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Calling SMB veg growers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 5265
  • Start date Start date
DaveH said:
Years ago me and the wife went to South Africa and one common food there were gem squashes. Small, green and a bit bigger than a tennis ball. Boil, scoop out the seeds then put mushrooms, bacon and melted cheese in, they were lovely.

One day I saw them in Sainsburys when they were doing a little food of the world thing. I bought 4, kept the seeds and grew some the next year. I think I got 4 more years of seeds before I had a batch that did not germinate and that was the end of that.
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Can get it online these days
 

Hansel said:
@HerdnMulhall
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@Stivy
Well I live on an olive grove and tend 120 about olive trees scattered around. The olives are milled for oil. It takes about 6000 olives to get a litre of oil and frankly it's a past time rather than any hope of making a profit but on a good year the oil is like liquid gold and people are delighted to receive a bottle as it's pure , high-grade stuff. There is an informative book, 'Olives- the noble fruit ' by an American writer that seems to have gone walkabout from my bookshelves but there are endless you-tube shorts. Gathering by traditional methods is back breaking stuff and commercial growers use all sorts on machinery to grab the trunk and shake it to cause the olives to drop. While I have seen olive trees in England I can't imagine they would ever be a crop , I think on average, mature well tended trees produce around 4000 olives so you are not going to get anything worthwhile in Northern climes. And because of drought conditions our harvest has failed 3 years out of the last 6. This year however because of torrential rain in March there is so much olive blossom that a bumper crop is hoped for. It's great fun though tending the trees, climbing up to prune them to keep them manageable, seeing their growth. I imagine myself one day being found dead with a heart attack half way up one of the trees with a pruning saw in my hand. It would be a great way to go.
 
HerdnMulhall said:
@Stivy
Well I live on an olive grove and tend 120 about olive trees scattered around. The olives are milled for oil. It takes about 6000 olives to get a litre of oil and frankly it's a past time rather than any hope of making a profit but on a good year the oil is like liquid gold and people are delighted to receive a bottle as it's pure , high-grade stuff. There is an informative book, 'Olives- the noble fruit ' by an American writer that seems to have gone walkabout from my bookshelves but there are endless you-tube shorts. Gathering by traditional methods is back breaking stuff and commercial growers use all sorts on machinery to grab the trunk and shake it to cause the olives to drop. While I have seen olive trees in England I can't imagine they would ever be a crop , I think on average, mature well tended trees produce around 4000 olives so you are not going to get anything worthwhile in Northern climes. And because of drought conditions our harvest has failed 3 years out of the last 6. This year however because of torrential rain in March there is so much olive blossom that a bumper crop is hoped for. It's great fun though tending the trees, climbing up to prune them to keep them manageable, seeing their growth. I imagine myself one day being found dead with a heart attack half way up one of the trees with a pruning saw in my hand. It would be a great way to go.
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I see you are in Spain? I was thinking more about growing Olives in UK just on a hobby or interest basis. We bought an old Olive tree from Cosco about 3 years ago. It has a really old knarled trunk which must be about 18 inches diameter. I would guess it must be about 80 years old? Anyway it has never produced an olive and it is more architectural than anything else.
Anyway, at the weekend we were in Cosco again and they had smaller olive trees for sale. These had a trunk which was only about 4 inches diameter but.....it had plenty of little flowers on it which I assume are the start of olives? Anyway I planted it next to the old one and now I too have an olive grove as well consisting of 2 trees.
I just wondered if anyone else had planted olive trees in UK and whether they actually got any olives from them. So from HerdnMulhall it sounds like they like a lot of water which wouldn't have been my guess?
 
Stivy said:
I see you are in Spain? I was thinking more about growing Olives in UK just on a hobby or interest basis. We bought an old Olive tree from Cosco about 3 years ago. It has a really old knarled trunk which must be about 18 inches diameter. I would guess it must be about 80 years old? Anyway it has never produced an olive and it is more architectural than anything else.
Anyway, at the weekend we were in Cosco again and they had smaller olive trees for sale. These had a trunk which was only about 4 inches diameter but.....it had plenty of little flowers on it which I assume are the start of olives? Anyway I planted it next to the old one and now I too have an olive grove as well consisting of 2 trees.
I just wondered if anyone else had planted olive trees in UK and whether they actually got any olives from them. So from HerdnMulhall it sounds like they like a lot of water which wouldn't have been my guess?
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We’ve got a couple in pots outside in Brittany which has a very similar climate to Devon & Cornwall. They flower and olives do appear but they don't recommend trying to eat them.

They do require water but can withstand long dry periods hence they are prolific all around the Mediterranean, from Spain, France, Italy, Greece etc right across into the eastern side, Israel, Syria etc.
 
Tomato seedlings seem to be taking ages to grow , they are about 3 to 4cm high with 4 leaves on some but they just seem to have stopped growing , currently in plastic 3 x3 inch pots.
 
Guitar Man said:
Tomato seedlings seem to be taking ages to grow , they are about 3 to 4cm high with 4 leaves on some but they just seem to have stopped growing , currently in plastic 3 x3 inch pots.
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Mine are flying but they've been in the house on a South facing windowsill. Where do you have them?
 
Hair Flick said:
We’ve got a couple in pots outside in Brittany which has a very similar climate to Devon & Cornwall. They flower and olives do appear but they don't recommend trying to eat them.

They do require water but can withstand long dry periods hence they are prolific all around the Mediterranean, from Spain, France, Italy, Greece etc right across into the eastern side, Israel, Syria etc.
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Why is that, do you know?
 
Stivy said:
I see you are in Spain? I was thinking more about growing Olives in UK just on a hobby or interest basis. We bought an old Olive tree from Cosco about 3 years ago. It has a really old knarled trunk which must be about 18 inches diameter. I would guess it must be about 80 years old? Anyway it has never produced an olive and it is more architectural than anything else.
Anyway, at the weekend we were in Cosco again and they had smaller olive trees for sale. These had a trunk which was only about 4 inches diameter but.....it had plenty of little flowers on it which I assume are the start of olives? Anyway I planted it next to the old one and now I too have an olive grove as well consisting of 2 trees.
I just wondered if anyone else had planted olive trees in UK and whether they actually got any olives from them. So from HerdnMulhall it sounds like they like a lot of water which wouldn't have been my guess?
Click to expand...
Just to clear things up. We were in real relentless drought conditions when the harvest failed. No or very little spring rain which meant there was no blossom that set or survived. The land felt as if we were experiencing desertification. My experience is that the optimum is a reasonable amount of rain in spring sets the blossom and then a bit of rain , not necessarily a lot, swells the fruit in autumn. So as that mirrors the normal weather pattern here it's not a lot of water they need just normal rainfall in spring and late autumn. And good luck. Let us know how you get on.
 
HerdnMulhall said:
Just to clear things up. We were in real relentless drought conditions when the harvest failed. No or very little spring rain which meant there was no blossom that set or survived. The land felt as if we were experiencing desertification. My experience is that the optimum is a reasonable amount of rain in spring sets the blossom and then a bit of rain , not necessarily a lot, swells the fruit in autumn. So as that mirrors the normal weather pattern here it's not a lot of water they need just normal rainfall in spring and late autumn. And good luck. Let us know how you get on.
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Well it looks to be doing just fine and with this weather at the moment it must think it is back in the Med? But another poster advised that if grown in UK then they wouldn't recommend eating them. Would you know anything about this?
And then another question just out of curiosity if you don't mind? I see you are in Spain? Are you a Sunderland supporter? How did you end up in Spain? It seems like we are spread far and wide?
 
Started some peas & beans early in a mini green house in the spare bedroom, they now in large pots & starting to die off, its still a couple of weeks to soon to put them outside, any thoughts?
 
@Stivy,
i am indeed a mad keen Sunderland supporter and have been ever since 196I, Sunderland V Spurs in an FA Cup match. Willie McPheat scoring for us.64,000 in Roker Park and I've been a stupid fan ever since, ,I ended up in Spain because my long term partner has severe arthritis and the weather here, way out in the sticks is so much kinder, the pace of life so less stressful. That big hot sun warming the bones.
I'll be honest the chances of having a successful olive harvest in the UK, either for the table or for oil, is something I just didn't think possible. However on consulting Google the arbequina variety is grown in the south of England, Suffolk, apparently and there's a claim that you can get up to 20 lbs a tree- (really?). I find that hard to believe . That sounds way, way optimistic.
However you must remember out of 1000 plus varieties some, like the ones I grow are for oil, and other varieties are for the table. I grow exclusively for the oil. My experience of table olives is that they need a lot of prolonged and repeated soaking in brine and it's a faff and hard to get right . You can't just pick an olive off the tree and have a munch by the way. They need curing. And again if you want edibles you need to identify what type of olive you are growing and see if it is suitable for the table as opposed to the mill.
Of course if you do grow for oil you have to have an olive mill within striking distance and here they will only take a minimum quantity of many 100's of kilos . Even with my trees, sufficient to say to get that quantity, I go in with a neighbour and we share the proceeds, I doubt if they are many olive mills around Sunderland- maybe in SR6 though?
So if it is possible it's the table varieties you need to go for.

I'd be fascinated to know how you get on. And if you aren't successful with a crop a well pruned olive tree is a beautiful thing to behold, just as specimens in their own right.

Best of luck.
 
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