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California Gardening

Is my Swan Hill olive OK?

9 years ago

In November I planted a 24" box Swan Hill olive. It gets full sun all day, the soil is sandy loam, on the sandy side. While it was winter I was watering it about once a week, when the weather heated up I was watering it about every 3 days. I water after checking the soil so that isn't a set schedule. In late Feb or early March I got a flush of growth, about six inches. But starting about a month ago the leaves are looking burned on the tips and it's losing quite a few of them. I've been monitoring it and now I see the brown tips on some of the new growth. Is this normal? I'm not sure what to do but I don't want to lose this tree, it was expensive and I want it to grow into a focal point in my garden.

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Comments (3)

Suzi AKA DesertDance So CA Zone 9b
9 years ago
It looks like it needs water to me. We transplanted 2 6' olive trees two years ago on our property. We had to both top and root prune to get them out of the ground at the other house so we could plant them here. We put them on a drip system every other day, 2 gallon emitters for 45 minutes. They looked like yours and almost died for almost a year, then suddenly, they showed happy new growth. They were the same size when planted, and now one is double the other. Guess what! The smaller one had a clogged emitter!! It still lived, and now it's in full growth mode. Olives are drought tolerant once established. Yours might still be getting used to it's new space.
kentc
Original Author
9 years ago
I've been diligent about checking the soil and watering. I wasn't prepared to have any problems with an olive, they're tough plants and grow everywhere around here. Some areas of this valley had olive groves 100 years ago. I'm hoping that it will settle in and be OK but when I saw the burning on the new leaves it got me worried.
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Suzi AKA DesertDance So CA Zone 9b
9 years ago
kentc, I was SURE ours were dying. Almost ALL the leaves dried up and fell off. There was hope because some leaves just hung on and stayed green. Then one day there was a new sprouting branch with tiny gray green leaves on it. Then more and more. Now we can't stop those trees from putting out new growth.

I'm hoping in a few years we'll have olives for me to brine. Ours were started from cuttings I took at a local golf course in 2009. I know the olives are very big and delicious brined. Not sure how long these cuttings will take to produce.

Good luck to you!

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