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An olive works to a longer rhythm than most garden fruit. Flower buds are set by cold in winter, flowering happens in a short window in late spring, and the fruit then takes most of the rest of the year to fill and color. Nothing you do in autumn will change the size of that year's crop; almost everything that matters happened between winter and early summer.
The table below is the whole year at a glance. Use the stage of the tree, not the calendar, to decide what to do, so that the same plan works whichever hemisphere you garden in.
| Stage | What the tree is doing | Your job | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winter | Logging chill hours, dormant | Keep outdoors or somewhere unheated and bright; water rarely | Warm indoor rooms; wet compost |
| Late winter to early spring | Buds swelling | Main pruning; first balanced feed | Cutting more than a quarter of the canopy |
| Mid spring | New shoots extending | Water as the compost dries; watch for scale | Letting a pot dry out completely |
| Late spring | Flowering, a few weeks only | Keep the second tree nearby; keep the air moving | Overhead watering onto open flowers |
| Early summer | Fruit set, then natural drop | Steady watering; light second feed | Panicking at falling fruitlets |
| Midsummer | Fruit swelling | Consistent water; remove water shoots | Letting the tree swing wet to bone dry |
| Late summer to autumn | Fruit coloring | Stop feeding; net if birds are a problem | Any nitrogen feed |
| Autumn to early winter | Harvest | Pick at the stage you want; start curing at once | Storing picked fruit dry |
Winter: do nothing, in the right place
The main winter task is resisting the urge to help. The tree needs to be cold, so a container olive belongs outdoors, or in an unheated bright space, for the whole season. Water perhaps once a month, and only if the compost is dry two inches (5 cm) down.
Only move a pot under cover when a hard freeze below about 15F (minus 9C) is forecast, and put it straight back out afterwards. Every week spent in a warm room is a week of chill hours lost, and chill hours are what buy you flowers.
Spring: prune first, then feed
Do the structural pruning before the buds break, taking out dead and crossing wood and opening the center. Then apply a balanced slow-release feed as growth starts. Doing it in that order means you are not feeding branches you are about to cut off.
As shoots extend, watering steps up sharply. A pot that needed a drink once a month in winter may need one every few days by late spring. Keep checking with a finger rather than switching to a fixed routine.
- Prune while dormant Cut before the buds move, leaving a good proportion of last year's shoots untouched so the tree has wood to flower on.
- Feed once, lightly A balanced slow-release fertilizer as growth begins is enough. Repeat lightly in early summer if the tree is in a pot.
- Get the pollination partner in place Have the second olive standing within pollen range before the flower buds open, not after.
- Check shoots for scale Turn over the new growth and look along the midribs. Early treatment is a wipe with soapy water; late treatment is a season of sooty mold.
Summer: water steadily and leave the fruit alone
Fruit set is followed within a few weeks by a heavy natural drop, when the tree sheds most of the tiny fruitlets it set and keeps only what it can carry. This looks alarming and is entirely normal. Do not feed in response to it.
What does damage the crop at this stage is inconsistent watering. A tree that swings between saturated and bone dry drops far more fruit than one kept evenly moist, and the fruit it keeps ends up small. Aim for a steady cycle of soaking thoroughly and then letting the top two inches (5 cm) dry before soaking again.
Stop all feeding by late summer. Nitrogen going in late produces soft shoots that have not hardened by the first frosts, and that is the wood that dies back over winter.
Autumn: harvest, then close the year out
Pick when the fruit reaches the color stage you want and start the cure the same day. Once the crop is off, the only remaining jobs are clearing fallen fruit from under the tree, which breaks the olive fruit fly cycle, and getting the pot out of standing water before the wet season sets in.
Do not prune now and do not feed now. The tree is heading into the cold period that will set next year's flowers, and the best thing you can do for it is leave it cold, dry at the roots and undisturbed.
The four notes that make next year easier
Keep a short record each season: the coldest run of nights in winter, the week flowering started, the date and weight of the harvest, and how hard you pruned. Those four lines explain almost every good and bad olive year you will have.
Add a note of where each tree stood during flowering. Moving a container tree a few feet, or leaving the second tree round the back of the house, is a common and entirely invisible reason for a crop failure that otherwise looks like bad luck.