Plant family: Oleaceae
Plant origin: Eastern Mediterranean.
Fruit description: DWARF Arbequina Olive is a beautiful bush, with weeping growth habit, and very attractive small pointed grey-green leaves. It is a small olive, usually eaten when black, which is good for eating and for pressing for olive oil. DWARF Arbequina grows to 2.5 metres, and is suitable to grow in pots, or can be planted in the ground. The fruit is oval, smooth, 2-4cm long, turning from green to purple grey to nearly black when fully ripe. Inside each fruit is a hard woody seed. The fruit is too bitter to eat raw. Olives are usually pickled in brine to remove the bitterness before the fruit is preserved.
Flowers: Olive flowers are tiny and creamy white, borne in Spring in little bunches on the ends of last year's wood.
Growing conditions: The Olive is a small very long lived evergreen tree. The leathery leaves are about 30mm long, grey-green or top and silvery underneath. Olives grow to about 5 metres high. With age, the trunk becomes twisted and gnarled. It is very hardy, adaptable and drought tolerant, growing well in poor and stony soils, tolerating some salinity and some alkalinity. It tolerates frost well. Cold weather helps flowering but long hot Summers are required for good fruit. Olives prefer dry climates more than humid. Water is necessary for good fruit development. The tree makes an attractive ornamental, as the grey green leaves look good with other green foliage. They make good shade or windbreaks too.
Uses: Olives are usually preserved or pickled in vinegar, wine or olive oil. Preserved olives have many savoury uses such as tapenade (olive paste), in salads, on pizzas, in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Greek cooking. Pickled olives may also be stuffed with pimento, anchovies, feta cheese or nuts. Oil pressed from ripe olives is delicious eaten with bread, in salads or in cooking. It does not burn or smoke at high temperatures. Olive oil is also used in medicine, toiletries such as soap, and cosmetics. Olive wood is very beautiful for wood work.
Medicinal uses: Olive leaves can be used to prepare a medicinal tea.
Pollination requirements: Self-Pollinating.
Harvest time Harvest the fruit when green or when black according to the flavour you want in the pickled or pressed product. You can pick the olives by shaking the branch or tree and collecting the fruit that falls.
Plant relatives
Special features:
Grown by method: Cutting Grown Pot size: 125mm
Plant growing Height and Width for pots or in the ground planting: Grows to 2.5 metres high by 2 metres wide if Planted in a Pot. Grows 2.5 metres high by 2.5 metres wide if Planted in the Ground.
Shipping plant pot or planter bag size: 125mm
