Olive

Olea europaea

Family Oleaceae

TreeZones 8-10

Botanical illustration of Olive

Silver leaves that catch every breath of wind, a trunk that gnarls beautifully with age, and — yes — real olives: an olive tree in a pot brings the whole Mediterranean postcard onto a patio. Cure your own harvest once and store olives never taste the same.

Pot culture keeps it a tidy 5-6 feet and lets cold-country growers summer it outside and winter it in a cool bright room. Self-fertile, evergreen, and nearly indifferent to drought; 'Arbequina' starts fruiting young. Set one by the sunniest door and begin the tradition.

Where to buy olive — 10 nurseries compared

  • Full Sun
  • Drought-tolerant · low water
  • Slow growth
  • Excellent edible
Olive — a print from the Plant Library collection

From the print shop

Growing olive? Hang it.

Our Plant Library collection carries olive — Olea europaea, print Nº 336, “Olive.”

526 designsfrom $12.99white or black backgroundmatte poster, unframed

Shop Plant Library botanical prints →

✓

Will it fruit where you are?

Enter your ZIP — we look up your USDA hardiness zone (2023 map) and check it against what olive actually needs.

Life cyclePerennial zones 8–10, annual elsewhere
PollinationSelf-fertile

Olive · Common problems

Common olive problems

Pests, diseases and weather to keep an eye on.

Pests

2 problems on file

  • Scale
  • Olive Fruit Fly (West Coast)

Diseases

2 problems on file

Olive · Growing & propagation

Growing olive

Light, water, soil, propagation and the season’s jobs.
What it needsThe details
Light
Full Sun
Water
Very low

The definition of drought-tolerant

Soil
Poor, gravelly, perfectly drained · pH 6.5 - 8.0
Fertilizer
Minimal

A little nitrogen in spring

Pruning
Late Winter

Open center; olives fruit on last year's wood — alternate light/harder years.

Spacing
Container or 12-20 ft

How to plant & propagate olive

Propagate
Grafted, or from cuttings/layering

Seed won't come true

Olive · Harvest & keeping

What you get from olive

How long before it bears, how much it gives, how you know it is ready, and how long it keeps once picked.
Botanical illustration of Olive
Years to first harvest
3 to 5 years
Typical yield
20–60 lbs
What you eat
Fruit (cured)
How to tell it is ready
Green-ripe for firm brine cures; purple-black for oil and ripe cures

Always cured, never eaten raw

How long it keeps
Cure or press promptly

Cured olives keep months

Olive · Seasonal care & spray guidance

The olive growing playbook

Field-tested instructions for every job olive asks of you, compiled from university extension guidance — in the order the season brings them.

As growth begins

early spring

1 job
FeedingIn spring

Split the nitrogen: half at growth start, the rest before bloom

Give half the year's nitrogen in early spring as growth starts and the remainder before the tree flowers. Aim for 8 to 20 inches of new shoot growth a year and adjust the rate up or down from what the tree actually gives you. A mature dooryard olive in reasonable soil often needs nothing at all. Nitrogen applied after flowering pushes vegetative growth at the expense of the crop, and the soft growth it forces is also what reduces cold hardiness and dilutes oil quality. Getting it in before bloom feeds the flowers and the fruit set instead of the shoots.

Just after bloom

as the fruit sets

1 job
SprayingAfter fruit set

Olive fruit fly: spinosad bait once your traps catch flies

Start spinosad bait (GF-120 NF Naturalyte Fruit Fly Bait) as soon as your traps are catching adult flies, or about 2 to 3 weeks before pit hardening, whichever comes first. Put it out as a coarse spray or stream of large droplets onto a small patch of foliage on part of the tree rather than covering the canopy, and repeat every 7 days as long as flies keep showing on traps. Apply pre-dawn or in the early evening so the droplets resist evaporation. This is a bait, not a contact insecticide - the adult fly has to find it and feed on it, so a few large wet droplets outperform a full-cover spray and an evaporated droplet does nothing. The point is to kill the females before they sting the fruit, which is why the trap catch, not the calendar, starts the program: once the maggot is inside the fruit no spray reaches it.

Through summer

the growing season

2 jobs
PruningThrough summer

Olive knot: do your pruning in dry summer weather

Take your annual pruning in dry summer weather, not in winter or spring. Open the canopy so light reaches the interior where next year's fruiting wood forms, and cut out any knotted, galled twigs well below the swelling. Wipe or dip your shears in a 10 percent bleach solution between cuts and between trees. Olive knot bacteria cannot enter intact bark - they need a fresh wound and rain to wash them into it. Pruning wounds made in the dry summer months are not susceptible to infection, while winter and spring cuts sit open through the rains and become new infection courts.

What to watch forThrough summer

Hang an olive fruit fly trap and read it weekly

Hang a yellow sticky trap baited with pheromone or ammonium bicarbonate, or a McPhail or Olipe trap baited with torula yeast, in the canopy and check it once a week through summer and fall. Replace yellow sticky traps about monthly, or sooner if they get wet, dusty, or clogged with other insects, and refresh McPhail lures on schedule. Olive fruit fly can finish a generation in as little as 30 to 35 days at optimum temperatures of 68 to 86 F, so a population builds fast and out of sight - the maggot is inside the fruit. The trap catch is the only thing that tells you whether to bait at all and when to start; by the time you can see stung fruit, the larvae are already in.

Harvest time

as it ripens, and picking

1 job
HarvestingAt harvest

Pick at the ripeness you want - then cure, always

Decide what you are making before you pick. Green-ripe olives come off while the fruit is still firm and has turned an even pale green to straw color. Naturally black-ripe olives stay on the tree until they reach dark red, purple, or black, which UC Davis puts at roughly 3 to 4 months past the green stage. Either way, every olive has to be cured in water, brine, dry salt, or lye before it is edible. Raw olives are loaded with oleuropein, a bitter compound most abundant in green fruit. Curing is what leaches or chemically breaks that bond - there is no ripeness at which an olive becomes good to eat straight off the tree. Ripeness is a choice about flavor and texture, not a deadline.

After harvest

autumn, and putting it to bed

2 jobs
SprayingIn autumn

Peacock spot: copper on the leaves before the rains start

Spray a fixed copper fungicide, copper sulfate, or Bordeaux mixture to thorough coverage of the whole canopy in late fall, before the first sustained rains arrive where you are. Repeat in spring if wet weather keeps up. Peacock spot spores germinate and infect leaves between 35 and 80 F when about 48 hours of free moisture is present, so nearly all new infection happens during fall and winter rain. Untreated, it defoliates the tree, which weakens the following bloom and cuts the crop.

HarvestingAfter harvest

Strip and destroy every leftover olive after you pick

Once you have harvested, go back and strip every olive still hanging in the tree, then rake up all the fruit on the ground. Bury it at least 4 inches deep or bag it for the landfill. Do not leave it in a pile, and do not compost it in place. Larvae in leftover fruit drop out, burrow into the soil, and pupate there - that carryover is exactly the population that stings next year's crop. Fruit left hanging on the tree keeps feeding fly generations right through the fall.

Olive · Calculators & field guides

A little help in the garden.

Calculators for the figures. Field guides for the hands-on work.

Olive · Yearly calendar

The olive year, month by month

What olive asks for, month by month.

Jan

No calendar activity is listed for this month.

MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Bloom
Prune
Harvest

BloomMarch to May

PruneFebruary to March

HarvestOctober to November

What each band means

  • Bloom — flowers open — pollinators working, frost on blossoms is the danger.
  • Prune — shape it now — cuts heal cleanly and structure is visible.
  • Harvest — picking time — check ripeness every few days.

These are the species' typical months — expect them a few weeks earlier in warm zones and later in cold ones. Watch the plant, not just the calendar.

Olive · Ecology & uses

Ecology & uses

What it does for the garden, and what it is grown for.
Botanical illustration of Olive

Olea europaea

Olive in the garden system

  • Understory layer tree
Attracts
Birds
Moisture
Upland / dry
Deer
Browsed

Protect young plants

Origin
Introduced

What olive is grown for

✓ Commonly eatenraw olives inedibly bitter, not toxic

Use
Container Mediterranean
Use
Curing project
Use
Silver foliage
Edible value
4/5

Harvesting & storing olive

October - November (green = firm/bitter, black = ripe; ALL need curing).

Edibility, identification, and traditional-use notes here are general reference — not medical or veterinary advice, and not a claim that any plant treats or prevents anything. Medicinal ratings record how strongly a plant features in herbal tradition, nothing more. Never eat or dose a plant you have not positively identified. More on how to use this library.

Olive · Varieties & cultivars

Best olive varieties & cultivars

There are far more than these — the ones below are the named varieties of olive people actually plant.

Named varieties of olive differ in winter-chill needs, ripening time, hardiness, and whether they set fruit on their own — pick one that fits your climate.

12 varieties

Arbequina

Also known as Arbequin, Arbequi

Partly self-fertile

Chill
150–300 hrs
Ripens
Oct-Nov
Zones
8-11
Disease
moderate; some peacock spot susceptibility
Size
compact 10-15 ft, dwarfish and precocious
Pollination
sets some fruit alone but yields much better with a pollinizer such as Arbosana, Koroneiki, or Picual; recent research shows it can behave as self-incompatible

mild buttery oil, low pungency; fruit too small for table use — The go-to low-chill, relatively cold-tolerant, precocious variety for Southern and warm-winter US home growers and containers. Self-fertility is disputed: long treated as self-fruitful, but recent extension/research sources classify it as partly self-incompatible, so plant a pollinizer for reliable set.

Where to buy ‘Arbequina’verified

Story Thyme Farms may earn a small commission from these links, at no cost to you — it never changes what we recommend.

Raintree NurseryArbequina Olive$25.99↗Peaceful ValleyArbequina Potted Olive Tree$39.99↗EtsyBrowse growers↗

Sources & plant identity

Know what you’re growing.
See where the knowledge comes from.

Botanical illustration of Olive

Olive

Olea europaea

The plant, at a glance.

Botanical name
Olea europaea
Plant family
Oleaceae
Growth habit
Tree · Tender Perennial
Origin
Introduced
USDA plant symbol
OLEU
Invasive risk
Low
Every garden is different.

Hardiness, size and timing vary with your cultivar, soil and climate.

Rooted in research.

University extension research, brought together with hands-on growing experience at Story Thyme Farms.

Explore Olive’s sources8 reference links
for Olive

Research from these sources

GigaScience / PMCUniversity of California ANRUniversity of Floridanovavine.com

Publisher marks identify sources, not sponsorship or endorsement.

Questions

Olive questions, answered straight.

Do I need two olive plants to get fruit?

No — olive is self-fertile, so a single plant will set a crop. A second one usually improves yields, but it isn't required.

Is olive safe for kids and pets?

Olive is commonly eaten and isn't considered toxic, but "commonly eaten" isn't a guarantee for any particular person or animal — allergies, quantity, and which part you eat all matter. One caveat on this one: raw olives inedibly bitter, not toxic. Never eat a plant you haven't positively identified, and check with a vet before letting pets or livestock graze anything new.

When do you harvest olive?

October - November (green = firm/bitter, black = ripe; ALL need curing).

How do you propagate olive?

Grafted, or from cuttings/layering (seed won't come true).

Elsewhere

Where olive sits in the library.

Where olive sits in the library

Fruit trees31Self-fertile fruit trees20Fruit trees for zone 822Fruit trees for zone 921All collections

Grows in the same world

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