Sad Olives

Damaged Olives - Marin County  2015

Alert readers will recall earlier accounts of my experiments with harvesting and brining olives. Alas, the last two years' crops were a total failure due to the presence of olive fruit flies. After last year's disaster I was prepared to give up on any kind of harvest, but I didn't. Instead, this year I installed two (2) fruit fly traps. They're ball-shaped, using yeast pellets as attractant dissolved in water at the bottom. (See below.)

Alas again, they didn't work well enough to protect the olives. Many fruit flies were trapped, but not nearly enough to prevent another total loss.

So . . . what to do? The next option presented at an olive seminar I attended was to prevent the tree from fruiting, either through some sort of chemical spray, or by physically knocking the flowers off in the spring. But you would have to be prepared to do that every year, indefinitely . . .

It might be time to look into replacing the tree with a fruitless variety.

Olive Trap #1 - Marin County  2015

Olive Trap #2 - Marin County  2015