Olive tree

Will this grow to a fair height, Resi?

This is the real Olea...when will it start to produce fruit? Or is it early days yet? I had a Russian Olive (eleagnus) at my last garden and it smelled gorgeous when it bloomed but the fruit were inedible, that's as close as we get to "olive trees" over here!

i believe that olives dont really grow very tall 15-20m at most Whistonlass, but most are severely pruned to stay much shorter than that. i actually had some olives on it last year, but am in the process of pruning it so it gets a more 'olivey' shape, should have done it before but now do a bit each year, the deer had already lopped it fr the top. i have eleagnus too Lori but didnt know they were called 'russian olives'!, they are the sort of plant which sends you looking in all directions to see where that heavenly smell came from, and the flowers are so small and not noticable at all.

Sorry, Resi...yes Eleagnus augustifolia is known as Russian Olive..over here. Another small tree that has a wonderful aroma with insignificant flowers is the Amur maple..(Acer ginalla) They smell sweet... very much like a lilac and the flowers are a yellow-green, it's hard to credit that the beautiful smell is coming from a maple tree!.... I also like the Linden (Tilia)(my Dad called it Basswood), it's flowers are little white stars which smell deliciously sweet and in a tea imparts a special taste. Beautiful aroma when blended with a black tea, and is supposed to be a detoxifier as well as a calminative. They are all hardy to zones 3 to 5 as well, whereas, the true olive is a zone 8, I think..(could be wrong.)

hi lori, we planted 8 limes, tillia, spaced out along our wild hedge which have all taken, one was in the wrong place, competing with a fig so i transplanted it to the middle of a grassy area last winter hoping for some shade there in years to come, very chuffed she took and suffered no ill effects fr transplant.
in our previous house, also here in france, we had 3 enormous limes and the first spring i saw the 'limes alive' i could just not get over the honeypot effect for the bees,you could hear them from well down the lane... the trees really did seem alive and then as you say, that smell, sitting underneath one on the go makes you drowsy, inhaling all that...and just listening!
yes tilleuil tea is one of my favs, the french are very keen on herbal teas, mine comes with green tea...as i cannt make my own anymore, my babes are just about 90cm high now and still flowerless.

That is wonderful, Resi!! mmmm... in a few years you'll be enjoying your own tilia aromas... That's the thing about growing trees, aye? they seem to take a while to get going but suddenly they're providing shade! Had a maple in the front garden of our last house which was a mere switch when we moved in...when we sold last autumn it was 40 ft tall and providing shade from the summer sun...and dappling the garden in a mere 12 years! The only downside was the amount of roots...I could hardly get other plants in with a shoehorn, and I had to water a lot because the tree took most of it.

Whistonlass en Lori, i have just posted a picture of my little olive tree, i noticed this morning that she has lots of buds.
i have no idea about the process needed to change them into edible olives, if she manages to produce real fruits that is! last year she had about 5 dinky little olives, bit more now.

sorry to be so completely ignorant ;-p...but .... I thought the fruit just ripened on the tree! or you picked them green and pressed them for oil!! lol....Pardon me Resi. Is it a process like canning ..or pickling?

i was thinking about actually getting them to the eating stage, like pickling i suppose, rather than the olive oil stage, cause i tried to eat one last year and they were really hard, bitter little nuggets. i can see i have to do some serious googling here...

LOL... what did we do before google? Oh, yeah..we went to the library! You've got me interested now...will be waiting to hear the answers...