Mame Olive

LuZiKui

Shohin
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In April I cut off the top 4-5" of my olive tree. It had some interesting movement so I put some root hormone on it and put it in a small container. About a month later some roots started popping out from the bottom of the small container. I was going to be on vacation and wanted to give myself some insurance against it drying out so I put it in a pond basket of soil. The roots exploded and now they're coming out of the bottom of the pond basket and it's pretty well held in there.

I want to get it into a more manageable container to free up some space on my bench. I've still got a couple of hot months left here in SoCal. Can I go ahead and do that now or should I wait until next spring? My concern is that by spring there will be so many roots growing out of the little container it will be a huge pain to separate them.
 

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I think it’s probably a mixed bag with summer vs. spring.
I’ve repotted mine in the summer with good results. Where I’m at, my olive doesn’t start growing until it gets over 90. I’m essentially timing the repot with when it starts pushing new growth.
Thats gonna be a cool little tree.
 

p_anova

Mame
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I would just carefully cut the plastic container away and leave it in there. That pond basket is their's now, they claimed it. Little guy is cute btw. Even letting it grow in there till Spring next year, until the repot, will set you in the right direction.
 

LuZiKui

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Well against better judgement I decided to get this thing out of the little container it was in. I had a long day at work and needed to do something with my hands. I was surprised how many roots it had put out in just under 3 months. The little container had some cactus mix and the pond basket just had potting soil. This guy seems to be enjoying it.

I tried to keep as many roots intact as possible but most of the dirt fell off. These things seem to be pretty robust so I'm hoping it continues where it left off. I now have a tiny tree in an oversized pond basket but it was the only thing I had available. I mixed in some extra bonsai soil to improve drainage.

Thinking I'll give it a couple weeks to make sure it's growing well then I'll throw some wire on it to start giving it some shape. Then maybe next spring I can get it into a smaller container. I'll include a picture of the plant it came off of. You can see the big cut where this piece came from.
 

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LuZiKui

Shohin
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So i'm pretty confident it's Olea Europea, and there are a bunch of different subspecies under that. I've seen some pictures of wild olives (Olea Oleaster) that look pretty similar to it. But then again I've seen some pictures of dwarf olives that look pretty similar. My guess is that there has hybridization over time so it's probably hard to tell exactly?
 

Doogliebop

Mame
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Yeah It could be either from what I can tell. It's hard to distinguish until the bark matures.
 

LuZiKui

Shohin
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I didn’t think this little cutting would do as well as it has. The soil it was in wasn’t great so I figured time to get serious with it.

It has a ton of roots for such a short period of time but unfortunately only from one half of the trunk. I’ll need to think about what to do with it… maybe a little ROR out of a stone with a little pocket? At any rate just planted it straightforward for now. Used pumice and coco coir. Trimmed some roots to get it to fit and trimmed some branches. I’ll keep it in the shade for a few days then back to full sun. 95E36C58-AAAC-4AC2-B642-BC7BF2BDCFF4.jpegC8A8BC98-AD0F-41AA-A672-C9BC44DE6101.jpeg1660FE9A-A7E4-47D9-9B43-D6BB84C5FE3C.jpeg
 
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