Harvest outlook
the 50 litre ones, and the gravity cotton-wool filter unit. How’s that for unbridled optimism?” So in Harrison’s own words “that’s the sad story”. “It started in 2002 when we first planted, and we had some really good harvests along the way, but unfortunately, it’s just the wrong area to try to grow dry-land olives successfully.” More information: www.rashvalleyolives.com.au. Worendo, Darlington And the story doesn’t get any brighter speaking with our third regular contributors, Rob and Sue Overell. Like the other Queensland growers, consecutive years of drought have rendered their trees unproductive yet again this year. “It’s our third year running with no crop. We’re in dire drought here,” Rob said. “We did get some flowers but we got big hail storms in later spring and we lost the lot. The other day I think I found two olives in about 500 trees.” Unlike the others, however, they’re keeping all of their trees. “We’re living in amongst the trees now, we’ve built a cottage there, and our son is still keen to use them. So we’ll still continue looking after them and the years we get a crop that’s going to be great, and if we don’t get a crop there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re just not stressing about it any more.” They have, however, reduced the level of maintenance they do in the grove. “We’re making it manageable while we’re not getting a crop,” Rob said. “We still fertilise and apply boron and trim them but we do minimal other work, and we don’t go over the top with pruning. A lot of the trees we’ve let grow very big – we’d prune them if we want to maximise production but we don’t any more - although we do prune many of the smaller trees. “And we don’t irrigate the olives any more. There’s a total ban on irrigation here, so they’ve got to just go with the natural rainwater now. Until recently that had been 1mm, and two nights ago we got 7mm but it didn’t even wet the ground. It just crackles underfoot.” The trees are, at least, healthy, with no pest and disease issues of note. “We had one bad year with lace bug about four or five years ago but nothing since then,” Rob said. “It took multiple sprayings to get it under control because I used an organic spray to start with and it just wasn’t effective enough. The mistake was not getting them earlier. That said, it knocked them back for a year but after that we got a good crop. “And they look nice – in fact they’re absolutely stunning from a distance – they’re just obviously feeling the conditions and they’re just not very productive.” More information: www.worendo.com.
New South Wales Olives from Broke, Broke Marie Kearns is a new contributor to our Harvest Outlook feature (many thanks and welcome, Marie!). With her family, she runs a small grove of 550 trees just outside Broke in the Hunter Valley, planted with a north-easterly aspect and for table olive production only. Varieties include Kalamata, Sevillano, Manzanillo, Picholene and Azzapa, with a few Frantoio for pollination, and their award-winning olives are produced using natural fermentation methods. The 2018-19 season got off to a good start, she said, but needed a lot more rain to have achieved a really positive result. “Flowering this year was pretty good, although later than last year, 16 • Australian & New Zealand Olivegrower & Processor • March 2019 • Issue 111
Broke Razorback
and similarly fruit set looked promising. “We have had a very hot, dry December and January, however. We have been irrigating quite heavily over the past two months (three times a week for around two hours each) and still would often find the fruit quite shrivelled when we arrived at the grove on Friday evening. “Luckily we’ve had some good rain in the past few weeks and following that, the fruit we have is looking good.” There’s just not that much of it, she said, and they have a couple of possible reasons why that may have occurred. “Unfortunately many of our Kalamata trees just haven’t got any olives, and the Picholine are also sparse. The Sevillano, Manzanillo and also the Frantoio have good volume. “We pruned quite heavily in spring this year and also left quite a lot of Kalamata on the trees last year, as they were late ripening. They were in the section with very little fruit on and we were away in early June, so we didn’t get to them. “We wonder if either of these issues might explain the fruit in these trees just not developing.” On the upside, the dry year – combined with good grove management practices - has been positive in terms of pests and diseases. “We have had little in the way of pest problems this year, and we have a routine for spraying for fungal problems which helps us keep on top of that,” Marie said. So now they just need a bit more rain in the lead-up to that smaller harvest, which looks like deviating from its usual mid-February to April time-frame each year. “We expect harvest will be slightly later this year, probably starting early March and going through to June,” Marie said. More information: www.olivesfrombroke.com.au. Razorback Olive Grove, Razorback Danny Fahri’s harvest story generally follows a biennial pattern, with good crops one year followed by disappointing crops the next – in most cases caused by extremes of weather. Which means last year’s “worst year on record” should mean a positive change of fortune this year. Unfortunately, Farhi told us, it just hasn’t happened – and it’s all down to those extremes of weather. “There’s nothing to tell you (about the harvest). This year is worse,” he said. “It’s because we’ve had no rain, nothing. Olive trees need late winter rain and if you don’t get it, you won’t get fruit. And everything here is struggling now: too much hot weather, burning flowers, not enough moisture. All the farmers are in the same boat and there are no crops - every year I have hundreds of types of birds appear; this year you can hardly see any birds around because there’s nothing for them to eat.” Fahri says his 2019 olive crop is “very little” but that the grove is surprisingly healthy, despite the harsh conditions.