Do you know of a vendor that offers any of these varieties to US customers?
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The deadline for abstract submissions to the IX Intl. Olive Symposium closes April 1. Sometime after that a tentative program will be posted. Perhaps someone will provide a talk on cold hardy olives.
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Were you able to find any of these cold hardy varieties available for sale? I’ve had Arbequina for several years, but have had to keep them potted and indoors during the winters. It would be great to have one of these Bulgarian or Spanish cold hardy varieties to keep outside!
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It is a slow process that I don’t expect to fully resolve until late this year. I want to get cuttings from at least a dozen varieties with known cold tolerance. That will give enough of a genetic base to do some selection work. I have inquiries out for both the Bulgarian and Spanish selections.
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I’ve heard there are some small farms of olives in Ga. Supposedly they grow well there. When I looked at them it wasn’t my 7A weather as much as ripening in time. I’ve been thinking about grabbing a couple and just stabbing them in the ground to see what they do.
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following with interests. my arbequina in their large pots are warmed to above frost all winter artificially; would love plants that only need a little care instead.
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@resonanteye
That might be too warm. In my experience Italian olives do very well in sustained overnight winter temperatures in the low to mid 20’s F, provided the daytime is in the 40’s or better.
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From my research, there are three levels of hardiness with olives. Most are hardy to at least 20F. About 20 to 30 percent are hardy to 10F. Maybe a dozen varieties are documented hardy to 0F.or just a tad lower. Arbequina is only hardy to 10F.
Arroniz and Cornicabra are rated to 0F. This may not be for sustained 0F over several days, but for a short overnight drop to 0F, they should survive.
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it gets down around 10F for about a month here. I keep the olives in with my figs in the regulated hoophouse, but give them more light over winter, everything just above frost temp. the oldest is I think 5 years now.
I’m looking for something that can be planted against a warm wall or fruit wall, maybe covered for the coldest month, and planted outdoor that way. I know the arb won’t survive it
we get an occasional incredibly icy night below zero, too. not often but occasionally
I’ve always thought about “frost temp” as 40F or lower, i.e. when ice will form by sublimation on metals, lawns, etc. depending on pressure & humidity.
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Frost temp is tricky. Air temperature is only one part of the picture. Radiative cooling also affects plants to a huge degree. When the sky is clear, plants easily radiate away any heat in their leaves which can make them a few degrees cooler than the air. This lowers the dew point causing frost to form on the leaves. Here where I live, I have seen radiative cooling cause frost to form when air temperature was 36 degrees.
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In the junior level thermo class we calculated 42F as an upper limit for non-exotic materials outdoors.
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I usually see it here around 36-38F. I keep the hoophouse as close to 40 as possible through winter, it will drop to 38 but no less as that’s when it alerts me to run out with heat. it’s just heavily insulated, and has heat mats on reflective surfaces to warm it, plus some cheap shop lighting. that’s enough to keep it warm all but one or two nights in winter. in the day it gets up to maybe 50 ish through winter, in March it starts to get warmer so I’ll use a timer on the heat mats… I have a thread about my setup somewhere here.
the olives seem to be fine in there by the figs. even my avocado did all right this past winter.
I would love to have a tree I could put in ground though. we are supposed to be 6b here but from the numbers it is more like 6a, we get extreme heat and dry to extreme cold. short ish season on a bad year, decent one in a good year.
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Here is one of the Ga. farms I was talking about. They go into detail of the varieties they grow, dieback, and more. It’s a good read with a lot of information and history.
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thank you so much for this info
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Bringing this thread back to the top for some more discussion.
Arroniz, Cornicabra, and Manzanilla Cacarena are on my short list.
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Now you’ve revived my interest. I’ve been thinking about trying a few for a while now. I think they will survive, it’s the fruiting I question. The nursery down the street has Albequina for $20 and I may give a few a try. That’s the main variety they are growing in Ga. and they claim it’s somewhat cold resistant.
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I’m growing Nikita’s Jubilee in 7a.
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Robert, presuming you are north of Atlanta, Arbequina is not likely to last. It can handle 10F. Your area hits 10F or a tad lower at least once every 10 years.
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Oregon has an olive evaluation in progress with about 130 varieties in trial. It is woefully short on cold tolerant varieties. Current best are probably Arbequina and Leccino.
Neil Bell is involved in the trial.
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