the gardening etc. that goes on in the western USA the dominant frame of mind in regard to horticulture is not the same as what is present among at least part of the populations of some other areas. For instance, I've been told the annual budget for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden alone is bigger than that for all of the west coast botanical gardens combined. Some years ago 7 1/2 million dollars was raised in 10 days for a single project at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I think that level of response is pretty much unknown out here.
haskins02
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks for the responses so far. As for removing the trees, my wife won't go for it for several reasons, depite alergies. As for having them removed and getting paids money for them, the trees are situated in a way that it is impossible to get a big tree digger machine (or any machine) near them - they would have to be dug out by hand - huge job. The near-pollarding worked before even though the trees did not look good that first year (few leaves, odd branch pattern). From what I understand from the responses so far, there is not a problem with the tree having more olives and pollen after heavy pruning, but only a concern with the long-term health and asthetics of the trees. Is that correct? Thanks.
Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
12 years ago
but only a concern with the long-term health and asthetics of the trees. Is that correct?

Yup. Essentially you are mangling the tree in order to have a clean pool filter and fewer symptoms, suppressing it over a number of years rather than cutting it down in a few hours. A lot of the jobs from my old landscape design business was fixing design mistakes just like this one. Be forewarned - lots of hundreds of years-old trees in Italy and Spain, where they were cut down and the sprout regeneration trained into new, productive bearing limbs.

Dan

Olive Trees: How to Cost Effectively Reduce Olives and Pollen

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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5

Embothrium

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Olive Trees: How to Cost Effectively Reduce Olives and Pollen

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