Trick for sowing Olive seeds

[Crazy Diamond]

Olives are known to be difficult to propagate by seed in home because the thick coat that protect the seed when it get eated by an animal, but it can be done with a little trick for cracking open the seed, its not easy at first and you have to do it very slowly to not damage the seed. Just get ripe olives and remove all the pulp then leave the seed at least 1 week to dry out, then use any device to aply pressure, the more slowly and even you can until you hear the crack sound and then sow the clean seed (you can stratificate them first in the fridge) you cant use any olive thats been procesed to eat for humans that usually kills the seed, you need to take them from the tree. The resulting trees wont be the same cultivar as the father tree but are great for rootstock to graft or bonsai



The final product, the clean seed without any damage

 

[BrianBay9]

Interesting. I had a fruiting olive in my yard at a previous California home. I could not possibly rake up all the fruit that it dropped, so it was constantly seeding the ground beneath. I did nothing and always had hundreds of seedlings. I guess if you wait long enough they'll sprout on their own. Good to know you can speed it up.

 

[Crazy Diamond]

Interesting. I had a fruiting olive in my yard at a previous California home. I could not possibly rake up all the fruit that it dropped, so it was constantly seeding the ground beneath. I did nothing and always had hundreds of seedlings. I guess if you wait long enough they'll sprout on their own. Good to know you can speed it up.

Yes they have a long dormant period specially if they are not eated by an animal, crack them open just acelerates the germination from 2 years to weeks

 

[Shibui]

As for @BrianBay9 Olives germinate everywhere here without any treatment or work. I spend time pulling olive seedlings out of the garden to stop them taking over so no need to go to extra work to germinate more seed.
Olives generally develop quite slowly so it takes quite a few years to get a good trunk. Much quicker to pick out good specimens growing wild on roadsides of on farmland and transplant to a pot.
I guess some places do not have the same sort of feral olive problem that we have here but developing olive bonsai from seed seems like a really long process.