Wild Olive - Autumn Cuttings Experiment

[stav121]

So - on the 1st of September I cut part of a shoot out of a root sucker from a street olive that I came across. I believe that those are grafted trees and the root stock is usually wild olive (Olea Sylvestris), so I though why not experiment with Autumn Olive cuttings. I just cut them into small pieces, dip one end in a very generic organic rooting hormone (the only one I could find nearby at that time), put 6 small cuttings in individual pots with mix of 30% Zeolite, 30% Pumice, 20% Lava rock, 20% Sphagnum Moss, put them all in individual transparent bags and under a small indoor grow lamp that I have (from a Click & Grow 3 which stays on for 16 hours a day).

On 14th of September (14 days later) I pulled them all out to see if any roots had developed and to my surprise, all of them had at least one root emerging on come out already.

Here are the two that have even started to actively push more growth over the past two weeks.




Since it is starting to get a bit colder here day by day, I thought I might try to overwinter them inside for a while just to be sure they have taken for good.

Seems like a fun little project until Spring comes again.

 

[akillas]

Ive found wild olive to be indestructible.. you could throw one down the street and a year later it will be budding.

You wont see a properly thick trunk in our lifetime though, it thickens very slowly. For this reason, i (legally) only collect thick wild olive trunks and they are one of my fav species.

Also, nice pots!

 

[stav121]

Ive found wild olive to be indestructible.. you could throw one down the street and a year later it will be budding.

You wont see a properly thick trunk in our lifetime though, it thickens very slowly. For this reason, i (legally) only collect thick wild olive trunks and they are one of my fav species.

Also, nice pots!

Well, I find olives the best tree to fiddle around when your fingers are itchy. You can do whatever you want whenever you want and they will take it like nothing happened!

Thanks on the pots - I have made them myself, kinda got into some pottery during the summer heatwave and I made around 10 various size pots just to pass the time. Great side project for when there is no bonsai work to be done.

 

[Pads]

They usually root easily. But thickening the trunk is another story.

 

[stav121]

They usually root easily. But thickening the trunk is another story.

I will be back in about 40 years with the results I guess

 

[akillas]

depending on your location around Attica, there are all around fantastic rocky hills under 500m altitude, that have ancient wild olive trunks and farmers would be happy to get rid of them..

Here is an old wild olive that I collected 4 months ago.It recovered in just 2 months!
I plan to extensively deadwood&dremel carve it this coming spring.

 

[stav121]

depending on your location around Attica, there are all around fantastic rocky hills under 500m altitude, that have ancient wild olive trunks and farmers would be happy to get rid of them..

Here is an old wild olive that I collected 4 months ago.It recovered in just 2 months!
I plan to extensively deadwood&dremel carve it this coming spring.

Sadly, I live in an appartment with a balcony, so space is limited at the moment - that is why I keep a limited amount of bonsai at a time and prefer mostly shohin since it allows me to keep more trees in a smaller space. Currently I only have 3 trees that are over shohin size and that is pretty much the limit for me.

Unless something dies or is sold or gifted to someone, I am kind of limited to the trees I have.

In any case we have a couple of fields in Peloponnese and in Crete with some massive ancient olives that we own and we have already chopped back in order to contain in the future as bonsai - but they are field grown up until that time comes. We also have a pretty descent Elm (Ulmus Minor) that was self-sown there a few years back which gets cut back hard once every year that has an amazing trunk for future bonsai, a project for the near future hopefully.